Tag Archive for: Denver

Practicing Non-Grasping: Introduction

When Derik said that the Yamas were listed in order of precendence, I knew I had to start at the end.  My job, my life, and my sloppy self-reflection skills all demanded that I take it easy on this one.  So, I went straight to the end: aparigraha. The three versions of the sutras I had access to (How to Know God, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood; The Heart of Yoga by TKV Deshikar, and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Swami Satchidananda) all had slightly different takes on sutra 3.29.  I decided to skirt the connotations of accepting gifts and reincarnation, and take the approach of examining grasping, greed, and outcome-driven actions within my individual life.  I was a little bit intimidated by how intertwined all the yamas seem to be in human behavior, if not in concept.  I was not able to come up with a testable hypothesis or question for this experiment, and instead just decided to keep the awareness of the yama as much as possible while going about my job.

My job entails several levels of grasping, outcome-oriented action, and greed.  In the most general level, having a job at all is something I do in order to accomplish a standard of living for my family that I’m not willing to let go of.  Beyond the practicality of money and all the life-giving or frivolous things it can buy, I have a huge stake in my identity as a responsible parent, doing what needs to be done.  Part of my pride as an individual (in other words, ego) is in struggling through hard situations to achieve higher goals.  If my family and I experienced life as easy and enjoyed every minute of it, I would definitely feel guilty; as if we were way too spoiled and there was something else I should be taking care of.  Likewise, resignation to my family’s suffering without trying to resolve it (a nongrasping acceptance or giving of circumstance over to a higher power) seems lazy and misguided as well.  I’m sure there are other options for how to approach making a living for a family, but I don’t understand them right now.

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Practicing Non-Grasping: Process

On a more detailed level, the place I work  in particular inspires grasping, greedy, and outcome-driven behavior.  As a FOR PROFIT fundraiser that solicits funds for nonprofit and political groups (almost all left-wing progressive groups), it uses telmarketer tactics to exploit donors’ and callers’ genuine concern and passion for the issues, turning them into money.  The amount of money we raise strictly for the profit of the company and how much goes to the organizations we’re calling for is kept secret, but a google search speculates that only 35% of the money goes to the organizations that hire us.   We, as callers, are trained to be single-minded in obtaining donations, mislead donors about the nature of our work (almost all assume we are volunteers working directly with their beloved organization), and get as much money as possible in credit card form.  In order to keep the job, we have performance perimeters to reach.  We compete with each other to stay in the top tiers of performance, as the lower 40% of the room can be fired at any time.  Of course we, individually, have financial rewards for raising more money.          

Even before I started my experiement I was uncomfortable with the nature of my work, and I knew that I felt ever so much better when my conversations with donors respected their wishes (ie, “take me off the list,” “I can’t talk now,” etc.)  But, grasping to keep my job and my performance numbers high, I needed to enact the conversational grasping behaviours that I learned in training, such as agreeing to take the donor off the list, and THEN attempting to get a donation out of them, overcoming their financial misgivings by redirecting their attention to the issues they care about, and misleading them about the nature of the call.  Basic manipulative techniques.

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Practicing Non-Grasping: Conclusion

When I started my experiment, I became downright tortured by this dynamic.  I knew what I was doing, and didn’t know how to stop.  I beat myself up, made a spectacle of myself in my plight when Santosh opened up the room for discussion, and still have no real idea how to resolve my sins.  Because as much as stopping grasping is a noble goal, the only way I can see to approach it is in AVOIDING, like crazy, the situations that I associate with the behavior.  Avoiding is its own form of grasping, right?  I do think I did the right thing for my situation in keeping my job.  But I also feel the tension in doing what has to be done even if what has to be done is basically flat-out wrong.  I like to address this tension through activism, which also has a huge element of grasping thoughts, words, and behavior. 
On Monday I do start a new job, whose tasks are noble and necessary and which compensates me comfortably.  But I suspect that if I were to start my experiment over again next week, I would find more tortuously subtle forms of grasping that are just as hard to resolve given my nature, the culture I live in, and my family’s particular situation in the world.  Yoga really is the gift that never quits giving.

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Student Experiment: Overcoming Unhealthy Attachments

As part of Denver’s Axis Yoga teacher training program, students are asked to apply a yogic principle to their daily lives. This student chose to combine the yogic principle of Aparigraha (non-possessiveness, non-attachment) into her therapy sessions to begin to understand and overcome her attachments. She becomes aware of how her attachments are linked to her self-image and this acknowledgement helps her transform her thoughts and desires into a more positive outcome.

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Overcoming Unhealthy Attachments: Introduction

When the task came to choose a yama with which to experiment, I was certain that Aparigraha was the right one for me. Over the past six months I have been working weekly with a therapist on overcoming many of my attachments to unhealthy parts of my past. Because breakthroughs in therapy have come in small increments, I saw the potential for greater growth if I was to combined a yogic philosophy of non-grasping, non-possessiveness, or non-attachment with a more western psychological approach to the same topic.  Thus, my question became: If I incorporate Aparigraha in my life will it complement or speed up the progress that I am attempting to make in therapy to overcome unhealthy attachments? Believing strongly that the answer to this question would be yes, my hypothesis was: By combining Aparigraha with my weekly therapy sessions aiming at the same outcome, I will usher in change with greater ease and speed than just using therapy to achieve the goal of non-attachment.

