svadhyaya – Generous Wisdom

Curiosity & Honesty: Entering Into Divine Flow

Curiosity & Honesty: Entering Into Divine Flow
Or
Svadhyaya & Satya: A Path to Connection

This 4 part series is an exploration of themes and concepts related to Yoga practice, spiritual practice, and life practice, a rambling through a tangled, muddy wood of experiences; it is a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other adventure into curiosity. When we are curious, we learn what it means to suspend judgment and step into Divine Flow, the Loving, Creative Spirit-Energy of Existence that moves through all of us. What it feels like. What it looks like, sounds like, smells like, and tastes like to allow unfolding, unfurling, and to feel this happening in the moment.

Part I: Adaptability

In 2000 when I first enrolled in yoga teacher training, I learned that there were “different kinds” of yoga, and really only two: Hatha & Ashtanga Vinyasa. The lead Ashtanga teacher at the studio took one look at me and, with her characteristic smile said, “You’re athletic? You’re coming with me.” I didn’t know a chaturanga from a chakrasana; I figured she knew best, so I agreed, and experienced a resonance. It actually brought my worlds together: Primary Series in Mansfield, Ohio? Primary Series in Mysore, India. Holy Mass in Mansfield, Ohio? Holy Mass in Rome, Italy. It was a fine fit, and through all the years bore all kinds of good fruit, not the least of which was the little website, blog, and small fundraising site The Catholic Yogi (now The Catholic Yogis).

I loved the physicality of the Ashtanga practice. I loved the pattern and routine. I couldn’t perform all the postures perfectly or do every single vinyasa, practice 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week, but I sure tried. And when I failed, I buried my head in the sand, pretended it was fine, told myself it was okay, and didn’t believe myself one bit when I said it. I had four babies by c-section over the course of 8 years, did more pilates than primary series, didn’t have a separate meditation practice, didn’t have a separate pranayama practice, told myself it was okay that I wasn’t “doing all the practices exactly as prescribed, super-correctly, most auspiciously,” and I didn’t believe myself for one second when I said it.

I didn’t even know to look for
and uncover my own needs.
I thought I had to want to try for perfection
in every single thing. All The Time.

Throughout those eight years, lots of “other kinds” of yoga started popping up all over the place (thank you collaboration and The Internet): “Mindful Yoga,” “Vinyasa Yoga,” “Yin Yoga,” “Power Yoga,” “Hot Yoga,” “Restorative Yoga” – the list is seemingly endless. But I didn’t really feel I could dip my toe into any other water. It just wasn’t even an option for me. It was all or nothing. I was stuck in a cycle of “Not good enough; can’t leave.”

Some of the reasons I was not able to practice The Primary “as prescribed by ‘tradition’” was because I was a householder, a person with female bone structure, hip dysplasia, chronic inflammation, subacromial compression in the shoulder, and chronic pain. Not to mention limited physical access and financial resources. My beginning was “before the internet” or at least before its current iteration, and offered so much less access than the abundance of online resources we enjoy today.

It is important to note, too, that I didn’t realize much of this when I was young. I thought I could do everything, and so I should do everything – with or without access, finances, support, accurate information, knowledge, experience, mentorship – should (lots of moralizing there). In fact, I didn’t know until just three years ago when I suffered an end-range-of-motion injury in ardha chandra chapasana that my hip sockets are, in fact, not “fully formed.” (Totally the reason my hips never seemed to “open” beyond my “this is always the way it is” baseline arc, no matter the hours of practice over years of effort, and completely the reason my body always recoiled from kapotasana. Now I am thankful it always felt dangerous enough for me to shake my head and back away.)

I share all this to say that when I was younger, I didn’t know. And, unfortunately, we don’t know what we don’t know until we know it. Or until a wise teacher shares it with us of their own accord. Because, guess what friends: I didn’t even know the questions to ask. I didn’t know it was okay to not try to do “the full thing,” to not try to reach for and achieve some version of “perfection,” to not be hard on myself for not already knowing everything about everything. “Accessible Yoga” didn’t exist back then the way it does now. And even if it did, I probably would’ve given it the “side-eye” and been all judgy about it. I didn’t know it was okay to adapt postures or practices to take care of my needs. In fact, I didn’t even know to look for and uncover my own needs. I simply thought I had to want to try for perfection in every single thing All The Time. “Needs” were irrelevant.

Yes. This Was Exhausting.

It’s important to acknowledge here, too, that even if we can do something, our explicit ability to do that thing does not imply that it is a wise thing to do. That’s right. I said it. And now you can, too, in case you felt alone in that. And now we can say it together.

The first step in cultivating adaptability is giving ourselves permission to do it. Once we allow ourselves to adapt postures and practices, the next step is to experiment. And a healthy dose of curiosity & honesty helps with that.

