Tag Archive for: Axis

A Journey Towards Contentment: Choosing

Selecting the yama/niyama I was going to focus on for my experiment was a difficult process for me.  Upon reading through all of them, it seemed like there were bits and pieces in each one that needed improving on in my life. On the evening in class where we were told to separate in to groups based on the yama selected, I felt like a lost puppy. Everyone seemed to move directly and effortlessly to their prospective group. I felt like everyone was so clear about what their intentions were with this experiment. In a pinch, I plopped myself down with the aparigraha group. Just pick one. Maybe I needed to work on that non-possessiveness thing with the objects and people in my life.  As we began to talk about aparigraha, it didn’t seem like a “perfect” fit. I’m not really a person who cares about material possessions, but maybe I need to delve further. I do feel that I try to control the people around me though. A possession of sorts. Maybe this “is” the perfect fit.  I was not content with my aparigraha decision.  Hmmm, “kind of sounds like Santosha” were the words that came from my wise yoga teacher as he sat observing our group.  Santosha?  That’s not even one of the options for this project!   It does kind of sound like I have an issue with discontentment though.What to do, what to do.

Later that evening when I got home, I re-read the yama’s and felt, maybe it’s staya that better fits my weakness. Maybe weighing my words before I speak them will help me to not try to control and fix everything. Then upon reading about asteya, I thought maybe that is the yama that best deserves my attention. Am I really being honest with myself?  Do I say one thing and act another? Do I criticize people for doing things, trying to control their actions, then turn around and do them myself? Then it hit me. An ah ha of sorts. Just this act of not being able to be content in picking a yama, searching for the perfect answer for my experiment, maybe this, maybe that, led me to consider those words from my teacher, Santosah…contentment.

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Defining

Ironically, that same evening, I had opened my class notebook to some “favorite quotes” I had been keeping track of since class began.  There, sitting in the top spot, was one that I had written down during the first week of class that had resonated with me from the Mirror of Yoga book:  “Contentment is the ability to be happy right now for no particular reason at all.  “You can actually cultivate this feeling by simply deciding right now I am going to be content.” Santosha sounded more and more like a fit.

I have had a daily meditation practice for almost two years.  Though I have felt it has helped me in many ways, I feel my mind still races with discontentment while meditating.   Get this done, what if that happens, I must try to change it, get them to do it differently, etc. etc.  From my interpretation of what Santosha means, it is that “it is impossible for one who is dissatisfied with oneself or with anything else in life to realize the higher consciousness.” ” Dissatisfaction (the lack of contentment) makes sadhana impossible.”  Meditation impossible.  ” One who wants to attain meditation must practice ALL yamas and niyamas.” So, I realized, this is maybe why I had a problem picking my yama.  I need to practice ALL of them to reach Santosha…contentment.  Tall order.

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Applying

I set out to be content. Enter daily life. A beautifully challenging teenage daughter. A marriage. A huge redecorating project that I had volunteered for with a deadline. A  beautifully challenging teenager now with a broken collar bone and pretty cranky. Financial challenges. A broken car (again). etc. etc. This is going to take A LOT of practice, this contentment thing.

To begin with, I decided to assign myself a mantra…”be content.”  I repeated this mantra daily, hourly, sometimes each minute to remind myself.  I liked this mantra.  We have become friends.  It helped to a certain extent.  I began offering my yoga practices to contentment.  This was a nice reminder also.  When I visited the Gong Bath, I sought out a crystal that would help with contentment.  Each morning, after my meditation, I would read over the yamas and contemplate how I can do things to live this knowledge.  All of these practices seemed to help me with becoming more content each day.

I did find, however, that when the going got really tough, like people dropping the ball with not doing what they were supposed to on my redecorating project, or my teenager not eating appropriately, or my husband not doing what “I” think is the “right” thing,  or my car breaking down for the eighth time, etc. etc.,  that my little mantra was challenged. “How can I be content in a situation like this?” Then one day, in the middle of waiting for someone who was 45 minutes late and I had a boat-load of things to do, I had another one of those ah ha moments. Contentment = dropping control. Stop – Drop – Control.  Kind of like that thing you were taught as a kid if you catch on fire. Pretty much the same concept too.  The more you run and struggle with the fire(control), the hotter and larger it will get and the more extensive the damage. So a second bouncing baby mantra was born to me, “drop control.”

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Reflecting

Over the past two weeks, me and my little mantras have become very close. They have been helping me to “be aware”.  I have been practicing. Weighing each word before speaking it…staya. As I try to push my opinions on my teenager and husband, I found myself literally stopping in mid sentence and calling on my “drop control” mantra. After all, they have their own dharma in this life. This absence of harmful control…ahimsa. Non-attachment to others through cleanliness. getting re-aquainted with my netti pot,  paying attention to food I am putting into my body and daily yoga and exercise to start, leading to contentment…shaucha. Becoming “aware” of this hidden wealth all these practices are bringing…asteya.   Working on non-possession of the outcome of the situation…aparigraha.  Ah, there is that aparigraha again.   Together, all of this leading toward the perfect body and mind.   Not to outwordly look good at the pool in a few weeks, but to ignite the internal flame…tapas, to lead to that deep meditative state and then, finally, contentment…Santosha.

