April 23, 2020

Yoga is about transformation; it is intended to create shifts, changes. For many years, I interpreted that teaching as needing to change parts of myself that were wrong, that I didn’t like or that were unbalanced. On a physical level, I thought I would rebalance my pelvic asymmetry and adjust a tendency to walk with a significant “turn out.” Internally, I anticipated that aspects of my personality I didn’t like would “transform” into traits that were more socially acceptable or more easily tolerated by my judging mind. Over times, there were changes on both levels. However, they were rarely what I was specifically working toward. My pelvis is still torqued, but I have greater ease in my breath. I am still indecisive, but I have greater awareness of my fear. What is interesting about both of the outcomes that I am mentioning is that they happened, not out of an environment of wanting to change but out of acceptance of what is. Once aware of my tendency to hold my breath, I simply accepted that was my tendency. Cognizant of how fear was driving responses, I held that understanding without thinking I could change it.

The Sanskrit word, yoga, is commonly translated as “union.” The union is often understood as a yoking together of disparate parts, referencing the yoking together of two separate oxen to make a team. The advantage of the yoke is that the power generated by two oxen is greater than the sum of the individual oxen. Bringing the two together increases the power available and the team is considered a whole entity. The potential of yoga is held then in the unification of separated parts into a whole.

Rarely, do we consider that we are walking around as segregated parts. There is just one body that we bring everywhere, after all. And yet, I have come to recognize that I rarely brought all of me to any one moment. I cut off emotions that seemed dangerous, I ignored tendencies and I often hid away aspects of my beliefs and values from the general world. It seemed safer. I moved away from the impact of experiences and bottled up responses. In this way, I separated myself into various parts.

Purna is the Sanskrit word that is translated as perfection, fullness, completeness, wholeness. It references the yogic understanding that we are already, right now, perfectly whole or complete, not needing to break off aspects of ourself or gather in qualities that are missing. Our wholeness is perfect and yet many of us walk around feeling incomplete or not full. How do we find this sense of wholeness? The key perhaps is back to the meaning of yoga.

Weaving together or yoking up our various aspects is integral in our return to our wholeness. Central to this is the process of full acceptance. Accepting our totality is a first step in integrating the totality of who we are. As I mentioned earlier, accepting my fearfulness and the tendency to hold my breath allowed transformation to begin. Going in with the desire to “fix” my “broken” pelvis or eradicate unwelcome tendencies met

with failure. I have not transformed. Instead, though acceptance, I have taken a step toward understanding my innate wholeness.

Acceptance means not needing to change anything and various spiritual traditions recognize as significant. This is not a passive process, but instead an active exploration of what is. Acceptance is being with what is, fully seeing, tasting and experiencing without holding back or shutting off from the experience. It is moving toward or leaning into what is being felt. For example, when we feel anxious or nervous, the tendency is to move away from the feelings and thoughts whatever they are. The teaching here is to shift that tendency and actively move toward whatever we are experiencing. In moving toward, there is an embrace of the experience and in that begins the process of digestion. Digesting our experiential meals refers to taking them in and then allowing the experience to integrate and / or release. Just like digesting food, we smell and taste the experience. Allow it to roll around inside us, and then naturally, we will keep what is needed or useful and release or eliminate what is not needed. It is a natural process, exactly like the way our digestive system takes in and processes food and then eliminates waste. To digest fully, we need to bring our whole being to the experience, accepting all of our reactions and responses and trust that we can digest what we are experiencing. The cut off from the experience is rooted in the fear that we will not survive any given situation and yet the power that comes from unifying ourself with the experience facilitates our capacity to digest what is happening.

Take anxiety again as an example. My tendency has been to fight against the rising sense of fear, thinking that if I let it fully arise, it would kill me. On a certain level, this even makes sense as anxiety is related to an over-active fight or flight response that is part of our body’s defence against danger. It seems counter-intuitive and certainly life- threatening to move toward these feelings. And yet, as we talked about in the session on fear, if we are truly in danger, we automatically act - freezing, fleeing or flighting. Thought or analysis is rarely needed. We do. In the anxious state, we attempt to cut off from the anxious thoughts and often from any action as well. We also innately know to hold a scared (or angry or sad) child, wrapping them up tightly against our heart. It is exactly the same when we feel the same. With training and practice, we can pull the feelings, the experience in to our heart and wrap ourselves in a warm and loving embrace. There is no need to tell the young child that the feelings or reaction are wrong or bad or even that they are in danger. Simply, holding and accepting allows for the natural digestive process to act. The child, after a period of time, feels better and moves on with their day. Same for us.

The outcome of this process, over time, is deep transformation. It is not, however, one generated out of personal will. It is a natural experience of a return to our innate wholeness. As a result, we move in harmony, a perfectly yoked team of oxen and deepen our capacity to trust in ourselves. Silence arises and from there, a quiet joy in our being, in the totality of who we are, bubbles up.