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It’s one thing to talk about “finding balance in life”…it’s another thing to experience that balance while standing on one leg. Even if you will never set foot on a yoga mat, you’ll find uncomplication in these ten life-lessons I’ve learned from a decade of practicing yoga.
1. We are strongest when we have to be
We usually delay or avoid challenges in our lives. Many of us are experts at putting in the minimum effort or getting out of difficult situations entirely. A yoga class is different. Once it begins, the only way to get off the ride is to endure.
A difficult yoga class is a rapid sequence of intense physical and mental challenges but because quitting is not an option, our true strength is revealed. Bringing people to their limits is at the core of yoga. Overcoming limits is at the core of humanity.
When I hear stories of human beings living through extreme situations… soldiers in the trenches of WWI, people in cities rocked by natural disasters, even people dealing with medical horrors or intense personal loss… I try to imagine what it would be like and if I’d have the strength to endure as people throughout history have somehow managed to do.
Having been shocked to discover my true strength and resolve when faced with many difficult yoga classes, I’ve come to embrace the idea that when we are in situations where we must be strong, we are at our strongest.
There’s no need to dread life’s extreme challenges. When we get there we’ll find the strength we’ve always had.
2. Life is a balance of holding on and letting go
One of life’s great balancing acts is knowing when to hold on, and when to let go. People who try to control things can put a strangle hold on life while attempting to analyze and manage every detail. On the other hand, people who “go with the flow” completely can find themselves over the waterfall with uninspired lives of lazy passivity.
Holding on and letting go are abstract concepts, but in yoga they are plain and simple.
Stand on one leg. You will find that your entire body is suddenly engaged in keeping you from falling over. There are dozens of muscles you didn’t even know you had twitching away to stabilize you, and every movement you make directly affects your balance.
If you try to grab control of this process, you will find that 1) There are more things going on than you can keep conscious track of and 2) when you try to micromanage your body, your mind interferes with the workings of your muscles and they become tense, throwing your body’s natural balance out of order.
If you let go of the process completely, you’ll have no power. You are likely to end up a lump of jello on the floor. Now, that might be a comfortable place to land, but if we are in the business of standing on one leg (or whatever your life’s balancing acts may be), letting it all go leaves you with nothing.
So how do yogi’s stand on one leg for many minutes, contorting into beautiful postures with complete control and mental relaxation? They find the balance between holding on and letting go. This is as true for yoga as it is for life’s many balancing acts.
The holding on is intention – “I’m going to do this now – everything else can wait.” Intention is what allows you to set up a solid foundation, bringing engagement to the parts that are needed and letting everything else, including your mind, relax.
In yoga, a solid foundation means aligning your body in balance with gravity, engaging your core and bringing strength to the muscles you need while relaxing the rest.
In life, a solid foundation means aligning your priorities to balance what pulls you, engaging your core values and bringing strength to the actions you take before relaxing in rest.
In this way we bring our natural balance into center to create a stable platform– supporting our explorations to the edge of our limits.
credit: YogaBloga.tumblr.com
3. Let go of what’s happened and what’s coming – take time to rest
Yoga can bring you to your physical and mental limits, pose after pose after pose. To find strength and balance in a pose you must be present in the moment, not stuck in the past or concerned with the future.
If you are in a difficult situation, holding up your weight on the brink of balance and your mind is stuck on what’s happened or wandering the dark forests of what may come, your present performance is undermined and you are likely to fall.
Fortunately, built into yoga (and our lives) are opportunities to rest. Resting means letting go of absolutely everything – instantly and completely. Resting requires practice like any pose, and sometimes only lasts the length of a breath. But once you’ve found it, it’s like an island that nothing can reach… a “reset button” that erases the past, providing a blank canvass for new possibilities.
Finding a cycle of engagement and rest allows you to bring your fullest effort to every challenge, let it go completely, and start on the next challenge without lugging the weight of past performances or future expectations.
4. You can’t compare yourself to your neighbors
We live in a culture conditioned to compare. Often we create artificial measurements of our self-worth based on what we own, what we’ve accomplished or our relationships to others. But, because there are always people with-more, absolutely anyone can feel worth-less. The result is a culture “keeping up with the Jones’,” gazing over their fence to where the grass is greener.
Yoga uncomplicates this problem. Because strength and balance can only be found through focused attention to your experience, you quickly learn that having eyes on your neighbors is one of the fastest ways to lose focus and fall. This is why yoga instructors often tell you to “keep your eyes on your own mat.”
In the studio, as in life, you see all different kinds of people. Big and small, beginner and advanced, pretty and pretty-normal… nobody chose to be what they are and nobody is perfect. Because everyone is working at the edge of their abilities – even the most practiced yogi has their limitations – everyone is on an equal playing field. I’ve been practicing yoga for over a decade, but often I will see beginners rock poses I still struggle with because they have different flexibilities. This isn’t failure, discovering our strengths and limits provides the map of where growth can take place. Ignoring your neighbor and tending to your side of the fence is the only way to grow.
“The grass is always greener where you water it.”
credit: Matt Olsen
5. We are who we are
Many of us begin each day with a ritual of cleanliness, clothing, makeup and style… piling layers of polish on top of our insecurities in the service of our self-image. So it seems odd to suggest that heading in the opposite direction may be the faster path to increased self esteem. Yet, something powerful can happen when we remove the veil of composure and confront who we are.
