I have struggled with anxiety for most of my life. However, I did not realize it was such a problem until the last couple of years when insomnia started to take over my well being. After a while, I made the connection that my insomnia was a product of my anxiety. One of the reasons for this anxiety was ridiculous and impossible expectations I had for myself. I felt like I needed to be the best, look the best, feel the best all the time and with everything that I did. I was terrified of failing and so I worked very hard but worrying about not being the best and failing would keep me up at night. Over the last few years, I have tried to change how I look and talk to myself. I have a much better handle on my anxiety and my insomnia. Recently I have begun to notice that while I am working on having my own attainable and realistic expectations, I do not do the same for others, especially those closest to me. When I decided to do Ahimsa I first thought I would practice not harming myself with high expectations and negative thinking. However, this is something I am already aware of and working on (or so I thought at the time). Instead, I chose to challenge myself a little more and stop harming my relationships with others because of the ridiculous expectations that I have for them.
Tag Archive for: yama
For three weeks, I planned on not harming my relationships with family, friends, and co-workers because of how I believe they should act, work, talk, or behave. The goal was to not internally or externally judge or criticize them for not being the person or doing the things that I believed they should be doing. I chose to journal every night before I went to bed about how the day went and what I needed to work on for the next day. When I had a moment of judgment or impatience, I practiced my yogic breath and sometimes chanted to myself. I also tried to wake up before going to work and practice either ten minutes of asana or sadhana to try and calm and center my mind.
The first day was challenging, yet eye opening. Even waking up and doing only ten minutes of asana made me feel calm but excited and ready for the day. I knew that I had a problem with my expectations for others, but as a high school teacher, I was not sure if these same judgments spilled over into my classroom with my students. Amazingly, I realized that this is one group where I do not tend to overly criticize, become impatient, and have impossible expectations. This is the one group that I am very patient with and tend not to criticize. To be honest, I was not sure what to expect with how I judge my students and how I may be harming my relationships with them. Even though I have expectations for my students, I do not expect them to be perfect and have all the answers, because I believe that it is my job to help them. For me, this was quite the surprise and I even started to wonder if maybe I had made the wrong choice for my experiment. Then I went to a staff meeting after school and realized I made exactly the right choice.
At the staff meeting I encountered someone who I have no choice but to work very closely with in our department and as coaches. The last few weeks in particular had been especially difficult to work with him for various reasons. I do not tend to be a very sensitive person in certain ways. I am pretty thick skinned, love to joke around, can take a joke, and can also take constructive criticism fairly well. I have realized that I surround myself with the same kinds of people as many of my co-workers, family members, and close friends are like this also. However, this particular teacher is an extremely emotional, sensitive, passive aggressive young man. At the meeting, he became incredibly upset and emotional about a comment that was made to him by our principal. I became immediately annoyed, frustrated, and even angry at him for being so sensitive about a comment that I considered to be completely innocent. As I was telling him not to take things so personally and intensely I realized I was causing himsa to our relationship and to myself. I was upset because I did not think someone else should be upset. It had nothing to do with what I thought; yet I was allowing this man’s reactions to affect me in a negative and completely unnecessary way. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I allow him to affect me on a regular basis. I needed to be less affected, more patient, and simply allow others to be who they are. I was trying to make him more like me but that is not who he is, regardless of how I feel about his reactions. I cannot control others and that is not my job. What I can control is how I allow myself to react to others.
I began to notice how I view even my closest of friends. I judge them for not having a job that makes them happier, not having better communication with their husbands, not setting higher goals for them to strive for. It is exhausting how much I worry about others and how they are not doing the right things. My worrying and judging them to my standards does not help them, does not help me, and certainly does not help our relationship. I do not have all of the answers, or the perfect life, so why do I believe that others should live the way I do? If I love my husband, family, and friends, why on earth would I want them to be more like me? If I love them for who they are I needed to love them for all that they are. This realization was like a weight being lifted off of my shoulders. Loving those I already love, for who they are… genius!
