I love new beginnings, so I’m a big fan of starting a new year. I love the chance to pause and reflect on how I want to grow in the upcoming year, what priorities I want to bring forward, and to seek new inspiration to drive my decision-making.
I love a clean new calendar.
This open, reflective, ready state is consistent with the philosophy of yoga and our instruction to maintain a beginner’s mind. A lesson of yoga is to learn to look at every day as we look at New Year’s day; every minute as a New Year’s minute; new, fresh, open, all possibility and free of judgments.
Think of the brand-new year – an open calendar, a blank sheet, pure potential. That’s how each minute, really each moment, is to be lived. Because we are so influenced by our habits of mind, by the fleeting desires of our senses, and by the stories we create from our extremely limited perspective, every judgment, decision, and plan we make instantly binds us to our ignorance – to that which limits us. This is so frustrating and frustratingly true. We have learned to navigate the world by creating judgments and a path through them, so we bring all our baggage with us into every action, every interaction.
There’s that joke that goes, “Lord, I’ve been good so far today. I haven’t gotten angry at anyone, or lied, or shirked any responsibility, or participated in any drama, or engaged in any harmful behavior. But Lord, I’m about to get out of bed, have breakfast, and go out into the world and I’m going to need a lot of help to keep this good behavior going.” This is self-awareness.
Our patterned thoughts and behavior affect all of our interactions, even our decisions and plans about actions and interactions, AND[1] we still must plan and act. We can’t avoid it without causing harm and we can’t act without causing harm, if just the harm of deepening the groove of our habits of mind, our self-limiting patterns of thought. Every day will get written on, just like our calendars will.
For some people, this makes sense and is kind of funny. Yes, it’s a conundrum. You just can’t win, haha, good thing I do yoga!
For others, this kind of catch-22 thinking leads to something like real anxiety, perhaps echoes of growing up in a very critical household. Being told you can’t do anything right by a lovely authority like yoga philosophy can be quite a blow, since we all come to yoga to heal. For what it’s worth, by the same token, you can’t really do anything wrong, either. Is that better or worse? I think that might sound worse to folks who are already unsettled. I think it’s helpful to know that if you have a mean inner critic, that’s one of the tendencies to interrupt and transform. The priority is healing from harm and learning to allow yourself to make mistakes for the sake of growth and progress. Follow the path that quiets your harsh inner critic and you will be in better shape in many ways.
Prashant Iyengar, the son of BKS Iyengar, gave a wonderful teaching on this. He said we have to act based on our best understanding today. And we have to pay close attention to the effects of our actions, so we learn from what we do. That way, tomorrow we will have more knowledge and sensitivity, and we will realize that we missed something the day before, and that process will continue each day. He said yoga is a process of disillusionment – freeing ourselves from illusion.
The big illusion from which we free ourselves by the practice of yoga is that of separation. We are not separate. We are part of and connected with everyone and everything. We have our place in the great scheme of life; we matter. We matter, not because we are the protagonist, as our ego would like us to believe, but because we are truly interconnected with all of everything and we affect it all with our actions.
So how do we approach each day, each minute as New Year’s day and minute when we have to act and our actions are necessarily influenced by our habits, patterns, limitations and in fact, the actions we take tend to reinforce those tendencies so we get more stuck in the conundrum?
The answer, of course, is yoga. Think of tadasana, mountain pose – upright standing. If you work hard to stand up taller, you get tense and your breath doesn’t move as well. So act; stretch yourself up, and then release tension as much as possible while losing as little of your gained height as possible and repeat. That tension that comes when we make the effort to stand up tall is our reminder that we are also bringing our tendencies and limitations to all situations. The release of tension is our way to move into a more open and ready state. When we release tension, we see how much tension was produced. We become more familiar with our tendencies and more sensitive to our physical and mental state. This stretching up and then noticing and releasing tension is a physical practice that works on our bodies, our nervous systems, our emotions, and our minds. It creates a new pattern.
Similarly, anytime we find ourselves in a challenging situation, we can notice our bodies in contact with the ground and the movement of our breath. This gives us a nervous-system reset. This may remind us to pause, ask a question, or reframe the situation so we can be more skillful. We can work our way to a more consistently ready and open state by practicing being open and ready and taking what comes as an opportunity to practice, observe, and learn.
Happy New Year! I wish you happiness, freedom from suffering, progress on your path, and serenity in 2023 and beyond!
[1] See what I did there? My last newsletter featured an article about using “and” instead of “but.” This is a great example! Both conditions are true and we can’t choose one or the other. Find the article on my blog if you are interested