Beyond duality

Vitarkabādhane pratikpakṣabhāvanam*

Yoga Sutra 2:33

Translations:

When the mind is disturbed by passions one should practise pondering over their opposites.

Swami Satyananda Saraswati

In order to exclude from the mind questionable things, the mental calling up of those things that are opposite is efficacious for their removal.

William Q. Judge

When distracted by wayward or perverted rationalization, suitable counter measures should be adopted to keep away or remove such obstacles, especially by the contemplation of the other point of view.

Swami Venkatesananda

When negative feelings restrict us, the opposite should be cultivated.

Alistair Shearer

When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of. This is pratipaksha bhavana.

Swami Satchidananada

Cultivating of opposites

The phenomenal world is a world of opposites: Hot/cold, big/little, smart/stupid, black/white, me/you. It is a world of dualistic opposites. It has to be so. Whatever we are experiencing now, the opposite is also here, or at the very least, waiting in the wings. Our thinking is in opposites, our feeling and emoting is in opposites. 

Yoga Sutra 2:33 recognises that we become embroiled in disturbing cognitions and feelings and counsels the cultivation of the opposite. You might ask, if the opposite can always be here too, why do I get caught up in the most uncomfortable of the pair, in distress instead of in comfort? 

This has to do with the way our brain has evolved to keep us safe.  We have a negative bias.  Better that we mistake a stick for a snake than a snake for a stick. What happens though is that we get a bit trapped in the negativity and begin to  suffer.  We believe it, so we suffer.

In this age of the wonders of imaging the brain scientists have now shown how cultivating gratitude for example can change the very structures of the brain, growing the hippocampus and shrinking the amygdala. Cultivation of gratitutde is an example of cultivating the opposite.  When doom and gloom is all around, practice noticing what there is to be grateful for.

Welcoming opposites

The practice becomes even more powerful when we also practice welcoming both sides of the pair, not rejecting that discomforting side, not clinging on to that more comfortable side, but being open to them both.

In the practice of iRest® yoga nidra meditation we do this, moving between the two sides of the pair, welcoming both, whether it is a feeling in the body, such as hot/cold, an emotion and its feeling in the body, such as sad/happy, or a thought or belief, such as I am stupid/I am smart. We always notice how they feel in the body and go between those feelings, not just summoning them as a thought.  What does it feel like to believe I am stupid? What does it feel like to believe I am smart?

Both together

It is when we reach the point where we hold them both together that the really big power moment comes. It is not a merging, but both here together, both opposites at the same time. 

Wow! The resolution opens up to a state that is beyond opposites.  This is a sense of open, welcoming, Presence that is full of equanimity. How so?

Moving beyond duality to the simple way things are

This embodied form incudes all the thoughts, emotions, and every perception that we have, including the me thought. This embodied form is constrained by thought into believing in separation, a me and a you. It is in this state that the opposites arise.

The mind of thoughts is so powerful, and we are so habituated to its illusions, that we need a few tricks if we are to see beyond it and experience another Reality. And one of those little tricks is this work in opposites. When we hold these two opposite constructs of the mind at the same time, we may be able to "see" beyond them to the simple awaring Presence that everything is. 

Everything is. It is not was or will be, it is. 


* vitarka - doubt, discussion, discursive thoughts, passions
   badhane - disturbance, harrassment, torment
   pratipaksha - the opposite
   bhavanam - should be thought of, pondered, state of mind

Reset your defaults

There were some intensely emotional moments last week when I heard the news that loved ones were involved in a serious car accident. There were moments when I was caught up in "how did they survive"! There is horror and trauma in that thought,  it might so easily have been a different story. But it wasn't. I have been watching and welcoming  all the emotions that the events have unleashed, and the thoughts that accompany them. There truly is nothing that is not a messenger with a valuable message to deliver.

Immediately upon hearing the news I recognised feelings of anxiety and distress in my body and then the presence of immense gratitude.

Yes, along with tumultuous other feelings there is gratitude - has to be, my loved ones did survive, and that is a miracle. Concern for them remains, there are injuries to body and spirit to be navigated, but oh so much gratitude.

I am also experiencing deep gratitude for the guidance of my teachers who have shown me the way to welcome my feelings, emotions and thoughts, all as sensations in the body, and the lessons that become available through lived experience of the deep wisdom of the teachings.