I was amazed by the realizations that I was having. I was relieving anxieties I did not know I had, patching relationships I did not know were strained. When I began to have a negative or judgmental thought of someone else, I practiced my yogic breath and sometimes even chanted the Gayatri Mantra to help center myself. I was in control of myself and everything was going according to plan. It was the night going into the third week of the experiment and I felt great and reflected on how thankful I was for choosing ahimsa. I woke up that night with intense pain in my abdomen and to make a long story short, ended up in the hospital with appendicitis. This was not part of my plan. I missed the entire next week and a half of school and the experiment seemed over. I was cut off form the world, assigned to bed rest, and prescribed painkillers. Work stopped, axis yoga stopped, asana stopped, my world was put on pause without a notice or a choice. I tried to stay optimistic about my recovery and quickly rejoining the rest of the world. I was strong, determined, and in every other way, a healthy individual; I would be back on my feet in no time! I did not see the trap I was setting for myself, the impossible expectations that I was creating. Towards the end of the first week of my recovery I could feel myself becoming depressed from boredom and immobility. I went to yoga training and sat in class, I became more depressed knowing I could not fully participate. I went to work six days after the surgery and went home in pain and overcome with complete exhaustion and had to take two more days off of work. Instead of accepting life and healing, I was still setting impossible expectations and despairing when I could not meet them. I was harming myself; I was no longer practicing ahimsa.
In the last few days, I have tried to slow down and be more patient and accepting of my recovery. I have tried to actually listen to the doctors instead of my own expectations. This is not easy for me. In my perfect world, I could have finished the experiment and felt good about how well I did and how much I changed. Life happened, I wasn’t ready for it but I am still trying.
Each student experiments with yogic principles throughout their journey in the Axis Yoga Teacher Training program. This student found valuable insight and personal progress through the application of the yama (observance), aparigraha (no-harm).
When we were first instructed to select a yama or niyama to cultivate throughout our first experiment, I found myself immediately drawn to the yama aparigraha. Aparigraha is often translated as “non-possessiveness, or refraining from hoarding,” and it involves a letting of greed, attachment, wanting, and the desire to own.[1] For me, this idea of non-possessiveness immediately conjured up images of the popular television show “Hoarders,” where the individuals featured found themselves literally drowning within clutter; their grasp around the material possessions overpowered their life to the point of paralyzation, and their inability to release said clutter lead them to alienation from family and friends. Material possessions can quickly become objects of control—such that we are constantly entrenched in a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentaltiy—and our inability to find release perpetuates a life of suffering.
Yet, to take this experiment deeper than merely cleaning out a closet, I found myself examining the things I have come to grasp tightly. Because aparigraha can also be translated as “non-coveting,” I challenged myself to seriously examine the ways in which I covet, control, and attempt to possess my body and my notions of body image. Like a hoarder, I have recently come to find myself controlled by an obsession with working out. After losing quite a bit of weight through a regimented exercise program, I have found myself enslaved to images on magazine covers, headlines on gossip tabloids, and self-perception of what I see in the mirror: a desire to possess the “perfect” thin body. What began as a kick off to fitness has quickly turned into a governing obsession with weight, clothing sizes, and caloric intake. Like the stars of “Hoarders,” I have found myself controlled by what I covet.
My absence of peace with my “own skin,” coupled with my worries and doubts of how others view my physical body, has lead me astray from the path of understanding who I truly am. I decided for this experiment that I needed to regain footing on that path, and that the best way for me to do this was through consistent sadhana practice, an asana practice that is intentional about quieting my mind’s fluctuations, and a critical examination of why I (and to some extent, my culture) value having an ideal body type. To implement these techniques, I used a mantra for sadhana, a deeper focus on my breath within asana, and conversations with friends (as well as journaling on my reflections) for my critical examination. Each provided valuable insight and progress within my aparigraha journey, and I am excited to share my results with you.
