Suffering is Part Of Life

Note: I saw this article originally posted on The Yoga Journal website.  While I don't necessarily agree with all points made in the article, the sentiment seemed to tie in with the topic of our last session together -- the idea that doing yoga or integrating Ayurvedic practices gives us tools to more easily cope with-- not to avoid, escape, or get automatic respite from -- the inevitable suffering we face by being alive in the world. ~ Crystal

P.S. I apologize for the weird and random changes to fonts and sizes.  Blogger.com's editor, too, offers me a chance to interface with suffering. 

Suffering is Part of Life—That’s Why We Do Yoga

April 25, 2013

By Neal Pollack

Last Friday, at noon, I took a yoga class. The Boston manhunt was in full swing, but there was nothing I could do about it; I was more than 2500 miles away. The night before, I’d stayed up until 2 a.m. listening to the police scanner online. Beyond the fact that I have some acquaintances in Boston (all of whom were totally unharmed), the situation essentially had nothing to do with my life. But I still needed a break, because it was making me crazy.

Last week, it seemed like the world degenerated into a chaotic mess of explosions, lockdowns, and political disappointments. The air had become palpably suffused with dread and misery. And, because I’m a nerd, I immediately thought, “What does yoga have to say about all this?”

Well, I’m here to tell you. Though your day-to-day classes are mostly concerned, as they should be, with hip-opening and backbending, yoga is all about suffering, or, more specifically, the alleviation of suffering. The ancient sages, from the Buddha on down, correctly surmised that suffering is the prima facie baseline human condition. They developed the amazing art and science of yoga to help us get through our crummy lives.

According to my teacher Richard Freeman, a learned man to be trusted in such matters, yogic concepts of suffering can be broken down into three basic categories. First, there’s suffering that comes from yourself. We constantly say things to ourselves that make us unhappy: “I suck at my job,” “I’ll never find love,” “I don’t like how I look,” on and on toward infinity. Yoga is about untying your mental knots and dissipating those essential misinterpretations.

Then, there’s suffering inflicted upon you directly by other people, via cruel or indifferent thoughts, or even violent actions. We’re hurt every day by our parents, our spouses, our siblings, our children, our partners, our friends, or random honking people in the Safeway parking lot. Occasionally, those who harm you do it deliberately, but most often, it’s accidental. They’re too busy dealing with their own mishugas. Yoga helps because it allows you to be both more compassionate about other people’s suffering, but also less reactive when they strike out at you.

The third category is suffering inflicted upon you by the world, which never lets up its assault.  Your roof leaks. You’re bitten by mosquitoes while walking your dog. Your flight to Charlotte gets delayed for two hours because of sequester cuts. A meteor fragment strikes your small Russian village. Or you’re caught up by a week’s worth of relentlessly bad current events news.

As if the terrors of physical reality weren't enough, we also all exist inside a virtual world of endless chatter, opinions, fear, and violent images. Yet we need to remember that the media, though it’s certainly part of reality, isn’t really happening to us. While Twitter can occasionally be fun and helpful, most of the time, it represents little more than a swarm of word mosquitoes. It distorts our perception of reality, and therefore spreads suffering.

For the victims of the Boston Marathon violence and their families and friends, suffering is real and tangible, and we all must extend our hearts to them. The same goes to the people directly affected by the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas, and of other violence all around the world. But for the rest of us, the overwhelming majority, last week was just a macabre show, full of gore, heroes, villains, and bumbling comic-relief CNN reporters,  a carnival of needless anxiety and tiny sufferings magnified ten thousand times.

That’s why, in times of news lunacy—especially if that lunacy isn't directly affecting us—we should turn to yoga, if we’re so inclined. This doesn't mean we should ignore the news. If there are political actions to be taken or opinions to be stated, then we should do as conscience compels. But regardless, quietly sitting with our breath and our bodies helps enormously, without fail.  So last Friday, I took a good yoga class, an hour and fifteen minutes of vigorous exercise, calm breathing, and a Savasana where I gently snored away the previous night’s police-scanner-induced anxiety.

When class ended, the manhunt was still on in Boston, and would be for many hours still. But from where I sat, the sun was warm, the trees were green, and my hips were sore. Despite its endless and eternal tendency toward misery, the world still moved forward. Then some jerk honked at me in traffic because I’d stopped at a yield sign to wait for a blind person to cross the street. But I didn't let it get to me.

He was just suffering.

Neal Pollack is the author of Downward-Facing Death, a serialized Kindle yoga murder mystery, the memoir Stretch: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude, and the self-published novel Jewball. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and son. You can find out more about him at nealpollack.com or follow him on Twitter.

You v. The World

I'm not sure how many of you have seen this video of a social experiment conducted by Dove, as it has been making its way around the Web, but it's interesting, nonetheless.  I'm attaching the link that Christina sent to me, and in addition to the video, there are some interesting commentaries on the video that are linked to -- also interesting.  Anytime someone is brave enough to cite Winnie the Pooh, I'm in love.

While beauty isn't the most important thing we are, we are more beautiful than we might think.

Spring Juncture with Jagged Edges - by Christina

 Love and thanks to Christina for sharing these significant words. ~ Crystal

Right Now. Today.