This week I have been doing the practices and proving them to myself. I don't pretend to be a saint and it is not always so easy to live the teachings, my feathers are often ruffled. I am ordinary like that - we all are. But I am glad I have been doing my yoga practices daily and that they can step up and help me to navigate difficult times.

What yoga practices are they that have been so useful?

Well it has not had a lot to do with a well executed, nicely aligned trikonasana, although I still advocate asana practice to keep the body healthy, and a lovely asana practice can also be a moving meditation. However in my experience, love it though I do, yogasana practice alone is not what builds resilience in the face of what life throws at me.

I am most grateful (there's that word again) for the practices of iRest®.  Of all the yoga sadhana (practices) I have learnt in 40 odd years of exploration in yoga and meditation, iRest has provided me with the tools that work, for me, working in meditation daily and then taking the same practices into daily life where we really meet "stuff". And my tumultuous week has focused my understanding of how well it works.

The brain's default positions and how to change them 

The default position of the mind is to wander all over the place, to ruminate. This is the factory default if you like, and it serves a purpose. The mind in Default Mode Network is scanning the internal environment and in so doing may make new connections, make plans, analyse events and so on. That can be useful, until it takes over and gets us into an overthinking loop.

Another default position is our Negative bias. We are preset to see the worst, just like the A. A. Milne character Eeyore. Again this is protective. Better to get out of the way of a stick thinking it to be a snake than to get bitten by a snake you saw as a stick.

You can see where this leads us.  When the Default Network and Negative Bias get going together we have discursive negative thoughts, and everything is doom and gloom, just like poor Eeyore!

"The Default Network and Negative bias together lead to discursive negative thoughts ... but you can change the default settings."


Just as on your computer you can change default settings to something that will serve you better, it is possible to change your mental defaults as well.

Meditation techniques often get us out of this loop by focusing the mind, which moves us into another network called the Attention Network (sometimes called "Task Positive Network"). In the Attention Mode we can focus and learn. It is possible to stay in Attention Network for a sustained period of time, such as when performing a creative task that becomes all consuming and we completely lose track of time and whatever other responsibilities we may have. It is not possible to be in the Attention Network and the Default Mode simultaneously. "Best to stay busy" is often a response to difficult times, but all too often we can turn off the Discursive default mode during the day by staying busy, but the moment we stop being busy and try to sleep it rushes back online.

Meditation techniques that use points of focus, such as breath awareness, mandala visualisation, chanting, or that set tasks like rotating awareness through points in the body, are switching on the Attention Network. And studies do show that the more we switch on the Attention Network, the less discursive is the Default Network and the more we are able to concentrate. 

In iRest we employ such techniques for example when we sense the body and attend to the breath. 

But it is not a complete reset of the defaults.

Resetting the defaults - the alternative

Research has shown that if we utilise meditations on the feelings of the heart, loving kindness, compassion, gratitude as examples, we begin to reset the Negative bias. I have long had a daily practice of gratitude which I often share in class - think of just three things today that you could be grateful for. There is always something to be grateful for. Build this practice into everyday life and we literally change our brain, taking a more positive outlook.

And yes, we can also change our default network away from the discursive Default Mode Network.

There is another network which we can call the Present Centered Network. We learn to step into this network in our iRest practice, for example when we work with opposites. We utilise the Attention Network first. Try this:

Sense the left hand. Feel it fully. Let go of visualising it and just feel the left hand.

Shift to the right hand. Feel it fully, without visualising, just feel the right hand.

Go backwards and forwards between hands, attending to sensing just that one hand while you are there, and then to just the other.

When the time is right sense both hands at the same time.

While sensing one hand or the other we are utilising the Attention Network, but the moment we sense both at the same time we open into Present Centeredness. With consistent practice in various situations as we encounter in a regular iRest Yoga Nidra practice (by regular I mean daily), Present Centered becomes our new default that we can carry into everyday living, it becomes our Default Present Centered Network.

I offer gratitude to those who gave me reminders this week as I drifted back into the old Default Mode and Negative bias - you may not have even known that you were reminding me but at various times the messages came and helped me to keep finding my way back to the Present centered. 

My deepest gratitude I offer to my teachers, especially to Richard Miller who took the ancient teachings and tweaked them for our modern lives, infusing them with his knowledge of psychology that joins in him with an amazing and deep knowledge of yoga traditions. And others who have also learnt from him and who have helped along the way to illuminate my path, including Anne Douglas, Fuyuko Toyota, Jennifer Carbanero, Kirsten Guest, Molly Birkholm, Ford Peck and Stephanie Lopez.

