Finding the courage to stare acceptance in the face

Since my intention this week has been acceptance, I’ve thought a lot about it. I read a quote this morning that opened my eyes to what acceptance really means:

I like that this quote encompasses so much under the umbrella of gratitude. Gratitude is in all things, in our whole life. As I read the quote I became grateful for my intention this week: acceptance.

When we think about acceptance we need to also think about it’s opposite, denial. Our society scratch that, the media and our egos need denial in order to function. Acceptance of the here and now would make it difficult for the media to sell us the better and the more beautiful. Our egos convince us of our weaknesses in order to not be challenged.Denial holds us back in life.

So how does that relate to my intention and my yoga practice?

On my mat denial that I can’t do certain poses scratch that, denial that I am not ready for certain poses, has held me back. On the other hand, not being able to accept where my body is at has also held me back. There is a fine balance between pushing too far and not pushing enough.

This week I have been plagued with back pain. And yesterday morning I knew I needed a break from yoga. At first I was unsure of where this back pain came from, however upon thinking about my week I remembered that the day before, Thursday, I got on my mat even though my body screamed that it needed a break. I believe the back pain stemmed from there, from my denial.

Taking a day off my mat, without even meditation, was very difficult to do. At first my ego screamed at me: get on your mat or else! I ignored these thoughts and eventually peace came over me. I began to see the benefits of taking a day off. My back pain began to subside, I could pay attention to other aspects of yoga other than asana. I began to see that I was not practicing my intention of acceptance by ignoring my back pain. Taking the day off helped me further understand my intention and the role of denial as a barrier to acceptance.

I realized that in order to break down the walls of denial, in order to be fully aware of what acceptance means we need courage. Courage to change old habits, courage to see where the real problems lie. My real problem was not my back pain. My back pain was my body’s way of letting me know somewhere along the way I lost my path. I could have ignored the back pain and done yoga. My ego would have seen that as courage, society would have seen that as courage, but it would have done my spirit and my body no good. We often put others’ needs ahead of ours, we often give more than we take. These are not bad in themselves, but there is a point where we need to see where these actions stem from. If these actions stem from a place of denial – denying yourself self-love, or denying that someone or something is taking more than giving, leaving you empty – is essentially denying your soul and your body of what it needs – self-care and self-love. We find courage by accepting that there needs to be a change – breaking down the barriers of denial.

My back pain may have been a nuisance yesterday, but taking the time to listen to my body and see where the problems were, took courage. Taking the time to change what does not serve us takes courage. It is the only place of growth.

And so, my intention for next week will be just that, courage.. With that my pose for next week will be crow pose.

Since I’m talking about denial I have a confession to make. I have been avoiding crow for quite some time now. I had gotten to a point where I was able to hover for about four breaths (on a good day) but then my wrist started screaming at me. Let’s be clear, I am not dismissing that pain. However, I have been working on core work a lot, and my arms, back, and my core in general have become quite strong due to this. With that, I bought wrist wraps which have helped lot. I’ve noticed it most in my vinyasa, which for the first time ever is painless. However, I remained in denial over crow. I believed that I wasn’t able to do this.

While this is somewhat true, I need to accept the work that needs to be done in order to learn the pose as far as it will take me (maybe hovering for a maximum of four breaths will be my limit but I won’t know until I really truly try). In order to accept, I need to break down the barriers of denial, which have been holding me back. I need to find the courage to face those denials and show up on my mat willing to try openly and objectively.

Refusing to to try, living in a place of denial only strengthens the ego and keeps us that much further from acceptance and courage.

Next time you get on your mat (or do an activity you love to do) ask yourself where am I denying myself growth here? What can I change in order to find acceptance and therefore courage?

In my case just doing yoga, for the sake of doing it was not yoga at all. I needed the back pain and a day off my mat to realize that. Now that I have done that I come back stronger, more open to transformation, more willing to break down more barriers. I come back with acceptance in my truth and the courage to grow from there.

Challenge: 1 pose, 1 intention, 1 eye-opening journey

I have never had a good relationship with intentions on my yoga mat. I have the best of intentions (haha) but once I start my practice, the thought or mantra escapes my heart and mind. Instead I focus on alignment and constantly judge whether I am doing a pose perfectly or not. So, this week I decided to change a few things.

The change came naturally. I had read a few weeks ago about focusing on one pose a week. I had dismissed the idea as boring, where would the challenge be? But ever since then I have noticed that my focus on the mat is scattered between proper alignment, balancing perfectly, perfect sequencing, that I can’t meditate. So this weekend I decided to pick a pose that I would work on for the whole week. My pose is toe stand (padangustasana). I also have a pose for thought post on this asana if you just follow the link.

As you all know, I make peak sequences. (I have been debating whether to post them, mostly because I don’t like the idea of someone whose never done yoga hurting themselves from one of my sequences). These sequences focus on one or two poses. I basically work up to them focusing on muscle groups needed to perform the pose optimally, and use counterposes afterwards. I already have a peak sequence for toe stand, and while I have been using it, it has not been my only go-to sequence this week. I free-styled it a lot as well, adding toe stand into each sequence. It’s been four days of toe stand so far, and focusing on this one pose has been phenomenal so far. Coupled with the one pose a week, I have also chosen to do one intention a week as well. As I mentioned above, I have trouble with intentions. I tend to forget, or not really feel them. I decided if I chose one, maybe some insight would come out of it.

This week I chose forgiveness. I chose this intention because I tend to judge myself a lot on the mat and carry those judgements around with me through out the day. On top of that, when I judge myself, I judge myself for having judged myself in the first place – double judgement wammy! And so I decided that each time I caught myself judging my posture, my balance, my body, my breathing … etc on and off the mat, I would forgive myself and move on.

