Today in yoga class our teacher said to try not to come out of the pose early, stay in the room, and during the last 10 seconds, go to your personal edge. Life will always have a struggle in it, both in and out of the studio. Pushing through your struggles inside the studio will train your mind to overcome them outside of the studio, too. There will be struggle even in the periods when all seems to be going well. The tremendous control of the mind over the body we learn in the studio, translates into tremendous control of our mind over thoughts detrimental to our overcoming struggle outside the studio. Not letting our mind go in a certain direction takes fortitude, but through the practice of yoga, it becomes almost second nature. One person was discussing having to leave the room because she couldn’t get air and one young man remarked, “But isn’t that what yoga is all about?”
When we are involved in a struggle the only thing we focus on is having it over. And when it’s over, what will there be? Another struggle. If life is never without a struggle and it’s impossible to reach that struggle-free utopia, then it seems to me we need a better approach to viewing our everyday problems, as well as our long term ones. I, myself, have been going down the road of “struggle is a journey, the solution is not necessarily the destination”. Lately instead of racing to find ways to resolve it, I just slow it down and put it on the back burner. Sort of like what we do with our thoughts when we go to sleep. It’s been said that our dreams are our subconscious mind working out our difficulties and problem solving while our mind is at rest. Going through my day without actually focusing on my major struggles of late, I feel my mind is on auto-pilot in finding those solutions and problem solving. Out of this, at odd times of the day, such as driving down the road, out if nowhere comes a new way to approach the struggles lingering in my world. Being present in my yoga practice, my reading, my writing, my cleaning, etc. and leaving my struggles in the peripheral, leads to that sort of “dream type” problem solving.
I believe this is another benefit gleaned from the floor of the yoga studio. Day after day I’m conditioned to drop my struggles in the puddle in the parking lot before entering, and for 90 minutes train my mind to focus on my own eyes in the mirror, overcoming anything my body might be yelling at me. Outside of class it’s easier to focus on the moment at hand, rather than get eaten up inside by life’s current strife. So many new insights come about that wouldn’t have if I had dwelt on my struggles 24/7, making the journey as satisfying as the destination. Just as in the dream state, the mind is allowed to go to places we could never force it to go.
Complete control over our thoughts is paramount to relaxing in the midst of conflict and strife, greatly reducing the stress that could easily overtake us.
And so, as another day goes by, mind control affords stress relief, and…I have written.
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