Learn iRest Yoga Nidra with me - find the next 6 week course.

Welcoming change

Welcoming is a quality of our True Nature. Welcoming is openness, it is loving and compassionate. Welcoming does not hold onto anything nor does it reject anything. It simply welcomes everything just as it is.

Welcoming is Presence, the act of being present to every moment just as it is.

When we welcome whatever is present we find that we are no longer held in the thrall of anything that is arising. Whatever is present is welcomed just for being here now. There is no need to tense against a future that may never arrive.  There is no need to hold onto whatever has been in the past.

We are often challenged by change and yet we also know that change is always happening. Good times come and go and bad times come and also go. Body sensations are always changing. Our emotions are always changing. Our thoughts are always changing.

When we are able to really practice welcoming we can welcome change without all the stress as we recognise it to be the way the world of matter works. In as much as we are embodied, things will be changing. Our bodies are changing from the moment we are conceived and continue to change after we have died!

In welcoming, in as much as it is a quality of our True Nature and therefore brings us home to our True Nature, we find that which is unchanging. Our True Nature is not the body, nor the emotions, nor the thoughts.  It is not the external circumstances. All of these are in constant change.

Welcoming helps us to discover that which is unchanging and unbound by the temporal and changing circumstances.

Next week I am looking forward to going on a retreat to sit with my teacher, Richard Miller, who has really helped me to recognise the truth of these teachings. On retreat we give ourselves the opportunity to immerse and practise being welcoming and finding our way back to this unchanging Presence that is our True Nature.

In June I am also looking forward to sharing the same with you. Please join me on retreat, and Come Home to Being. June Long Weekend.

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Stillness and contentment

One day my friend and colleague, Cherise, loaned me a little blue book, the Art of Stillness, by Picot Iyer. "You'll like it", she said. I did.

Being still I catch the scent of gum blossoms.
Photo credit: Vittala K Shettigara

As I read it, and sat with it, I reflected how stillness is something really precious to me, the greatest treasure being when I gain an ongoing sense of stillness, no matter what my activity or what is happening to me or around me.

I practise opening to permanent Stillness. Slowly it is coming.

To write a column like this I need to find stillness so that what wishes to be expressed can make itself heard. So today I have paused, and sat, asking it to come forth. Iyer's thoughts expressed in that little blue book are with me. Stillness is here.

And I recognise what else is here, things that arise through the gateways of my senses. Green tea on the palate. The tinkle of the courtyard fountain. The mid afternoon light a glare through the blinds. The scent of gum-tree blossoms floating in through the open windows.

The loud sounds of excavations across the road as an empty block of land is readied for construction are not disturbing me, they are just there.

As I progressed through Iyer's book he talked a lot about monks going off and spending years in isolation in monasteries and doing nothing. But that is not the life that is available to most of us. Yet I know that those of us who live in the world are not doomed to be caught up in all its motion.

I too love to stop and be quiet. In a few weeks time in early April I will be spending a week in silence sitting with my teacher on retreat. And in June I am offering my students a retreat, partially silent, for three days. Retreat gives us the opportunity to immerse and heighten our sensitivity to the Stillness that is always there. Retreat helps us to carry that flavour of stillness with us back into the whirring activity of everyday life and to continue to experience it there as well.

Iyer also reaches that point in the little blue book, eventually.

"The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world."

Stillness is a quality of  Being Awareness, a vastness that through practice we come to recognise is who we are, as much as we are the body and personality we inhabit or the thoughts and emotions that we experience.

Contentment is also a key component of stillness. When we can be at peace just with what is here, recognising that everything is arising and subsiding in and from a vast stillness that is Awareness, contentment is also present.

Contentment is the second of the internal practices, or niyamas, described by Sage Patnajali as the second limb of yoga. Yoga Sutra II.42 reads"From contentment there flows the most excellent happiness and delight." (Translation Swami Venkatesananda).

When we are not in connection with Stillness, Contentment is difficult to attain. Yet when we begin to practice the mindfulness that leads to Stillness, Contentment also arises. Discontent is a restlessness of mind, body and spirit. As the restlessness is stilled, through our practices of mindfulness, body and breath sensing in movement and in still and silent practices such as meditation and yoga nidra, so too the discontent, and we are content with things just as they are.