Tag: aversion

why?

by Linda (Valdez) Karl

While working with a private student this morning I asked:

why is it that people are so attached to things they CAN NOT change and don’t do anything about (or are so detached from) the things that they CAN change?

How does that view of reality get so turned around in people’s heads?

You can’t change the bad weather, you can’t change being stuck in traffic, you can’t change a slow line at the airport, you can’t change the way your mother or father treated you in your childhood. so why are you intimately attached to your own suffering? maybe because your suffering gives you your identity?

do you experience sadness or are you a sad person? do you experience anger or are you an angry person? hugely different scenarios.

However, you can change the way you look at things: you can cultivate more patience, you can become less judgmental, you can become more compassionate (always first towards yourself), you can slow down, you can stop multi-tasking. so why do you have aversion to changing your conditioning? maybe because if you changed your conditioning you would not be “you”?

oh those pesky samskaras! who would we be without them?

It dawned on me that this is the cause of so much suffering.

I am not going to write a long esoteric post of what the Buddha taught, but some of the things he taught were about the impermanence of all things, about seeing the true nature of reality, about attachment and aversion.

People cling to the mindset of “that’s the way I’ve always been” or “that’s the way we’ve always done things” when they are talking about their lives in the HERE AND NOW. Because X happened 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, that is why they are like this now. We are “survivors” of this and “victims” of that. that has nothing to do with NOW.

I always use the example of concentration camp survivors when I talk to students about changing their way of looking at things….

two men survive Auschwitz. they both lost their entire families. they are all alone. they both suffered through the cold, the lice, the dysentery, the starvation, through the same horrors. but when they are liberated, what makes one a Nazi hunter and what makes the other a hungry ghost shackled to the past? are they both survivors or are they both victims?

I am reading Bringing Yoga to Life by Donna Farhi. this is one of the best yoga books I have encountered and it will definitely be on the students’ required reading list when I start my own teacher training program. it is not a book on asana practice, it is so much more…just like yoga.

In the chapter “A Box of Monsters”, Farhi writes that separating our true Self from our box of monsters is no easy task, and she cites the advice of the great Hindu sage, Ramana Maharshi. She says that Maharshi used an analogy repeatedly with his students to help them understand the layers of their experience:

“It is like a cinema. The screen is always there but several types of pictures appear on the screen and then disappear. Nothing sticks to the screen; it remains the screen. Similarly, you remain your own Self in all the three states [wakefulness, dream, deep sleep]. If you know that, the three states will not trouble you, just as the pictures which appear on the screen do not stick to it. On the screen you sometimes see a huge ocean with endless waves; that disappears. Another time you see fire spreading all around; that too disappears. The screen is there on both occasions. Did the screen get wet with the water or did it get burned by the fire? Nothing affected the screen. In the same way, the things that happen during the wakeful, dream, and sleep states do not affect you at all; you remain your own Self.”

Maharshi’s basic question was: are you the screen or are you the projection?

Farhi says that if you think the projection and the screen are the same, then it is like thinking that every time a horror show is on television, you’re going to have to fix the TV.

Yes, as feeling human beings we are affected by the horrors we endure, but that is not our endgame because we are so much more. Some may call me a survivor, a statistic, but I am so much more. we have a body, but we are more than our bodies. we are more than our box of monsters. what remains after our own horror show remains undamaged.

As a wise-ass Buddhist once said, life is suffering, life sucks, but pain is optional.
the choice is yours.

Impermanent are all compounded things.
When one perceives this with true insight,
then one becomes detached from suffering;
this is the path of purification.

Dhammapada 20.277

addthis_pub = ‘yogagal60510’;

no attachment, no aversion

by Linda (Valdez) Karl

What would happen to pain if we did not label it as such? What would happen if we turned to face our obstacles instead of pushing them away?

I teach vinyasa flow and yin yoga. Yin yoga is a style that is still unfamiliar to many yoga students. It doesn’t make you sweat and you don’t feel like you’ve gotten a “workout” — “you mean you’re not moving? you’re just on the floor? no way can I do pigeon for 10 minutes, are you kidding?!?”

I believe that if you have strictly a “yang” practice like astanga or vinyasa, you are only giving yourself half the gift of yoga.

Because of my training with Paul Grilley and Sarah Powers and my own personal yoga and meditation practices, I feel that a yin/yang yoga practice offers a complete practice not only on the physical level, but more importantly on the psychic level. Working on these deeper levels is what leads to our personal transformation, and the changes we make in our soft tissue have a profound influence on the emotional, mental, and energetic levels. My own yoga practice deepened when I moved away from an alignment-based, precision-obsessed practice.

A quiet yin practice reveals our subtle body. We move from the gross muscular level into our bones, into the connective tissue deep within us. Many yoga students don’t practice in a way that invites stillness because many times the contemplative aspects of yoga are ignored in western yoga classes. How many of you sit in stillness for 10-15 minutes DURING a vinyasa class, i.e., at the end of class, not AFTER the class, only as an option? My study at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in India showed me how different yoga is there compared to the fitness classes labeled as yoga here.

In my training with Sarah earlier this year she said that “yoga is a process of fully inhabiting ourselves — body, heart, and mind.” Sarah believes that as a society we are so fixated on our bodies looking and performing a certain way that we neglect the spirit body. She said that Ken Wilber calls this “bodyism”, and I see it all the time in vinyasa classes.

There is nothing wrong in trying to perfect an arm balance or headstand, nothing at all. But if the only thing behind it is Ego, then it is only a performance. Non-attachment, non-Ego, is accepting yourself just the way you are in that present moment when your legs smash the wall and you crash down from a very shaky headstand — and smiling about it instead of swearing. I ask my students, “what is going to ultimately transform you? holding an arm balance for five minutes or sitting in stillness for five minutes?”

The stillness of yin yoga allows us to observe the rising and passing away of physical and emotional sensations. All of our life experiences reside in our body, and the emotional afflictions we all carry affects the body and hardens us, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Yin yoga is not just about cultivating physical flexibility, but our inner flexibility as well. Sarah believes that we can never truly soften if we do not investigate these sensations and turn toward our pain and discomfort, instead of running from them. This process is similar to vipassana meditation — watching, arising, abiding, passing away.

Sarah’s teacher training included a workshop called “Working with Emotional Obstacles Along the Path.” She suggests that we explore our personal responses to our sensations, and instead of pushing them away, confront them, because if we do not, our obstacles continue to live in our bodies. Sarah recommends a five step process:

* Recognition — Identify what is disturbing you the most. Emotional pain, illness, addiction, self-hate?

* Acceptance — Acknowledge the issue and explore how and where it lives inside you. Does it have a shape, color, size, temperature, texture?

* Impartiality — Let go of defining the issue as right or wrong. Let go of assumptions and just observe.

* Personification — Imagine this issue as a living being in front of you. Notice its gender, color, size, etc. Ask It what It needs of You, and if this need is met, how does that make You feel?

* Compassion — Give yourself permission to have this need as you begin to open to the expansiveness and clarity of your newfound Awareness.

Yoga, done with mindfulness, allows us to come home to ourselves.

TADA DRASTUH SVARUPE VASTHANAM
(Yoga Sutra-s 1.3)
“Then, the ability to understand the object fully and correctly is apparent.”

“In the state of Yoga, the different preconceptions and products of the imagination that can prevent or distort understanding are controlled, reduced, or eliminated. The tendency to be closed to fresh comprehension or the inability to comprehend are overcome.” (Reflections on Yoga Sutra-s of Patanjali, TKV Desikachar)