Slowing down with yoga

Life is busy, that’s the message I’m receiving, people working 50-60 hour weeks, not coming home until 10pm from the office, working weekends, never able to properly switch off, always on the go, checking phones for messages and emails, rushing from one meeting to the next, never feeling truly in control or on top of anything.

It’s a funny old world we now find ourselves in post-lockdown, still so much uncertainty hanging in the air – life has always been uncertain but now more so than ever before – and no one really sure what might happen next with the threat of vaccine-resistant mutations, and travel plans taking shape last minute now.  There’s no guarantee even then, that plans won’t have to change at the last minute, and do people want to take that risk?

Life has been changed. Even life in the yoga and wellbeing world has changed. Yoga classes are no longer what they were, people have found other ways, online yoga is huge, you can practice from the comfort of your own home and for free, squeezing it in with the myriad other things that have to be achieved in a day. There are pros and cons to this, a pro that people are still able to get practising, but it’s a shame when yoga becomes little more than a tick box exercise, or is a rushed activity, where we’re not truly present.

There’s a lot to be said for getting to a class, not least because of the collective energy that comes from connecting with others on the same vibrational field, but also because it is not so easy to zone out or bypass, there’s no chance of checking your phone when you hear it ping as you can so easily do at home, nor fast forward your way through the bits of the practice that you don’t like (yep, we all do it!), and finish early, and not taking or making time to rest at the end (often the most important part of the practice!).

It doesn’t help that yoga has reached a saturation point and become so trendy that it might well soon begin to go out of fashion. This is the trouble when we extract just one part of a practice, like mindfulness, being extracted from Buddhism and now used as a tool to increase productivity and the bottom line in many working environments. It’s not that management don’t care, more so that wellbeing has become another tick-box exercise, to ensure the business is seen as caring, even if it’s not so much about staff’s individual wellbeing, but about how the business is performing.

Yoga is a victim of all this too. Always we are told that yoga can make us feel better, is the panacea for our loss of mental, physical and emotional wellbeing. And it can be, of course, but to be truly effective, on a long term and transformational basis, it needs to be viewed holistically, not simply as another exercise routine. It has benefits of course, keeps us nimble, fit and – in theory – healthy, but for yoga to be truly effective it needs to be practiced regularly, with attentiveness and awareness. 

Kriya yoga is the yoga of action as detailed in the second chapter of Patanjali’s yoga sutras. This particular section is aimed at people who have an unsteady mind and are subject to the kleshas (the afflictions, including ignorance, ego, desire, aversion and fear (that’ll be all of us then!)). Patanjali details what can be done to calm down a little bit before being in a position to meditate.

This is what people forget and the whole mindfulness craze has done nothing to ease this. If your mind is unsteady, the worst thing you can do for yourself is attempt to meditate. My Ayurvedic doctor has always said this, that it is essential the digestive fire is balanced first as this will create a calmer mind, which will feed the heart and immune system and allow us to sit for meditation without being de-stabilised by it.

If you are all over the place, your digestion is causing heartburn and acid reflux, or you’re constipated, then you absolutely need to address that first, before you even begin to contemplate sitting quietly in meditation. It is absolutely essential that you do what you can to calm the mind before you begin, and what we eat is one of the easiest ways to positively impact our state of mind – we are what we eat. The process of preparing food can be a meditative, grounding and centring practice for us, helping in its own way to calm our minds. 

We should also never overlook the benefit of getting our hands in the earth. My Ayurvedic doctor regularly recommends this to people; get your hands in the earth and see how your life will be positively changed by this experience (my life was totally changed by getting my hands in the earth). Growing our own vegetables and fruits has benefits beyond the process of growing, as it can help to nourish us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and prepare us to meditate!

Throughout chapter two of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali offers a practical approach, a path to practice (sadhana) including purification, reflection and surrender. He introduces kriya yoga, the yoga of action, which comprises three parts:

Tapah – to heat/purification and make a certain effort towards doing things that are positive and constructive and in the right direction, such as getting on our mat and eating better. 

Svadhyaya – reflection, reading texts such as the Yoga Sutras, and reflecting on them as a guide and holding ourselves up to them – how are we doing?

Isvarapranidhanani – surrendering to a higher principle, this the idea that we are not in control, that the world does not revolve around us. This awareness encourages an acceptance of our place in things, that there is something higher. 

Thus, like karma yoga in the Bhagavad Gita, we are encouraged to do the work on ourselves, to practice yoga, for example, without attachment to the fruit. Instead we surrender our efforts and make them as an offering to the greater good. Most of the time we have a motivation of gain, so it can be helpful letting go of things that don’t work out. We can remember these attributes of kriya yoga by the 3As:

Action
Awareness
Acceptance

This is yoga in action then, taking action, with awareness, and with acceptance of where we are at, without expectation of gain. It’s a practice, like Reiki, it cannot be learned just by reading about it in a book, we actually have to get practicing, whether that’s on a yoga mat or not! There’s this wonderful quote that I often share on retreats from Vanda Scaravelli’s book, Awakening the Spine:

“Why are we doing yoga?

For health reasons? Perhaps a walk in the park would be better. To help someone else? There are so many ways of helping people. To make money? This is surely not the best way. Out of a sense of duty and discipline? Or for some obligation towards ourselves coming from our puritanical background?

No nothing of the kind. No motivation no aims, only an agreeable appointment for the body to look forward to. We do it for the fun of it. 

To twist, stretch, and move around, is pleasant and enjoyable, a body holiday.

There is an unexpected delight in meeting earth and sky at the same moment!”

Talking of retreats, I’m writing this on Sark, a few hours before the final yoga class of the weekend. There is something extremely special about Sark and about retreating here. I heeded the call to the dolmen here yesterday, it’s a magical place, first time I’d been able to get out there on my own. This was only an hour before kirtan with Katie and Adam, which took me to another place, the vibrational shift from kirtan is very real, for me Bhakti yoga is the most direct path to the divine and absolutely calms the mind. 

We’re on retreat here again next weekend, and back on holiday a couple of times over the summer, before retreating again a few times in the Autumn. People are in need of the opportunity to take time out from these busy lives that they are leading and to go within and actually see what’s happening on the inside. It takes courage because we don’t always like what we see, but the soul is calling for greater embodiment and yoga, kriya yoga can take us there, and retreating on Sark absolutely gives us the space to be held in our practice too.

I hope you’re not too busy to lay out your mat and go inside yourself and be truly attentive to what is happening. Classes are still there, for when you know you need to be less distracted by everything else going on in the outer world, both online and in person, and there is always the earth to walk upon, barefoot is best, hug a  tree, find a power spot, sit down, feel the sun on your skin, smell the air, be present to life as it is unfolding moment to moment – watch the moon.

Love Emma x