Surprise, you’re human!

Surprise! I’m human. Obvious statement I know,  seeing as how you can look at me a person who is living, breathing and talking and clearly see that it is no surprise at all that I am human. No other species on the planet but a human can do all of these things. As easy as it is to identify these things, accepting it can be a completely different ball game. In yoga we talk a lot about false stories that we can tell ourselves so many times and for so long that we actually start to believe them as fact. The Sanskrit term for this is samskara, in the western world you may know them as self-limiting beliefs or a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are tiny impressions and pathways that are created in the brain by repeated thought or action. If you are reading this blog post I assume you have at least dipped your toes in to test the waters of yogic philosophy or maybe you’ve taken a couple yoga classes and heard the instructor hint at this by saying something like “notice your thoughts,” so you know a little something about what this means to you. You may have even begun to identify some of your own negative samskaras and after close examination and deconstruction have determined that they aren’t true. An example of a negative samskara would be, one time when you were five your mother called you stupid because you hadn’t quite yet grasped how 2+2=4. She never told you that she didn’t actually think you were stupid; she was just frustrated because she wants you to be successful in school so you can get into a good college. She only ever said to you out loud that you were stupid, now 25 years later you believe it and because you never went back to the source and did the work to determine that it never actually had anything at all to do with you you’ve ended up living a pretty safe life. You had dreams and aspirations, you wanted to create clean energy for all but you believed that you were too stupid to do it and so you never tried anything. We all know this feeling in some form very well. But I bet you didn’t know that are also positive samskaras too. They are helpful only in intention but if we aren’t careful the end result could be just as limiting.

I came to this realization as I began to identify for myself how some of my positive samskaras had begun to feel like a restriction. As a yoga teacher and practitioner I pride myself on my dedication to the practice. I wake up I read, I meditate, I journal,  I pranayama until I pratyahara myself into a calm steady flow of being. Sometimes I get there, sometimes I don’t (that’s why they call it “practice” amirite?!). Off the mat, although I’ll admit it isn’t always entirely possible I try to consider the 8 limbs, the Yamas and Niyamas in every decision I make. I think these things are supposed to make me a “good yogi” and a good yogi (or so my mind has lead me to believe) is pure and ethereal and doesn’t walk but kind of floats and always knows the right things to say because I meditate so now I’m enlightened. And because I’m now enlightened as a true yogi should be, my mind is clean and pure and free of unnecessary clutter so I should sleep as sound as a newborn baby every night and wake pure and refreshed and ready to take on the day. Only I wasn’t, I couldn’t. Even though I wanted to so badly. Sleep. Good old-fashioned restful sleep. And let me tell you there is nothing that can unravel a human being quicker than lack of sleep. So when I found myself on night two of lying awake in bed after setting clear intentions to have restful sleep and feeling only more restless I slowly watched this feeling morph into helplessness and I fell apart. What I actually did was fall into a heap next to the bed and burst into tears. My boyfriend woke up and got me tissues, he asked what was wrong. I wanted to tell him immediately but couldn’t articulate, all I could do was sob. That’s right, I a dedicated yogi was reduced to a sleep deprived toddler throwing a tantrum. Oh if Patanjali could see me now!  The crazy thing is that although I was exhausted I wasn’t crying because I was sleepy I was crying because I lead myself to believe that a meditated mind is a totally pure mind and so easy to rest, but a restless mind is a diseased mind a mind that is literally dis-eased. Actually it was Sri Swami Chachitinanda who said this, but just like all things yoga I took it to heart, I made it the end all be all. And so I laid there next to a very confused and now also sleep deprived boyfriend devastated because I felt like a bad sad yogi.

But there’s the thing. This is one of those times where the answer is in the question. I made those things  good and bad. The aim of Yoga is not to make us good or to keep us from being bad, the aim of Yoga is to teach us how to be with all of these things. The more I practice and the more I try to understand and release that which no longer serves me. I realize a little more each day that there really is no good and bad there is only what we tell ourselves and what we attach to. Yea, maybe my mind is a little dis-eased a couple nights out of the week and sometimes it isn’t, that doesn’t make me bad or good it makes me HUMAN. A human being living in a human body with a very complex human mind that is not perfect and was not made to be. It just means that there’s more work to do, more things to look at and consider, I know that now. That’s why we practice, not to be rid of these struggles but to better understand them so we can live peacefully alongside them. But most importantly I practice so that when I fall from grace (because I can assure you just as sure as the sun will rise and bring a new day we will all fall at some point in our journey)  I can give myself a break and come back to just being without all the expectation.

So I urge you, the next time you feel like you have fallen to lay in the rubble, make rubble angels, cry until you can’t anymore.  Hell, wake your boyfriend up even, feel all the things! And then pull yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to work. Because surprise! You’re human too.