The Art of Letting Go

yoga philosophy

As one season ends, and another begins, we can start to feel a change rippling through our City of Trees. The long days of a hot Sacramento summer slowly start to fade away and before we know it, we find ourselves ditching those summer flip flops in exchange for warmer boots, and swapping Cold Brews for Pumpkin Spiced Lattes. This change can be amazing to experience, whether it’s the simple joy of riding your bike through crunching leaves, or an outdoor yoga class fueled by crisp morning air.

This changing of the seasons has come to be revered by a lot of us, and for myself the changing from summer to autumn, is one change that I love to embrace with warm hoodies and pumpkin spiced everything. I feel like there is something symbolic about the idea of embracing change, instead of fearing it. And, a certain zen quality in the way Autumn’s shift in energy can spill over onto our lives in subtle and more meaningful ways. 

One of the most picturesque ways this can be witnessed, is by watching leaves gently fall away from trees. The process is a slow one, and from day to day you might not notice these subtleties. Overtime though, these small changes in colors from yellow, orange to red, add up to a bigger transformation. Ultimately, deepening further as we witness the trees let go of each leaf in preparation for winter and spring. 

If we are open to it, the seasonal changes of Fall can serve as a graceful message from nature. Showing us first hand how great changes take time to unfold, rarely ever happening all at once. It can also encourage us to slow down a little, so that we can look up and enjoy life a little bit deeper and notice the subtle nuances unfold before our eyes. Encouraging, all of us to have more patience with ourselves when we go through difficult times of change, and that letting go of things often leads to something better, if we can just let go of our fear and embrace the present moment. 

Letting go, isn’t always as simple and easy as it seems though. So, why can something as basic as  “Letting go”, be so difficult at times for us to do then? Letting go of a job, old friends, marriages or loved ones, it’s a universal constant that each of us all experience throughout our lives. Sometimes the changes are chosen, and other times the changes are thrusted upon us instead. While some of these changes might be welcomed, others can be feared and often give rise to anxiety or sadness. By holding on tightly to our fears and resisting the inevitable change, we make the changes more difficult. 

Change can become more manageable though, when we embrace it, when we allow ourselves to bend to the winds of change, instead of breaking and resisting their forces. Embracing change doesn’t mean you don’t still fear the change, it means that you roll with them and let those strong emotions be there with you, with hope that in time they will fade in intensity. The fears we may be experiencing are valid, but perhaps even more important, is the personal acceptance of the fears and the willingness to move forward in life despite them.  In this process, maybe we can learn to accept all the seasons in life just a little bit easier.

What is Yoga?

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I recently took the plunge and decided to take on Yoga Teacher Training with The Yoga Seed. On our first day of Yoga Teacher Training, Reno one of the instructors asked us, “What is Yoga”? Asking this question to a room full of Yogi’s in training, was a bit like opening Pandora’s Box and before long we all had our hands raised in the air, as we each eagerly shared our own interpretation of what Yoga was to us. 

The instructor carefully wrote down each suggestion as people shared different ideas and theories about their own experiences with yoga. And, the conversation picked up momentum quickly as we began to discuss how community, breath, connection, play, and mindfulness all encompassed Yoga in different ways. We dove in even deeper when, Reno our instructor asked us, “Could yoga also be something else, maybe even something controversial or outside of the box?” In a flash, and even before I realized my hand was in the air, the words just fell out of my mouth, “Yoga is Zero”. And then Crickets…..

The silence was probably just a few split seconds, but the intensity of all those faces staring at  me with their questions’ gleaming in their eyes, was a tad overwhelming for a reserved introvert like myself. As everyone’s focus shifted to me for an explanation on how zero had anything to do with yoga, I started to feel a tinge of regret because I didn’t quite know where to start, or even how to begin to explain such an abstract theory. But somehow, I felt supported among this sea of new faces and I attempted to elaborate on this wild notion, and I said something like this, 

“Yoga is zero, because zero is our natural, and purest state. When you practice Yoga, you forget about the barriers, masks, and relationships we think define us. When we mistakenly perceive the layers of ego as a defining feature of who we really are as people, we are inevitably not fully living in the present moment. But, Yoga helps foster the removal of all the things we thought we were or weren’t, helping us realize our wholest and truest state by bringing us back to zero where we can reconnect with our inner selves”. 

I’m not sure if my explanation actually explained what I was trying to say, or if I confused everyone in training even more. But, it’s something that stayed with me throughout my training as a burning question left unanswered. 

Now, let’s pretend to fast forward a few months to the last weekend of training, where I naively assumed we were all done with homework and assignments. But wait, “just one more assignment”, they said. “For this last assignment we want you to write about, ‘What is Yoga’ in your own words or opinion”.  A light bulb instantly illuminated for me, kinda like it does in a comic or cartoon, and I saw this assignment as something more than just one more requirement needed to check off my to do list before getting my yoga certification.

