Re-charging well-being

Within you is an unchanging deep well of well-being. We call it your Inner

Beat a well worn path to your inner feelings of well-being

Resource. It is innate and it is natures gift to us to help us be resilient no matter what happens in life.

Just as important to our survival is our negativity bias.

This seems contradictory doesn't it? It is a paradox.

The negativity bias keeps us safe. If we hear a bump in the night the negativity bias would have us immediately think that danger lurks so we can become alert and ready to flee, freeze or defend, whatever the best option is in the moment. It is a deep instinct. It comes on stream before the logical powers of our thinking mind can kick in, deducing that it is windy outside and that darned tree branch just banged against the gutter again and to make yet another mental note to prune it before the next windy night!

The inner resource may be there all the while. The inner resource can hold us calm to allow the thinking mind to do its deducing. The inner resource can keep us calm us while we get back to sleep.

Why is it then that we have so often lost touch with the inner resource of well-being?

The detritus of life has buried it. This can especially happen if it is not regularly recharged, if there has been a string of misfortunes or challenges, or a major traumatic event. But even the constant stresses of ordinary modern life, feeling time poor, job insecurity, the bills coming in, more and more until we are in a state of overwhelm, and the inner resource can become buried.

So it is an important practice for life that we regularly recharge our inner resource. You can do this in outer ways, by taking some action that helps you feel calm and at ease. Maybe one of these is similar to your outer practices of recharging your inner resource:

• a walk on the beach
• a long deep warm bath by candlelight with soft music playing
• a holiday in cabin away from modern technology with a good book
• immersing in a novel
• losing track of time painting a picture
• going on retreat
• making music with friends.

Your favourite outer practices of recharge can also help you to find that inner place of well-being and calm. Think about that thing you do to recharge as if you are imagining it happening right now. As you do let all your senses come into play. Tastes, sounds, smells, the light, what you see, and tactile sensations. Are you alone or have you brought along a favourite person or people, or animal?

Now turn attention to the feelings of well-being that are evoked. More and more let your attention dwell in the feelings in your body of being at ease, secure, calm, the feelings of well-being. Notice as much about these feelings in the body as you can, as you allow the images to recede.

In this way you can make an inner practice of recharge. This can be done at any time and the more you do it the more clear the path to it will become. Wake up and practice it. Practice it while having lunch. On the bus. At the traffic lights. While waiting for sleep.

The more often you visit it the more clear the pathway to it becomes and the shorter the pathway to it becomes until it is simply turning attention towards it and it is there, always.

Nurturing Inner Wellbeing

The Scream - Edvard Munch

I always knew that yoga was good for me.  On the mat I felt better, more at peace, more centered. Something was calling me, a yearning if you like, and on the mat I had glimpses of that for which I yearned.

But in between times I could still find myself screaming like a banshee, reacting to the vicissitudes of life. Oh, I might have been a lot worse without the time on the mat, but why oh why could I not maintain that equanimity in between times?

So the question arose: What did I do on the mat that was not happening in everyday life? Of those elements, what could I take into everyday life?

There are many elements. Here are a few lessons from the mat that can be simply applied in everyday life. Let me know if they work for you.

1. Somatic experience
On the mat during the practice of hatha yoga we are paying close attention to the felt sense of the body. In everyday life I discovered I was no longer paying attention. In meditation the mind also settles much faster if we begin to explore somatic experience. Try it now. Close your eyes and just start to feel the body, the sensations of the body. Start in one corner, perhaps in the mouth, perhaps in the feet, and begin to explore the sensation of your body. Then after spending some time in this exploration of sensation of the body, observe what has happened to thought.

More recently, and through my explorations of iRest^® Yoga Nidra, I have also started to recognise that all emotions, thoughts beliefs, in fact almost everything that comprises this personality that was sometimes a screaming banshee, all of it is a somatic sensation. This has been a break through recognition. By bringing somatic awareness into everyday life I can feel as sensation all the things that make me react, before I react. Sometimes I choose to let that move through and be expressed, but only if it is not distructive. Early warning systems, great to have on your side.

2. Attention to the breath
Breathing in raise your arms, breathing out lower and fold your body into a deep forward bend.... on the mat my teachers were always drawing my attention to the flow of my breath and encouraging me to flow with the breath in movement. And lying in savasana, or sitting in meditation, again, follow the breath, notice the breath.

I assure you, when screaming like a banshee I was not paying attention to the breath.

When my kids were young I made my own discovery, that when the kids were going crazy and I was going crazy, all I had to do was to remember to sing. We would all calm down. Of course! Singing requires attention to the breath.

Slowly over years of practice, and again further nurtured through Yoga Nidra, my perpetual awareness of the breath has increased, and heh presto, it too is an early warning system. If anxiety arises it always drives the breath upwards, away from the belly and into the chest. Anxiety always subsides if you can bring the breath down into the belly. Brilliant! Another tool for equanimity.

3. Intention
I remember my teachers inviting us to formulate our intention for our practice (often called "sankalpa" in yoga), and to repeat it several times as a simple affirmation. Yearning to be at peace, my affirmation quickly settled to be two words "Still Centre".

Often on the mat I would be totally in the still centre.