Yoga has a way of dissolving the layers of piled-on-polish until all that’s left is the sweaty, half-naked human staring back at us in the mirror. With nowhere to hide, we are face to face with ourselves – all while being pushed to the brink of our abilities. I doubt there’s a person, no matter how beautiful, who looks into that mirror without critically evaluating what they see.
In this situation, a few realizations become evident:
First, as with most thoughts in yoga, when our minds are preoccupied by self-evaluation, we lose our balance and fall. We quickly learn that these thoughts do nothing for us, and that spending time with them only undermines our performance and enjoyment. Like the lab-rat who’s shocked for pressing a button, the yogi quickly learns to pass over these thoughts into acceptance, or at least tolerance, of that creature in the mirror.
With our self-image short-circuited in this way, we shift our awareness from outer-image to the inner-experience where our strength, balance and enjoyment can be found. Strength and balance have nothing to do with how we look… they come from intention, practice and engagement in life. Honing these leads to a wellspring of self esteem, and then the rest doesn’t matter.
6. Good teachers make a difference
Just think: people have been exploring the limits and abilities of the human body for thousands of generations, and that information has been passed down from teacher to student for just as long. Having an experienced teacher sets you on top of this pillar of knowledge, supporting and guiding your own discoveries.
To “go it alone” is to start from the beginning, having to learn every lesson the hard way. Asking for help leapfrogs you into a skill, and greatly enhances your abilities and enjoyment. This is as true for yoga as any other skill or ability you may undertake.
People say I have many talents, but I’d simply say that I try lots of things and seek help from experts when exploring something new. Whatever your interest, there’s a world of people out there who know more than you… and that knowledge can make a big difference and save you a lot of time playing trial and error.
“What one person can do, another can do.” Sometimes asking how they did it makes all the difference.
7. Your mind isn’t the boss of your body
For a long time I believed that my mind was “Me” and my body was a crude machine… one that would fall apart without my constant attention and maintenance. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies spend billions to sell us on the image of our bodies as broken appliances in perpetual need of service.
We thus feel obligated to manage our bodies like bosses… distrusting nature and fearing some flaw will get us if we ever let our guard down. With our minds and bodies split in this way we become chauffeurs steering bumbling bags of meat… unaware of the wisdom and power our bodies…. we ourselves… possess.
One path to reuniting body and mind is yoga. When you try to bring about your body’s full strength and balance, you’ll quickly realize that your body knows what it is doing far better than your mind can comprehend.
There is wisdom in our bodies far deeper than our thoughts about it. The wisdom that balances us when we stand on one leg is the same wisdom that allowed our baby selves to breathe, eat, sleep, crawl, smile and grow… long before our minds had developed thoughts to think about it. More often than not, our thoughts interfere with our body’s functioning, bringing tension and second-guessing what happens naturally.
From this perspective, we are not separate from our bodies. Our bodies are not separate from [insert your word for “the whole enchilada”]. The power that brought us into being did not do so because it needed a manager. Talk to your doctor about Faith’n-All™*
*Side effects may include anxiety loss, chronic confidence and rapid-onset enjoyment. Children should not take Faith’n-All™ (it occurs in them naturally.)
the author
8. You can’t take the fire with you, just enjoy the heat
A yoga class is an opportunity to leave your usual world behind and enter a bigger body and mind. I am often astounded at the clarity I find, the moments of presence I have and the flood of beautiful ideas and connections that can come while lying on the mat between poses.
But, like all “heightened states of consciousness,” when it’s over you transition back to your normal self and experience. Those powerful feelings of clarity and presence can fade with the first phone call bringing news from “the real world”, and I will often leave a class running to grab a notebook – only to find that I no longer hold command over the beautiful web of connections that was so clear only moments ago.
This may sound unfortunate, but there is a beautiful truth hiding here. Life is a spectrum of experience from dizzying joy to crippling sorrow and everything in between. But just as you can’t take a log from a fire without it going out or turning to ash, you can’t take an experience out of its moment and keep it burning indefinitely.
This can be profoundly liberating: knowing you can’t grab hold of a moment and take it with you means you can relax when you’re experiencing life’s great joys. There’s no way to keep it, it’s not your job to try. Just let everything be in its place and enjoy the heat when you can.
9. If you come expecting 10, you’ll get 9
Many people come to yoga and similar activities because they expect some benefit. Just by writing this article I’m perpetuating the fallacy that there is something to be gained by doing yoga. The fact is, I don’t do yoga because I expect to benefit. I do yoga because I enjoy doing yoga. All of these insights are secondary to the simple joy of uncomplicating a few hours of my day in a sweaty room with girls in yoga pants.
When we come to any experience with expectations, we are critical of what we get out of it and if we’re “doing it right.” If you come to a yoga mat expecting to find peace and clarity, you will be disappointed. If you come to a yoga mat, or anywhere else, without expectations… you may just have a moment of clarity. (But don’t quote me on that).
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This article is dedicated to Libby Lyons, whose knowledge and skillful teaching has led me to more surprises than I ever thought possible.
Cover Photo is of Libby Lyons, owner of Elan Yoga Fitness in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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