Curiosity & Honesty

Sometimes honesty is about clarity. And sometimes clarity is about truthfulness. When it comes to practicing adaptability, svadhyaya (self-study & study of sacred texts) and satya (truthfulness) are necessary. We need self-study, the study of sacred scriptures, and truthfulness to get at the heart of our own beliefs and be honest with ourselves about them: do I believe I must strive for someone else’s, or a certain lineage, tradition, or institution’s concept of perfect, ideal, or full? When we look at the specific situations and circumstances, are we seeing clearly? Are we looking to confirm our own biases, or to uncover the truth that takes all perspectives into account? We need more than asana to practice Yoga. We need more than someone else’s practices to walk our own Spirit-Path. So it’s necessary that we get curious about what serves us.

Before we dive into a study of self, scripture, situation, and circumstance, curiosity must be present or we’ll keep banging our heads against the walls of ignorance, judgment, and condemnation. Curiosity opens the doors of truth. The desire to learn and understand opens the gates of sectarianism and leads to a path of connection.

When adapting postures, positions, and perspectives, what are the most important pieces?

Knowing you have the permission (from yourself)
Knowing you have the blessing (of Spirit that lives in all)
Knowing you have the wisdom (within your heart and body)
Knowing you have the ability (to make it happen)

Then?

Gathering the courage
Accessing the creativity
Collecting the support
Receiving & Enjoying the benefits

For Practice & Experience

To begin to practice and experience Divine Flow, consider experimenting with these invitations to contemplative inquiry:

What do I already know about Divine Flow?
What do I wish to learn or experience about Divine Flow?
What am I ready to know or experience about Divine Flow?

Alongside curiosity and compassion, take these inquiries into your meditation or savasana practice, then write or sketch your mind’s, body’s, and heart’s responses and impressions. Notice what you are ready to be curious about, be honest about, and what you are ready to adapt, modify, change, or allow. Are there non-negotiables? Are there non-negotiables that are desperate to negotiate?

What is true for you?

Entering into Divine Flow is a practice of connection. It is relational and requires effort & effortlessness, offering & receiving, allowing & attentiveness. Remember your most important pieces: permission, blessing, wisdom, ability, courage, creativity, support, receiving, & enjoying. Just because we can keep our heads buried in the sand, doesn’t mean it is wise to do. And just because we can lift our eyes to the horizon, doesn’t mean it is wise to do. We must do our own inner work with curiosity and honesty, svadhyaya and satya. Then we can make our own wise choice. This is the first step.

Our Own Mosaic

As Hatha Yoga practice has grown, blossomed, and spread into hundreds of varieties throughout the West, I find it increasingly more complicated to answer the moderately curious acquaintance when she asks me questions like, “So, what do you think about Hot Yoga?” Or, the even more complicated, “What’s your yoga class like?”

After some bumbling attempts at a coherent, clear, and concise answer in the grocery store, the random text bubble, or the school drop-off line, I’ve decided that in the face of complexity, the simple answer is best: “Hot Yoga’s not for everybody,” and “You’ll have to come to a class and find out!”

While it’s true that no one yoga class or style of yoga works for everybody, it is also true that there is at least one yoga practice that will work for each of us; it just takes some searching and seeking before we find it.

A quick internet search will turn up thousands of websites, articles, and posts regarding new yoga trends, yoga philosophy, the history of yoga in the West, and traditional yogic lineages. As you begin your yoga journey, it is good and wise to attend a variety of classes and workshops in different traditions and with different teachers within those traditions. You will quickly learn what works for you and what doesn’t. You might also find that what works for you during one phase of your life won’t help you during the next.

But the beauty of yoga is that it adapts. We don’t have to bend and twist ourselves to fit the yoga; the yoga can extend and untwist to fit us. So even if you trained and studied in one tradition, that doesn’t preclude you from dipping your toes in the waters of another. When you find what works for you, embrace it. There will be aspects of different styles that speak to us in different ways, and some will stay with us forever, throughout all our transformations. There will be other practices that served us well at one time but not longer fit, and still others that never fit in the first place, and we finally realize we can let them go.

Understanding ourselves is an important part of yogic practice; in Sanskrit it’s called svadhyaya, self-study, and is one of the five niyamas, or observances. However, when we study ourselves mercilessly, it is easy to get caught up in an endless cycle of striving toward an imagined future self, a constant and relentless “self-improvement.” We can easily apply this destructive habit to our yoga practice, or make our yoga practice itself a part of this negative striving. Self-study is important and necessary, but it is not a directive to hold ourselves to unrealistic expectations, on our yoga mat or off. It is a draining way of life to be consistently telling ourselves we can do better, instead of relishing the moments in which we do so very well. We deplete ourselves more and more with each I need to, I should do, and if only I could. We deceive ourselves when we repeat, I’m not good enough, I’ve not done enough, I don’t produce enough, I am not enough.