Do you think I was remembering those words when having an emotional breakdown?

Once.

Sobbing in bed, unable to sleep, for some reason it arose, and I used it as a mantra, over and over, and I slept and awoke refreshed.

Gradually I began to realise that there is enormous power in our self talk, and if that talk is a constant put down then we will believe that and our way of dealing with life will reflect that.

I began to practise positive affirmations.  But have you eve done that thing where you repeat an positive affirmation, and there is a voice in your head contradicts it?

When that happens, notice how it feels (coming back to somatic awareness), and then try on the positive affirmation, and ask yourself, if this were true right now, what would that feel like.

Intention can be in the form of a resolve for whatever you are doing, this yoga practice, this task, this day. But there is another intention which is more like my still centre mantra, which is an expression of that yearning that keeps you coming back to the mat in any case. When you have identified that one it will be so harmonious that the mind will not undermine it.  It is true, and it is pure and it is an expression of that yearning, which is, for who you truly are.

4. Welcoming
Honestly, I did not get this until I began to really seriously delve into iRest Yoga Nidra. Welcoming uncomfortable sensations did not appeal to me. However it is a wonderful truth worth discovering for yourself. If you stop regarding the sensations and emotions that arise as either good or bad, but as signposts that could point you either towards greater integration or away from a state of grace, depending on what you do when they arise, and begin to welcome them as signposts to grace, their power starts to drop away.

5. Inner wellbeing
So we come to cultivating inner wellbeing. From a place of inner wellbeing, welcoming becomes easier. When on the mat, in movement practice, in meditation, in Yoga Nidra, we practise contacting, truly feeling, inner wellbeing, and the more we practise, the more we can also call upon it in daily life.

If you are interested to know more about these practises, and bringing your yoga high into daily life, keep exploring yoga with a good teacher. At Yoga Spirit Studios you will find classes to explore wellbeing in movement, in meditation and in iRest Yoga Nidra. Come home to your True Self, which is equanimity itself.

Meeting emotions in your practice

This article was first published in the Yoga Spirit Studios monthly e-letter "On the Mat"

"Yoga is meant to make you feel good, right? So how come I can't stop sobbing into my mat today? I don't even know why, there is no reason for this sadness."

If this has ever been you, take heart, you are not alone.

Ninety-nine times out of one hundred we get on the mat, enjoy some stretching and meditation, and afterwards feel relaxed and happy. But once in awhile something else happens. There may be unexplained tears, agitation, anxiety or perhaps even anger. Sometimes the effect emerges later, in vivid dreams, or the urge to cry while waiting for the traffic lights to change.

Coming into the body
Yoga is a somatic practice. This means that it takes us into deep mindfulness of our body. This is true across the range of yoga practices, whether you are practicing asana, or mindfulness meditation or breath awareness. We quieten, listen and sense into everything that is here, and the medium for this experiencing is our senses, the felt sense of the body and how it manifests as our inner and outer environments.

Emotions are not concepts. Emotions are felt senses in our body.  So it is no wonder that as we start to sensitize ourselves to somatic awareness, we will encounter emotions.

Samskaras - the deposits of the past

In Indian and yoga philosophy we understand that past actions, desires and experiences create impressions on the mind/body that are stored and affect future actions and ways of responding to future situations. These are called samskaras.

The samskaras form a lens through which we process all experience. This can be useful, but only up to a point. Just as a stored memory of pain associated with hot  informs us not to touch things that are hot again, so deeply and unconsciously stored samskaras inform our responses to the world and in so doing they may be protective.

But there are limitations. As we become more Conscious, as we develop our awareness and move ourselves through our practice towards  body/mind/spirit integration, the lens of the samskaras are clouding our true experience. 

Then our practice itself will begin to invite a shedding of the samskaras.

Truly meeting ourselves

Meeting ourselves in sensation, we will meet all of the old stored emotions associated with a lifetime of accumulated experience. All the things we have tried to push away, being unwilling to face them, are stored up in these samskaras, or in other words as buried emotion.  They may also be manifesting as muscle tensions, pain, psychological disturbance or illness.

When we start to turn the light of our yoga practice on what is really here, it is necessary to prepare ourselves to welcome the emotions that arise from time to time.

Let well-being support you

It is possible to welcome the emotions that arise if we ground ourselves in a sense of well-being and allow it to support us. In iRest® Yoga Nidra we call this the Inner Resource. 

Remember a time and place when everything was safe and secure, all was well with the world. If you cannot find such a memory, construct it with your imagination. Use all of your senses to help to build this place of security in your mind. Notice how the sense of safety and security feels in your body.

Practice building this Inner Resource often and be aware of the felt sense of well-being in your body. The more you practice it the faster you will be able to locate this sense of well-being in your body.  You may even be able to find it without going through the pathway of memory and image. Get to know it and reassure yourself that it is always there for you.

Next time the difficult emotions arise, can you be an openness of welcoming , allowing it to unfold in its own amazing beauty, allowing yourself to simultaneously be supported by your Inner Resource.

Being able to meet and greet the emotions that emerge on the mat, without pushing them away or being fearful of them, soon you will find they lose their power over you, and you have let go of that samskara and come a little closer to your true self.