Shifting from fear

We began lockdown here in Guernsey on the new moon and here we are now on the full moon, and with lockdown being extended for a further 10 days. 

I’ll be honest, I’m in no hurry for lockdown to end. Admittedly I miss being able to be in the same room and touch students when I teach, and I long for a proper long swim and to hang out with my parents, but there have been many positives to come out of this last two weeks. I have a raised bed all of my own for example! This is a dream come true, it’s been on the list for years, but the opportunity just never presented itself until now.  

There are so many other positives that I blogged about recently, even getting to spend all this time with the children has been such a gift. So there will be many things to miss when lockdown has finished, but the one thing I absolutely won’t miss is the fear that Covid-19 has brought with it. I was always taught that fear represents ‘false evidence appearing real’. Fear feels very real, but it is just an emotion, just a state of mind, just something that we have chosen to buy into, that will create our reality, because of the manner in which we allow it to control our thinking and the decisions that we then make. 

 It’s very difficult when you’re ‘in it’ to recognise that you have a choice, that it is your mind that is allowing fear to take up residence, that only you can actually decide how you might react to any given situation. Do you come from a place of love, or a place of fear? Because the outcome will be very different depending upon your perspective, and your suffering will be greater one way more than the other too.

It’s not dissimilar from the glass is half full/glass is half empty scenario. We get to choose. But like I say, sometimes we are so ‘in it’ that we don’t recognise this. We’re also so conditioned to respond a certain way that we are not even conscious of the manner in which we have reacted until much later, when something or someone makes us conscious of it and by then it’s too late. 

Media doesn’t help. We are fed the negative constantly. I’ve had to stop looking at Facebook beyond yoga, because the negativity, albeit from many well-meaning, was becoming so draining. In this too, you see, we have a choice. We always have a choice about what we allow into our lives, from media, to people, to experiences.

E says Covid-19 has made me very opinionated and he’s right. I’ve had to look at that. Perhaps that’s my underlying fear, not of Covid-19 but of the detrimental changes to society because of the fear that has accompanied Covid-19 and the manner in which it has changed behaviour. I don’t like that people don’t want to breathe fresh air, that people virtually throw themselves into hedges when you run past them, and that others feel it’s their place to judge and criticise what people are doing with their two hours of exercising.

I’ve had to pull myself up on that, because in many respects that makes me judgmental and closes my heart to the world. I have had to reframe this, so that I don’t  lose myself in it, to have compassion for the fact others’ fear is so great that they literally see you as the enemy in disguise. Perhaps it is this that I’m having to come to terms with. Perhaps this is my underlying angst with this whole situation. 

Because I have recognised that there is some angst and it is this that feeds in to me being opinionated, as much as the extra yoga classes I am taking are taking me deep into the anger that has been stored deep in my hips all these years. None of this helped, or perhaps actually all of this has absolutely helped by the full moon that has shone a light into the shadows, that has highlighted the internal angst that has probably always been there but is now standing out.

Sometimes I feel sad, because I don’t want to live in a world like this, where I might be seen as the enemy. And then on the other hand, I feel incredibly happy because I see so much beauty in the world around me as I run around the lanes. All of this is OK. I know that. If there is one thing the Scaravelli-inspired yoga is teaching me, is the being OK with uncertainty, so that things are neither black nor white any more than they are right nor wrong.

Yet that’s so difficult when we have been conditioned to think that things have to be one way or the other, and that if they are not the way we want them to be then we automatically and quickly need to fix them or react to them or -tra la la- become opinionated about! This too I have had to work on and it has not been easy and is an ongoing process of letting go…

In our asana practice we thrive on a posture being practiced this way or that, we are attached to the form of it. Letting this go has not been easy. It’s also been totally mind-blowing to be guided to practice a posture in a completely different way to how I may have practiced it previously. I have been so conditioned over the years that I have to be so incredibly attentive to not move automatically and unconsciously in a way that I might have done so many times over the years.

 I have been astounded time and time again to find that the very way I have always moved my body in postures has not only limited the range of movement and freedom of my spine in any posture, but has limited my mind too, made me stuck, fixed.. So now, my teacher showing me another way, has not only impacted on my body, but has impacted on my mind too, it’s been blown away. At times I’ve had to just lie there and let it settle in, thinking to myself, ‘my goodness, so in drawing the hand and foot together rather than pushing away from each other, I’ve actually experienced more ease and depth in that pose etc etc’.

It’s this perhaps that has been so mind blowing. The opposite of what we might have thought. How humbling is that to recognise that there are other ways than what we had fixed in our mind as being ‘the way’, and all this just from the way that we might practice a yoga posture. Again it comes back to perspective. Love or Fear. Do we practice lovingly, in towards the self, or do we push/pull away with fear outside of the self? I know which one has brought me the most contentment. 

But oh so tricky to let go of what has always been and settle into the unknown territory that my teacher is taking me. And yet, I have recognised that the timing for this additional training has been a true gift, because if ever there was a time in life where we might need to settle into unknown territory then it is now. It’s not easy, it brings up all sorts of things, but what I have recognised is that it is a dance, a balance, a being OK with all the ranges and movements within it that helps us to step further into the heart and to compassion for self and others and to contentment.

I suspect compassion and contentment might be an antidote to fear. It might help to centre us and make us recognise that we have a choice about how we feel. I always remember someone telling me that even in prison, people cannot take away your freedom of mind, your freedom to choose the perspective that you adopt to approach your life. It’s not always easy, it’s very difficult at times, but it is insightful when we start to recognise the manner in which we are thrown off our balance, lose our centre and close down our hearts, so that we can become better at recognising it (the triggers) earlier the next time.  Life is never certain. 

I’m hopeful that as the sun continues to shine and nature continues to astound us in her beauty (now we have the time to recognise) the more comfortably we will be able to settle into the uncertainty that Covid-19 has brought with it, so that we may find our collective centre and let go of the fear that has been pervading society in recent weeks. Perhaps then we might find greater contentment. Personally I think reducing exposure to media, especially social media helps enormously with this!