Instead, reflecting on ourselves positively, or with non-attachment and a suspension of judgement, can uncover our uniqueness. In our yoga practice, this means we give ourselves the freedom to let go of some poses or breathing practices and embrace others, to modify certain postures or theories and experiment with new ones. We never stop being curious, so we never stop learning. If we can do this on our mat, the hope is that we can do this in our lives. We can learn our strengths and our weaknesses so that going out into the world we ask for help when we know we need it, and offer help where we know we can serve. In this way we can be a force for good in the world, giving others the opportunity to love us, and acting on opportunities in which we can love another.

The magnitude of discovering who we are and then actually being ourselves cannot be overstated.

There is an old Hasidic tale that expresses the importance of being who we are, of being who we have been created to be:

When the great, sweet Rabbi Zusia of Hanipol was on his deathbed, his students gathered all around him. The Teacher said to them:
When I get to the Next World, I am not afraid if God will ask me, “Zusia, why weren’t you Moses, to lead the people out of this land where Jews are so oppressed and beaten by the people?” I can answer, “I did not have the leadership abilities of a Moses.”
And if God asks, “Zusia, why weren’t you Isaiah, reprimanding the people for their sins and urging them to change their ways, to repent?” I could answer, “I did not have the eloquence of Isaiah, the Great Master of powerful and dazzling speech.”
And if God should ask, “Zusia, why weren’t you Maimonides, to explain the deeper meaning of Judaism to the philosophers of the world, so they would understand the Jews better and perhaps treat them better?” I can answer, “I did not have the vast intellectual skills of Maimonides.”
No, my students, I am not afraid of those questions. What I fear is this: What if God asks me, “Zusia, why weren’t you Zusia?”
Then what will I say?

Indeed, God will not ask us, “Why were you not your neighbor or your friend? Why were you not your sister or your grandmother?” So why are we striving to be what we are not, and ignoring all that we are? Why do we hold ourselves to such exacting and incredibly damaging expectations?

If God will ask us, “Why were you not yourself?” then let us study with a tender heart to uncover our truest selves, to seek and to find the yogic lineage that fits us best, even if that means we create a new one, a mosaic that we piece together over a lifetime, a magnanimous collage of all that is benevolent and kind?

My dear friends,

May we offer ourselves the same compassion we offer our friends,
May we love ourselves as we love others,
May we discover and embrace our truest selves, and
May we finally be the person we have been created to be.

Know that my gratitude for your continued dedication to your practice cannot be overestimated. You are an inspiration to me.

Happy Practicing!

The Catholic Yogi

Practice in Virtues, Catholic and Yogic

As we continue to move through this season of anticipation here at the Catholic Yogi, the second week of Advent found our family practicing Understanding, and now, in the third week, the week of rejoicing, we are practicing Kindness. As the weeks pass, much to my children’s dismay, we can’t happily throw out the patience we learned, the understanding we realized, or the kindnesses we are uncovering. Instead, we are striving to create habits of these virtues and so carry them with us into our final week of preparing the way.

The kiddos cheer when they think “a week of being patient” has passed, the pressure’s off, no more patience needed! But when we look at the root of all the virtures we find their life force is the same, Love. So, in Understanding, we still find patience, and in Kindness, we still offer understanding. When our fourth week of Advent brings Honesty to our door, I suspect patience, understanding, and kindness will inform our practice of truth.

The Eight Limbs of Yoga according to Patanjali offer Yamas and Niyamas as guidelines for ethical and moral behavior. (For a quick peek at all eight limbs, check out this article by Mara Carrico.) When I think of Patience, the second niyama, Samtosa, comes to mind. It means Contentment. Sometimes when practicing patience, finding contentment in our hearts is not only helpful, but necessary. All the grasping that lives within our impatience is calmed when we are able to embrace the goodness of the right here and now.

Svadhyaya, the fourth niyama, is the study of the sacred scriptures and of one’s self. This reminds me of Understanding. When we seek to be understanding we can study our own habits, thoughts, and behaviors; we can study the scriptures of our own cultural and/or religious disciplines; and, finally, we can study the circumstances, experiences, and situations of others, of our close family, as well as members of our greater communities, even those we haven’t met. When we have a better grasp of ourselves and others, empathy comes more easily.

Empathy has the ability to spur our feelings into action and take us from contemplation into motion. Acts of Kindness resonate with the first yama, Ahimsa, meaning Non-violence. In addition to avoiding harmful behaviors, we seek out ways to lighten the burden and bring comfort.

Satya, the second yama, means Truthfulness and is a great tool in our practice of Honesty. (You can read an excellent article by Judith Hanson Lasater on the practical applications of truthfulness here.) When we are sincere in our interactions with others, way down in the depths of the daily things, like “Are you hungry, would you like to eat before we leave?” “Yes, I am. That would be great,” we find there is less strife, less bitterness, less frustration, and less regret.

With all of these virtues swirling around in our hearts, what great gifts we can give to each other, not just one celebratory day each year, but here and now, way down deep in the daily living.

Happy Practicing!

The Catholic Yogi

~ For a more in-depth look at the Yamas, read Beginning the Journey by Judith Hanson Lasater, and for the Niyamas, read Cultivate Your Connections.