why is yoga so enduring?
One of the things I love about the yoga practice is that it’s enduring. It lasts. It perseveres. It is a living, breathing entity that can stay with us through any context, if we choose to have it. It’s enduring because it can change. The practice lasts because it can shape shift, translating to any context that we might find ourselves in. A great example is the Zoom yoga life we’re all living in. Even though it’s weird and not ideal for some, we are still able to practice. The practice was still being transmitted even as the world shut down.
Yoga is enduring because it is richly textured and multi-layered. It is enduring because it is diverse. Diversity makes things last, makes things live on, because it includes more perspectives and experiences into the room. It gives us more, to put it simply. Yoga is movement, language, philosophy, relationships, and history. It accesses the body, the heart and the mind.
If we use the practice as a metaphor for our own lives, we see that our stamina and our endurance are born from our ability to change, adapt, shift and refine. In her book Daring Greatly, Brene Brown writes that one of the ways to build ‘shame resilience’ is to own and share our story. Owning our story gives us power over it, and sharing our story allows us to connect with others, strengthening our empathy.
Why am I talking about shame? Because what Brene Brown writes about reminds me of the two things yoga has taught me over the years. I feel like if I could sum up the poignant lessons this practice have gifted me, it would be in this two-step process:
Own your story and share it. That doesn’t mean you need to accept it or want it to be there. But owning it and speaking it gets it out into the world. And when it’s out in the world - more tangible and real - it is subject to change. It is subject to feedback and interpretation and, if need be, revision.
Remember there is always room for more content. My teacher Douglas Brooks said this once and it stuck with me. This goes back to the idea that our ability to change and adapt and keep room in ourselves for more is commensurate with our ability to endure, to last, to leave a mark. Always remember that nothing is stagnant. That change is everywhere. That the universe is always creating more of herself, which is where her power lays. Never lose touch with your desire to create; to mold and recollect and reimagine those stories within you. Authority has the word author in it. You have authority over your story - how you write it and rewrite it.
Over the past few months, when I’ve gotten stuck in the doom thoughts, as my friend calls it, I’ve kept this two-fold practice in mind. We’re all human, and we all have brains, so we’ll inevitably get stuck in the whirlwind of thoughts, even to a point where we get swept far far away from our grounded center. In those moments, I call out the current story. I try and own it, speak it, share it, whether that’s through writing it down or sharing it with someone I trust. Even that step alone loosens the grip the story has on us. It puts us in the driver’s seat rather than leaving us victim. It makes us active rather than remain passive. And it lays it out on the table, subject to contemplation, interpretation, and affirmation or redirection (depending on the story).
Then I remind myself that this too can change. That I have the creative power within me to rewrite the story. This isn’t always easy but like any practice, if we commit ourselves to doing it, even when it’s hard, it eventually becomes second nature. It becomes a spontaneous extension of our hearts, in a way that naturally passes on this practice to others. And over time, we have a world that doesn’t hide or turn away from their story, their history. We have a world that owns up to their story, whether respectable or unsavory. We have a world that knows if they speak their story, however uncomfortable that may be, they then have the power to change it.