Forgiveness is a difficult concept to understand, at least for me. We are often told to forgive others for having hurt us. But I think forgiveness needs to be earned.

You can’t go around forgiving everyone for everything, why would they feel sorry for what they’ve done, if they’re guaranteed forgiveness? At the same time, we need to forgive ourselves for not being perfect, for having fallen down. Wait, does that make sense? Am I looking for perfection from others?

These are the thoughts I have been struggling with this week. I can’t say I have any answers, but I believe my first step in understanding forgiveness is by forgiving myself first.

Today was the pinnacle of my journey this week. If I had to describe my practice I would describe it like water, fluid. I was in a pretty awesome groove through out my practice. Toe stand is awesome, it has been for a couple of days now. But the real great moments in my practice today were:

Vinyasa – during my vinyasa I moved like a wave. I have seen this done in videos before, and often wondered how people moved through a vinyasa as if their body was a wave. Up until this week I consistently judged my vinyasa from my breath, placement of my hands, downward dog – everything. Today without even wanting to, my vinyasa was exactly that, like a wave. I focused on forgiveness and that silenced my judging thoughts. Without those clouds looming over me my body was able to express itself. My heart was able to shine.

Triangle pose (trikonasana) – nothing significant happened really in terms of the pose itself. Instead it was at this moment that I felt a difference. Triangle came relatively at the beginning of my practice, and in the pose I felt a calmness, a strength that alluded me before. I usually judge myself a lot in triangle, and as I got into the pose I began the process of judgement again. I immediately stopped myself, found my drishti (place to focus your eyes during poses), and thought of forgiveness. In that moment something changed. I knew my journey was going to be different today, I knew that I was onto something, and I stayed with it.

Seated half lotus pose (Ardha Padmasana) – at the end of my practice as I sat in easy pose, I just knew, I could sit in half lotus.

Now, you have to understand, I have really really tight hips. Before yoga even sitting in easy pose (cross-legged) was difficult for me to do for an extended period of time. I distinctly remember feeling so uncomfortable during story time in grade school because sitting this way was painful for me. I also remember my grandma telling me that she too could not sit in that position for a long time, and that because I was like her, I too would never sit comfortably in easy pose. I secretly vowed that one day I would find comfort in a cross legged position. As I placed one foot over my other thigh today, i took a deep breath and thought about forgiveness. I sat in the pose with my hands in prayer position, I closed my eyes and I smiled. I sat for five breaths, changed feet and did the same on the other side. When I finished, I got out of half lotus position and I cried. I don’t know why, but for a few minutes I sat there and I cried.

Past hurts escaping my body

I finally forgave myself a little today.

It seems there is something to this intentions thing, I love this mini challenge I’ve given myself. I also love the idea of a one pose a week, and will continue this for the rest of September.

This morning my sister got some great news.  She will be participating in the next Jedi Fight Club, which as I understand it, is a yoga workshop for Bikram teachers to better understand and enhance back bends (I’m not sure if you need to be a Bikram Yoga teacher, but the founder is a very well known Bikram Yoga teacher).  On her facebook page my sister wrote:

“Last year around this time I saw a post about this and hoped that one day I would be able to go.  This year the stars all aligned and I am going.”

She went on to say that this is how she ended up going to Bikram Teacher Training as well, the stars aligned. Come to think of it, India worked the same way for me.  I knew I wanted to go to India to do a Yoga Teacher Training, I just didn’t know when.  The stars aligned for me this year as I brushed my teeth after the heartbreaking reality that we would not be posted again.  You gotta love those revelations!

I have experienced this many times, as I’m sure all of us have at some point.  I had a similar, not so grandiose, experience this morning.

When you lack the answers to your questions, let them go.  The universe will bring you the answers if you just listen.

This morning, I prepared for my morning yoga practice, only to find that I couldn’t think of an intention for  my practice.  In truth, I find my intentions are pretty limited in scope, almost self-centered (as I cower in shame).  I decided to get into child’s pose and to think about what I would like to dedicate this practice on.

I was having trouble because, although I am still on my challenge, today I had no task to complete, no active practice of samskaras.  I decided in the end to focus on being present in the moment through out the day, rather than allow myself to waste time on mindlessness (browsing on facebook). So, even though I was having a “me day” I wouldn’t waste it.

This worked well, however, after  my morning ritual on Saturdays: yoga, breakfast, Mad Men episode, I came up to my recently- cleaned office to begin some research, and there it was, the answer to my question.

http://www.myyogaonline.com/about-yoga/learn-about-yoga/3-ways-to-set-an-intention-in-your-yoga-practice

To highlight the article (whose author I am now following, she is super interesting and is on wordpress):

In order to set an intention think about these three things:

gratitude: we all have something to be grateful for.  Some days these will be easy to list off, others you will have to search, but you can always find something.

Forgiveness: As the author so lovingly put it, we have all wronged people, and have felt wronged. Find moments where you ask for others forgiveness, and where you can forgive others.  I personally love this one, it adds such depth to setting an intention, and expanding our horizons to happiness.

Guidance: In life there are times we need help, this is human. For people like me, I have a very hard time admitting I need help, my type A personality (which I would have sworn I did not possess) usually presents itself on the mat.  I have learned to listen to my body, but every now and then I need to remind myself that I am not super human and its ok to fall down sometimes.  Remembering that sometimes we may need a little help is almost healing, and calming, especially for someone like me who often forgets this. Also, allowing us, through our own personal knowledge, to look for help in the right places is also a wonderful reminder (very important for me).

I thought I would share this, it seriously opened my eyes to so many new possibilities.  I’m very excited to begin this exploration tomorrow morning when I get on my mat once again :).