There is this puddle on the mat and it is me, melting.  And it is not very enjoyable.  The worst part of it all is that juncture is over. The meltdown should have already happened, right?  Clearly, spring has more in store for me.   In fact, the past three days have been the worst of the season. Things were finally connecting.  I could feel lots of shifts, kapha pushing pretty hard, but I was facing it.  I was confronting it.  I was holding myself accountable.  But the shadowy build-up was waiting for me. The final three days of juncture were beautiful.  I came to this joyful place where things that would normally trigger my anxiety, washed away and it felt amazing.  Euphoric. Maybe the deluge was waiting until I gained the confidence to handle what was to come. What is now on this mat.  This is not a comfortable place for me. But here I am. 

Then. Initiating. Entering & Experiencing Juncture. Clarity of Purpose.

This juncture I set out to focus on my self-confidence. Things in my life as of late kept pointing to my lack of self-confidence.  My lack of fire—pitta.  This was exciting for me, because I felt a bit all over the place and anxious about what the spring would bring this year. I decided that the juncture would be an exploration of what self-confidence meant to me—what it felt like, looked like, etc.  What I discovered in the first week of the juncture was that this intention was continuously challenged in every facet of my life. The first day of juncture I had a tension-filled faculty meeting that required us to deal with unresolved problems in our department. Yet, as I look back at that meeting and the rest of the week, I realize that I was honoring my intention and working on my confidence and my fear of conflict and fear of, well, being who I am in spaces where I know my views, ideas, and needs are very different from those I work with. During the week everything felt weighted, heavy, thick, and eternal. But I treated the heaviness differently. I was not reacting and fighting it. I was not getting defensive. I was exploring my feelings. I wasn't perfect at it by any means. Making the effort to change my normal reactions created an incredible amount of discomfort, which I now see as the first cut of a new pattern. A new groove in the record.

What kept me focused was the routine—the practices outlined by Juliet. At times I would do them without any idea how rubbing oil on my skin was going to help me with my anxiety. Other times I could feel the gooey thickness in my core moving and generating space in ways that helped me trust in the practices. Trust that I was building something new.

Right Now. Again. Today.

Something that Juliet discussed in yoga this Saturday morning helped me release something that has been moving and shifting around throughout juncture.  At the beginning of practice, she asked us to focus on what was rising up for us as a challenge at that moment and to feel where it was manifesting in our bodies.  It was an argument I had with my significant other, although anxiety about work was a close second. The anxiety was located in my heart center.  Tightness.  Shortness of breath.  Panic.  Very typical physical responses to my anxiety. But anyway, at one point we were in a pose, I now forget which one.  I'm thinking it was pigeon and she asked us to think about our typical (and probably unhealthy) response to that challenge.  After sitting with it, victim came to mind.  Things always happen to me.  It’s always my fault.  I always apologize, but with an air of resignation mixed with guilt.  So Juliet told us to engage with the opposite energy.  All I could think of was empowerment. Again, my work of the spring juncture—self-confidence—was coming to me in a slightly different way.  Once I thought about how empowerment felt in my chest, the tightness loosened.  I could feel myself melting.  I did not know what empowerment really felt like, but there was a release of energy. The anxiety that had been building over the past three days melted and softened and I could finally truly breathe.  I felt open. Spacious in that moment.

 Then. Exiting Juncture.  Euphoria. Deluge. 

Over the first week of juncture, everything (and I mean everything) was heavy. My body felt like lead more often than not. Every feeling felt like it was being torn out of my skin.  My classes felt like impossible hurdles. My colleagues were all dragging me down.  I was the victim at every turn. Everything felt like it would take an eternity. In cycling class, it was as though I was pedaling through a foot of thick mud. Meditation kept taking me to images of sitting in cavernous darkness, trying to cross some river that had no discernible end. My meditating mind kept going to that river and kept telling me I needed to stay there and explore it and understand it. Rather than trying to run or escape the dark heaviness, I decided to stay with it, try to understand it. Something in the practices of the season helped me keep going. It helped me keep going back to meditation, helped me keep doing my breathing practice, helped me get up in the morning and keep focused.

Where I found solace through all of this was not in escape, but in building fire. I soon realized that part of exploring my self-confidence was tapping into my core chakra. And it was there I have been staying, trying to build heat in a body that felt damp and cold. Staying focused on that space saved me in ways I was not expecting and it brought together the physical and emotional challenges I was experiencing.

Right as March transitioned to April, something happened. April 1^st started off heavy. Tensions abounded and my anxiety was nearing a breaking point and then there was an unexplainable release. I went to cycling class and I kept asking myself why, why, why was I holding onto all this heavy energy?  I got on the bike and there was this almost immediate shift. I did not feel like I was biking through a foot of mud. Instead, I felt free. I felt open. I started to just let go of everything and I could see light. I was no longer engulfed in darkness.  My classes became fun explorations with my students. I did not let work tensions linger. Meditation shifted from that dark cave to a river flowing rapidly around my body, cleaning me. As my meditation progressed over the week, I succumbed to the flow of the river and floated, eventually finding a waterfall. Then I watched myself contemplate: go over the edge or stay? I went over the edge and found myself in a clear stream of water, sun shining and warmth all around me. It was incredible and clearly a metaphor for the transition that had taken place. 



This juncture has been turbulent and probably one of the most stressful I have had at work, but the intentionality that I brought into the juncture kept building as I kept trusting the process. And I found something euphoric in the middle of chaos.