I realize that in these short three weeks I cannot change the control I have been striving for over my lifetime.  This will take time.  Maybe the rest of my time in this body on this earth, but at least this experiment has made me that much more “aware” of the yama and niyama principles and it is a new start to the ultimate contentment.

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A Journey Towards Contentment: Continuing

So as we approach this beautiful season of springtime, I plant my garden of contentment.  I spread my yama and niyama seeds into the earth.  I “drop the control” as fertilizer.  I shower it with the awareness of contentment each day, I bathe it in the warmth and depth of meditation each day, and watch as the new little sprouts of peace,  non-violence, truthfulness, honesty, vigor, energy, courage, non-possessiveness, cleanliness, purity, meditation, and most of all, contentment,  begin to sprout, grow, and flourish in this season I call my life.  My little mantras, “ be content” and “drop control”, always at my side, waiting to tap me softly on my shoulder least I forget they are there.

Thank you to all of my teachers, past, present, and future, who continue to help me find my center, my perfect yoga. My contentment.

Namaste.

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Conscious Awareness

Axis Yoga Teacher Training students complete a personal experiment as part of the culmination of course study. This student started the experiment with a practical application of lessons learned during the program. But it was a bigger lesson in awareness and its effect on life that the experiment ended up teaching.

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Conscious Awareness: Practical Application

My personal experiment was originally going to entail a daily home sadhana and applying

ayurvedic remedies to determine if either would have an effect on my chronic headache condition.  The

first week went well and I practiced each morning.  Sadhana started with a warm?up, three surya

namaskar, pranayama practice, and meditation.  After reading about some restorative asanas that may

help headache conditions, I replaced the warm?up and sun salutations with restorative viparita karani

mudra or supta badha konasana.  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice a change in the daily headaches, they

appeared to be as variable as they usually were with the high grade headaches coming as frequently as

normal; about two a week.

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Conscious Awareness: Setbacks

Then, I got sick.  Not hospital sick, just a head cold.  But, by my reaction to it, you wouldn’t have

known it was just a head cold.  My lack of presence during that week of illness was astounding.  I flowed

through my days completely unaware of my actions at any given moment.  I did not even experience the

weird duality I sometimes do when life’s challenges prove difficult to handle.  In my dual state, I am, at

least, aware that I am a wreck.  I watch myself, shaking my head and laughing at how serious and

attached I am to making others happy and ensuring that the things I “should do” as a responsible adult

get done.  It’s as if a part of me is separate from the insanity.  At these moments, I get the tiniest of

insights into one of Hafiz’s quotes.  “God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny

boat.  We keep bumping into each other and laughing.”  Part of me is muddling through and the

separate part of me finds that fact absolutely hysterical while asking “Why muddle when you can skip?”

I’m still figuring out how to answer that question (which, I might add, my separate self finds even

funnier).

There was no watching myself during that particular week of illness; I look back now on that

week as if it were a dream.  I slept my way through it as I slept my way through all of my younger life.

Sadhana during that week was no more than a twinkle in my mind; something else that I should do and

wasn’t doing.  Even the daily sadhana that I do at work was put aside.

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Conscious Awareness: Revising the Experiment

So, my experiment became an exercise in determining what happens when even the modest

amount of daily Sadhana I do is put aside.  Oh boy, the lessons learned here are so simple and yet so

immense that words cannot effectively describe them; but I will do my best.  Their simplicity is trumped

only by the fact that these realizations have occurred over the course of the last couple of days as the

illness subsided and my daily practice resumed.  It wasn’t until I restarted a daily sadhana that I could

see again; before that I wasn’t even aware that I wasn’t aware.

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Conscious Awareness: Realizations

My first realization is that Sadhana must be practiced regularly.  Without the practice, it is

simply a lovely theory.  If all I do is sit in a room and read and discuss what I can be and how I can grow, I

will never move from my current state.  I actually have to DO something if I want to change.

My next realization is that without presence, I sleep through life and the waves made by my

unaware actions carry me along.  Being present allows me to actively choose what to do or not do.

When I am conscious, I select, for each moment, what actions I take.  I get to be aware of and

understand some of the possible consequence of these actions.

Without that consciousness, I’m not even aware that there is a choice to be made, let alone

understand the consequences of my actions; I simply react to life.  The alarm goes off, so I get out of

bed.  I have worked at this particular job for four years, so I go to work.   I have bills to pay, so I do what I

have to do to earn a living.  The cats are hungry, so I feed them.  The laundry is dirty, so I wash it.  The

interesting thing is that, when I’m present, the cats are still hungry and I still feed them, but I chose to

feed them and I choose when to feed them.  I’m not simply rambling down the hall, with them wrapping

themselves around my legs, to get the food to them as quickly as possible, so that the yowls for food

stop.  The point is that the choice exists.

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