Recently, I set sail on an adventure for which some of my dearest and most consistent supports were unable to accompany me, and so it also set me thinking about the mental yoga of playing at the edge of fear. Jnana yoga is the yoga of challenging the mental rigidities that keep us locked in patterns that are only ours because they are familiar, not necessarily because they are healthy. Jnana invites us to reach mentally beyond what is familiar. Just like on the mat, when we dance at the edge of what's comfortable, and learn to breathe and relax, and build the strength to exist steadily in new territory, the simple experiences of everyday living ask us to move beyond what is familiar, and free our minds to grow and become flexible.
Yoga teaches that, the same way pain is the sign post for the body's edge, fear is the sign post for the mind. And the beauty and wisdom of physical practice therefore becomes a powerful teacher, and invitation to exploration, for the mind. In hatha yoga, we follow our energy body in the direction of physical freedom and strength, opening places where our flow of energy has been blocked, and energizing areas that have been allowed to remain limp in our every day living and moving through the world. Just the experience of bringing blood and oxygen, extension and strength to a place in our bodies that has been lacking it is invigorating. So, following the same spirit of exploration into the act of living, and learning to exist with integrity and deliberate attention even at the edge of fear, can be transformative.
As I began to recognize that this change was coming whether I wanted it or not, my first reaction was nearly paralyzing fear. I wept with it, fought it with my logic, my prayers, spent incredible amounts of energy pushing it back. It was actually on the mat that I recognized how full of tension and resistance my body was. My body, that I know so well, and that usually moves with eagerness and fluidity, loving its breath and welcoming wide open ranges of motion, was positively locked up with resistance. And, it was breathing and relaxing my body's edges that broke the dam, and all of the emotion I had been piling up against this change came crashing out of me on that sacred little mat.
The beautiful thing about this new experience has been the recognition of that calm, solid, wise and unshakable thing that remains at my center, guiding my thoughts, my words, my impressions and organizing my memories, as unchanged even while the supports on which I had so depended were removed. Yoga calls it Shiva -- the part of ourselves that is modeled after and linked to the Divine, and that will remain after the destruction of our bodies. The Hindu chant "Om namah shivaya" pays tribute to that divine center. There is always stripping away in life, and there are always shifts in the proximity and definitions of the elements that surround us, but it is only the degree to which we, in our attachment to our favorite parts of a world that is by its very nature temporary, resist the changes that determine how traumatizing those shifts are. In life, as on the mat, resistance is the thing that makes us suffer. Without resistance, when we finally allow ourselves just to step out into the unknown and learn to breathe freely and stand steady, we extend the limits of the possible.
So bon voyage, my fellow explorers, vaia con Dios into the wild unknown!
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