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WINTER 2007
NAMASTE,
Besides death and taxes, there is something else you can count on for sure in life, and that’s change. Whether it be the shifting of the seasons or the makeup of the government, the face of the planet or shape of your face, as Otis Redding said, "a change is gonna come". Like it or not, change is inevitable, so there’s no sense in debating whether that’s good or bad. It is not a question of good or bad. It just is.
The question is: how do we deal with the changes that do come? It’s an important question because change usually presents a set of challenges for us, whether we view a particular change as favorable or unfavorable.
Newton, in his First Law of Motion, states that bodies at rest tend to remain at rest and those moving at a constant velocity tend to continue moving with a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external force. He called this tendency inertia, and it is applicable to our own bodies (physical and mental) as well as other bodies in the universe. Inertia is one reason why change is challenging for most of us, and why we resist it and attempt to cling to the familiar. This, of course, would seem to make sense if what we are clinging to were pleasing and enjoyable. But if that to which we are clinging is unpleasant or even harmful, such behavior is a bit more puzzling. People, however, seem to prefer the demon they know to the uncertainty of the unknown, so the abused wife, the unhappy employee, and the disgruntled citizen often surrender to inertia and keep plugging along in sometimes barely tolerable, sometimes intolerable circumstances.
A somewhat trickier example of inertia appears in the tendency to stay stuck in pleasant circumstances. This is rarely viewed as a problem, but it is a common pothole on the path of spiritual awakening, an obstacle that stands in the way of attaining deep happiness and enlightenment. Sometimes we reach a place where everything seems to be going well; we feel good; we have insights into the nature of things; we have moments of profound clarity, even wisdom; and we figure that we’ve arrived; we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labors and good fortune. We settle, and what’s more, we settle for less than is possible, less, perhaps, than we set out to attain. Gradually, we slow down and come to a stop ~ and inertia sets in.
Whether we are mired in pleasant or unpleasant circumstances, mired is where we will be until some force comes along to move us. And the more attached we are to where we are, the greater the resistance to the inescapable forces of change when they do come.
Not surprisingly, for those of us on the path of yoga, our practice can be a powerful tool for helping us to deal with change. One way it can do this is by revealing the daily habits and patterns to which we are attached. Sometimes we don’t even know we’re stuck until something shows us we are. Many a beginning student has not realized how tight his hamstrings are until he lies on his back, raises his leg toward the ceiling, puts a strap around his foot, and tries to draw his straightened (or not so straightened) leg back toward his chest. Immediate and sometimes uncomfortable awareness of how tight those hamstrings are suddenly becomes unavoidable. Seeing that we’re stuck is often an important first step toward being able to see ways to get unstuck.
Another way our practice can help us deal with change is by providing us with the strength and flexibility to adapt to whatever change brings. Each time we do a new pose, for example, our body has changed in myriad ways. And each new pose requires us to observe, adjust, observe, and readjust in order to regain our sense of balance and find the best possible alignment for that pose. That process of adjusting and readjusting will force us to strengthen weak areas and to relax tight areas, to learn where to hold on and where to let go. That process is training us to deal with change.
Intention is a vital element of our practice. In order to act in an effective and meaningful way in our practice, we must put the energy of our intention to work for us. In our lives, when the forces of change challenge our ability to remain present and to adapt, the capacity that we have developed in our practice to maintain clarity of intention will provide us with a template into which we can integrate those changes as they come. They will appear less random and chaotic because we will have a framework for incorporating them.
And as we practice day after day, year after year, we see that we have a hand in guiding the ways in which our bodies and minds move and change, and we begin to realize that as surely as a change is gonna come, just as surely do we have within ourselves the ability to look squarely at change as it comes, open our arms, and embrace it.
Join us for our free Discussion Group on "Yoga and The Challenge of Change" on Sunday, March 4 (See workshops page.)
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