For me,  I felt like I was getting a do-over from that very first day of training, when I awkwardly tried to explain a complex Zen philosophy to a room full of strangers. Only this time my words would be perfect, and I wouldn’t get any blank stares gazing back at me. In a way, I thought if I could finally wrap my own brain around this whole Zen theory of Zero, then maybe, I’d actually be able to share it in a way where “Yoga is zero” makes sense. 

When it came down to writing the assignment, I felt like poetry would be the best tool for me to use, so, I did just that. The irony though, is that, I still don’t feel like I perfectly encompassed the essence of “What Yoga is” or “Yoga is Zero”, but I also don’t think that something as illusive and expansive as Yoga, could ever fully be explained with words alone. And to be honest, Isn’t Life a whole lot better, when we find a way to live out the unanswered questions themselves, instead of forcing an answer to appear?

Part 1, Finding Space on our Yoga Mats for Politics, Social Activism, and Social Justice

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Part 1 of

Finding Space on our Yoga Mats for Politics, Social Activism, and Social Justice

I don’t know if you have been following this country’s latest developments or if you’re one of those yogi’s that prefers to press mute to the political news of today. And, I’m sure some of you are already thinking Yoga and Politics where’s the intersection between those, How does Yoga involve politics? And, I can’t find fault anyone in that thinking, but if we can build a bigger awareness around what yoga is, then I think naturally the overflow occurs and the intersection just becomes an obvious connection.

I think we should take a step back from the idea of what “Yoga” means in  mainstream society, as this quasi fitness and stress management practice. While certain types of Yoga can be a form of exercise, the framework that yoga is only a physical or even mental self betterment practice is just one part of the overall structure that encompasses yoga.

The question then, what is yoga? I’ll preface my explanation by saying  I’m not a Sanskrit Scholar, but the word Yoga, comes from the Sanskrit word to Yoke. So, when we practice yoga we are “yoking” or forming a union between the Duality of life into a Non-Duality. I might have lost you in the last statement, so let’ start with talking about what Duality and Non-Duality are as words in this context, so we can have a shared language and start to piece some of these things together.

Dvaita in sanskrit mean Duality, and in the Yogic sense and for the purpose of this blog, means the existence of two opposing system. One way to think about is the duality that exists with each of us, and the existence of both our mind and our physical body. When we practice yoga, one union that happens is this sort of mind-body connection that gets created, we step on our mats, and start to connect our minds with our body, and breath with our movement. When the process occurs a yoking and a union occurs, and that process that occurs is Yoga.

Non-Duality or Advaita, means the existence of two things at the same time. We are both, inherently “good” inside  and at the same time we make mistakes and sometimes do “bad” things, we are both citizens to a country as well as citizens of the earth. We can call Sacramento home, as well as someplace else, the existence of the latter does not negate the existence of the former. Weaving these ideas together, we can start to see ,that, duality means we are one thing or one way, and that non-duality means we are more than just one thing or one way. So, with in the Duality there is also a Non-Duality, for example, we may find ourselves mad at friend or family member(duality) but at the same time, we also have love(nonduality) for that person.

Bringing that knowledge about the nature of duality and non duality with in the scope of tangible reality, I invite you to think about the duality of living our normal day to day lives. The feeling of who you are as a person both at work, at home, or commuting between those two worlds. Maybe, those shared realities we call society conjure up feelings of stress or anxiety within you, and maybe you go to yoga, to escape that feeling, to get of your head for a litte bit(duality). And,  in that process you start to become more embodied, you start to feel what’s going in your body, and for the first time all day, maybe you even start to notice your thougts, and how they are making you feel(non-duality). Its not as if Yoga has eliminated the stresses from your life, it’s merely just the awareness that you gained about feeling stressed, So the big question, then is, why if we go to yoga to escape our stresses, why would we want to talk about politics, and social justice, The prevailing thought being, there can’t be peace within stress because they are polarizing feelings and so there can’t be space for both.

What I’m here to say, is that, there can be space for both Yoga and Social Activism, within the practice of Yoga. I would even go further in saying, that, the very essence of pushing away anything stressful, anxiety, or negative, is fundamentally the antheis of what lies at the heart of yogic teachings because how can we yoke, or form a union with our mind and body, if we deny the existence of what the mind may be feeling.

All of this, begs the much bigger question here, which is, how can we find peace, if we are pissed off about what’s happening in our cities, our country’s and our world, because let’s face it, the world right now, at least as I type this, kinda sucks. We have states here in the United States straight up violating federal laws, blatant systemic racism, and global warming wreaking havoc on our earth, all while certain groups of people stand by and deny its existence altogether. How do we know what know, and not get angry, how can we find even a sliver of peace in this crazy world and still be instruments of change?