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Overcoming Unhealthy Attachments: Experiment

With excitement in my undertaking and dedication to my personal growth, I set off with Desikachar’s words on my mind: “When we are attentive to our actions we are not prisoners to our habits”(Heart on Yoga p.6). My experiment happened in a rather linear style where I created a table highlighting a thought for which I was grasping, leading me to question why I desire that outcome and further, what affirmations can I raise to counteract those thoughts? A few examples from my experiment chart include:

A thought that has me stuck, grasping for an outcome.

Why do I desire that outcome?

What thought waves should I raise instead?
1. I need my house to be clean I like to maintain a good image of my space and myself. I take pride in my house. I have a beautiful home just as it is.
2. When I have a friend over for dinner I need my meal to be perfect. I see my meal as a reflection of myself. I can’t wait to enjoy a wonderful meal in the company of a great friend.
3. I want the woman that I am dating to contact me, I haven’t heard from her. I enjoy our communication, it’s reassuring to know that she’s thinking about me, and I have come to expect it. I am loved by me and that is fulfilling.
4. I feel as if I’m gaining weight and that my body doesn’t feel as good as it once did, so I want to loose weight I have not been exercising as much and therefore, I just don’t feel as fit as I like. I will practice self-love and treat my body with respect because she’s beautiful.
5. I am worried and nervous about sharing this work with my yoga peers. It feels vulnerable to share my thoughts on what I am working on (weaknesses) because I could be judged. I am a work in progress and by sharing and expressing myself I open up new opportunities for growth.
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Overcoming Unhealthy Attachments: Reflections

As the experiment became more incorporated into my life, I was shocked to see just how many things were showing up on my chart, and I had no clue that so many of my thoughts were attached to needing to achieve an outcome. Many of the first rows, as exemplified in #’s 1 and 2, were filled with simple ideas that I could easily decipher on my own and create affirmations in response. But one of my thoughts had me in a quandary and in need of professional help. I took my body image thought, # 4, and chatted with my therapist about Aparigraha and my experiment. Intrigued, and open to my experiment she helped me achieve a better understanding of the root of my grasping.

After several conversations, guided meditation, and a large dose of self-compassion, I was lead to the discovery that the underlying possession I am attached to is my image itself. As I thought back on my chart and the times that many of these ideas came to me, I realized that most of my “grasping” came to me in the mornings as I lay in bed thinking about my day. Further, that these thoughts were attached to what I hoped to achieve or “show for” at the end of my day. It was true, my need to present an image of “perfection” to myself and to the outside world, had me in its grips. Driven by my ego and underscored by the stories I’ve retold to myself, I felt that by knowing what had me in its grips was exactly what freed me from them.

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Overcoming Unhealthy Attachments: Conclusion

Thus, I can firmly say that as my experiment concludes, my question was answered and my hypothesis was accurate. By combining Aparigraha with my weekly therapy sessions aiming at the same outcome, I did usher in change (regarding my self awareness) with greater ease and speed than just using therapy to achieve the goal of non-attachment. Just brining a sense of awareness to my thought patterns hasn’t yet turned the need for presenting a “good image” off.  However, it helps me contextualize things in a more manageable way. And further, it gives me another chance to practice a complementary niyama, samtosa and further my contentment with my deepest thoughts.

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Yoga Student Conducts Non-Experiment

As part of Denver’s Axis Yoga teacher training, students are invited to apply one of the yogic prinicples to their daily lives.  Students explore prinicples such as truthfulness and non-harming.  This particular student gives an honest account of how his selection and relationship to astaya (the principle of non-stealing) provoked so much defiance in him,  that his experiment became an examination of this resistance.

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A Non-Experiment of Non-Stealing: Introduction

From the start I should have realized that there was no way I would implement an experiment on Asteya. First, I chose it because there was only one person in the group when we began forming groups. Choosing a particular spiritual practice because no one else is doing it is does not set oneself up for success.

 Secondly, I couldn’t really define it as being different from aparigraha. OK I could stop myself from recording music from the Internet as I assume that is technically stealing. But what else would I steal. Undeserved praise? That has never been an issue; in fact, I have always had the opposite problem of never taking credit for things that I actually did achieve.

 There were a few ideas I had that I could experiment with, but none of them compelled me. In fact I felt extreme resistance to any experimental ideas. I could have explored vegetarianism as a way of not stealing life from other creatures. I have been eating mostly vegetarian for the last couple months but I can’t say I have noticed any significant changes physically or emotionally. And I started that after thinking about it for a few months. And the more I thought about it for the experiment, the less interested I was in trying to remain vegetarian.

 I could also have implemented an environmental experiment as a form of not taking unnecessarily from nature. No single idea came to me for how to do this and I did not want to upset my routine too drastically to do this. Also, I could not see any great personal revelation coming from this.

 I did think about cutting down on TV and other things that “steal” my time. But the question is who decides what is a wise use of one’s time and what isn’t? Is every moment one is awake supposed to be leading toward something greater? Sometimes you do just need to watch something mindless on TV. It can stop the fluctuations of the mind! I am not ready to spend every free moment meditating, doing yoga, and reading ancient texts. The time commitment for the training is already enough “yoga time” for me right now.

 The fascinating thing for me as I continued to struggle with this and try to come up with an experiment was how much resistance I had to doing any experiment. I physically did not want to do an experiment. And I began to get even less and less interested in attending classes.

 So in a sense my experiment became reflecting on why I was not going to do an official experiment and why I was feeling such resistance.

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