What do you pay attention to every day? The ding of a new text message? The ping of a new FB notification? The chime of a new email? The smell of the flowers in your garden? The feel of your dogs coat when you pet her? The sound of your child’s voice?
A friend of mine recently showed me a video of a guy doing yoga on the beach. His movements were tai chi slow. I have found that when I slow down, I am more effective at paying attention to how I feel. How I really feel. Not what I ought to feel, what I think I should feel, but how I really feel. Like this guy on the beach, if I slow down enough, I can really tap into whether I am actually hungry or thirsty. Whether the food I have eaten is nourishing my body in the right way. Whether I need restorative yoga poses or active yoga poses. Whether what I am saying and doing fits with who I am and who I want to be as a person.
Getting to this place was not easy. I had to learn how to pay attention. I grew up thinking about ideas and how to be kind to those around me. I grew up eating the food that was put in front of me, “rebelling” at the age of 14 by becoming a vegetarian. (I was presented with a beef stew by my grandmother and decided that I would have to become a vegetarian if I was going to avoid eating that ever again, but then I did have to forsake bacon which was tough in my family!) I learned to pay attention to how I looked, as a girl growing up in central London, in an all-girls school.
When my mind became difficult to manage – I turned to yoga and meditation. The movement of yoga initially allowed me to sit still so that I could meditate. Watching my thoughts, allowing my mind to be still. Allowing myself to slow down and be in a quiet space gave me the space to see how I really felt and what I really wanted to do and be. Therapy was sometimes helpful, but most of all, meditation. As my teacher David Nichtern says, meditation is about making friends with your mind. This process was incredibly helpful for me.
When my body became difficult to manage, I turned to yoga and the daily self-care routines that I now teach – self-massage, early rising, plant-based diet and so on. The yoga helped my digestion and Iyengar yoga helped me learn how to work with my injuries. These mindful approaches to my daily routines changed my relationship to food from eating foods that I “knew” were good for me to eating foods that really nourish me and keep me grounded. I have learned to tune in to how particular foods make me feel and whether they are doing the right thing for my body. I have learned whether particular stimulants (e.g. dramatic TV, coffee, chocolate) will have a negative effect on me, based on the time of the day and what’s going on in my life.
In the West we have divided up these practices of Yoga – the meditation is separate from the asanas (the poses) which is also separate from the self-care habits prescribed by ancient yogis. Putting aside the irony, given that they word Yoga means union, it is not helpful to study and learn such a small section of a holistic path.
I want to encourage you to slow down enough to pay attention. Perhaps you can learn to do it, before a crisis of health or emotions happens to you, so you have the tools to survive. Make a commitment to practice awareness every day. Kaizen – the approach of making one small change – meditate for 5 minutes, notice whether your food is nourishing you, whether the exercise you are doing is really taking care of your body.
In honor of BKS Iyengar, who died yesterday remember this:
“Yoga is the rule book for playing the game of life, but in this life, no one needs to lose. It is tough, and you need to train hard. It requires the willingness to think for yourself, to observe & correct, & to surmount occasional setbacks. It demands honesty, sustained application, & above all love in your heart…. By accepting nature’s challenge & joining the game, we find ourselves on a windswept journey that will pay benefits commensurate to the time and effort we put in – the lowest being our ability to tie our shoelaces at 80 & the highest being the opportunity to taste the essence of life itself.” Light on Life, p xvi
Tamsin Astor-Jack writes at www.tamsinastor.com/blog
©Tamsin Astor-Jack, Yoga Brained LLC