[1] https://singingheartyoga.blogspot.com/2011/02/aparigraha.html
I was given a mantra from the Ganapati Upanishad, “Om Gam Ganapataye Namah.” This mantra, a petition for the removal of obstacles blocking our path to success, is also invoked such that we can merge ourselves within Ganesha’s supreme knowledge and peace.[1] It was recommended that I use a mala to chant this mantra 108 times. At first, I did not understand the significance of this auspicious number—I thought, “Why 108? This seems awfully long and drawn out!” But after research, the significance of 108 repetitions helped to solidify my practice and draw forth meaning. Amongst other reasons, there are said to be 108 earthly desires within mortals, 108 human delusions or forms of ignorance, 108 energy lines converging to form the heart chakra, 108 feelings (with 36 related to the past, 36 to the present, and 36 to the future), 108 stages to the soul, and perhaps 108 paths to God.[2] Grounding myself in a consciousness that will (hopefully) lead to the elimination of duality began to help me understand my lack of true knowledge better. My attachment to my body—and not even just my physical appearance, but my body as a complete whole—proved to be a manifestation of my spiritual ignorance. As Rolf Gates writes in his book, Meditations from the Mat, “The fear that drives us away from ourselves is rooted in our spiritual ignorance—we do not know who we really are. If we did, we would realize that there is nothing to fear. We would know that we are everything we have always hoped we would be but never believed we could be.”[3] My sadhana practice proved to be a great starting point for understanding my connection to the divine; through this connection, I began to appreciate and respect my body rather than view it as inadequate.
[1] https://www.rudraksha-ratna.com/articledt.php?art_id=163
[2] https://swamij.com/108.htm
[3] Gates, p. 148.
Similarly, I was conscious throughout this experiment to remove any competition from my asana practice.[1] Rather than focusing on how amazing virabhadrasana II might make my triceps look if I held it for x number of minutes, I turned my attention to my breath and to the trueness of the postures. Additionally, instead of struggling to tuck my foot into the root of my upper thigh in vrksasana pose, I honored my body by keeping my foot against my shin. For some readers, these modifications would suggest that I never truly grasped the concept of yoga before. After this experiment, I do not think I would rebuke this observation. The competitive culture of corporate gyms taught me that yoga was what the beautiful people did to stay thin, and not the importance of the spiritually where this practice finds its roots.
[1] I have come to realize that I am my own biggest competitor… and yoga is NOT a competitive sport! I idealize the gross manifestation of postures without honoring where I am, in each present moment.
Last, my inquisition into the systemic perpetuations of “thin as beauty” led me to a place of introspection that I didn’t realize I had been avoiding. Many consumers are conscious of the “airbrush techniques” that lead models to thinner bodies and flawless skin, but we (women especially) forget this illusion of perfection when we are consistently surrounded by it in all forms of mass media.[1] For me personally, the perpetuation of thinness seems to have also stemmed from a lack of security in who I am as a person and how that person was in relationship with others. Upon reflection, I have come to see that the beginning of my fitness kick perhaps wasn’t ever purely just for health and wellness, but to make up for a lack of intimacy with a (now ex) partner. I victimized my body for the lack of connection, thinking “If only I was thinner than perhaps he would see me as more desirable.” Through hindsight—and this experiment—I have come to see that the problem was never really my body, but me forgetting who I am (a manifestation of the divine) and what it means to be me.
[1] This is not to say the problem does not effect men/boys as well. From a very young age, boys are taught—through action figures or cartoons—that men are to have bulging muscles. We can see this through the popular “Star Wars” action hero, Hans Solo (for example), who looked like a man of average build in the 1970’s but has suddenly steroid-ed out in his contemporary personification.
Aparigraha, specifically through not coveting an ideal body type, has taught me not to seek my validation within others but to look deep within myself and to understand who and what I truly am. I appreciated the overlap this experiment had with other yamas and niyamas (such as ahimsa, as it took a great deal of energy to not be violent toward myself with my thoughts; santosha, as I learned the importance of being content with my current fitness level—without negating the importance of striving for better health; or saucha, as I found an appreciation for my body through gentle cleansing techniques such as exfoliation) and the ways in which it taught me to prioritize how I spend my energy. Rather than spending all of my time obsessing about how many miles I will have to run to burn off that piece of birthday cake I just enjoyed, I began to consciously retrain my mind to appreciate the adequateness I bring here and now. Additionally, I appreciate that the teachings of yoga are veiled in contemporary society and accessible to those even outside the yoga path. A quote I found myself clinging to (on my long marathon training runs) reads, “It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you will learn that the competition is with the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.” The little voice proves to be the ego, and yoga—specifically through the path of aparigraha and this experiment—continues to lead me the cessation of this mental modification.