I discovered something recently, and while technically it’s not something I didn’t know, it is something that I realized in the KNOW sense of the word (see previous post to make sense of this). As is so often the case, it was the culmination of a long string of small, unrelated ponderings that ignited the fuse of OOOOooooh! The detonator happened to be an article by my meditation teacher, Sally Kempton, about commitment.
Here’s a snippet:
“That’s both the good news and the bad news about commitment. The commitments you make define you. They make you who you are. Which means that they’re not to be taken lightly.”
There is a charge of energy and power that comes from stepping fulling into a task, a practice, a challenge, or relationship. That means no holding back, which admittedly is very scary and even vulnerable, but entirely worth it. If a yoga practice is all about the work then it only makes perfect sense that the more fully you step up to the work, the more committed you are, the richer your discoveries will be. Basically, you can hang back close to shore and get pushed around by every little wave and eddy, OR you can put your whole self into it and swim out to deep water where you can’t necessarily see the bottom, but where you can find a measure of stillness as you get closer to the next shore.
I think it pays off to put your whole self into what you’re doing because the Law of Attraction comes into play and offers you a chance of manifesting (or “attracting”) what you are seeking. So often we hold back in subtle ways and end up attracting what we didn’t want. Unless we truly commit, we don’t get into the deep water, the unknown. We miss out on learning how to hear ourselves, to trust our own inner-guidance, to do the work, and to let go of the results. The kicker is the work, the commitment to the work, particularly when things get rough. And don’t things always get rough at some point?
That is where another event in the string of ponderings comes in. This particular thread of thought emerged out of a physical alignment principle. This alignment principle is about power and has everything to do with your tailbone and abdominal muscles. In Anusara, they call it “outer spiral” but you can think of it as a plugging in (or even a zipping up) of the lower abdominals. This physical principle never fails to remind me of my habit of short circuiting my power. When I work with this action of plugging in my core, it immediately changes my state of mind. A few weekends back, I got to study with one of my favorite yoga teachers, Christina Sell, and yes, we did a lot of core work that weekend. However, she began the weekend with a concise phrase that she uses when describing the benefits of a yoga practice:
“We shape shift to state shift.”
Basically, we move our bodies to shift our frame of mind. Wherever you are when things are rough and your commitment is waning, state shift. You can actually do this with your breath (always available), with meditation, or with the physical practice of moving the body in asana work. For more dramatic results, combine all three. By using the action of plugging into the core, you can actually shift your frame of mind to an empowered place. Yes, everyone alive experiences challenges and obstacles. However, in my experience there is a very big difference in perceiving difficulties from an empowered frame of mind versus being shoved around by them. When I say “empowered” I mean remembering that you are able to hear yourself, trust yourself, and rely on yourself- that you are capable of handling what is in front of you. To my mind, power and commitment go hand in hand.
That’s what’s been blowing my hair back lately- the dynamic combination of power (getting back to power when it feels lost) and commitment as the bedrock of a yoga practice. Practice often because it offers you a simple and effective way to reconnect with your own self-efficacy. That’s a pretty powerful vantage point. Practice often because you’re committed to your well-being
. That’s self-love.
