This has been on my mind a lot lately, probably because so many things are changing and its starting to feel like your feet are coming out from under you to keep up, sound familiar?
So when you feel that pressure, you're drawn to do the thing that you're doing, let's say your asana practice (maybe since in the Ashtanga method that's a daily hurdle), that next posture is coming up, you know you don't love it, but you know that when you're finished with it it feels better and it feels like you've moved past something, or through something. For me this used to be standing up, I'd seemingly been able to drop back more easily than I thought I would, even though there was that fear of plonking down onto your head I could still do it, but the standing up comes first. My first trip to Mysore Sharath taught me the full primary series after 6 weeks then started me on standing up and dropping back the 7th week, then came the end of my time there and I had a meeting with him and he sent me home with that as my "homework," the second trip I had different homework, now looms my third trip where the homework from my first trip is finally dare I use the word easy? No, easier, yes, it is easier. I can now stand up and drop back with less trepidation than ever before and lately its almost been as if its easy. Now, my homework from last trip I won't discuss, its still not easy, I am getting closer to it, but its not easy.
So when those standing up and dropping back thingees were coming up I'd feel it, it was a like I was under pressure and when I got there I'd have built it up to be much more than it should've been. That pressure, and the fact that there is less of it now, some days even none, is the transmutation of that energy into a new thing. I like to say, "yes, in this practice we are trying to kill you. (long pause) Kill those little parts of your psyche that are no longer serving you to be exact, so you are in a cocoon right now waiting to break through that tough shell to emerge as a butterfly." So, it may be true that in this practice there are many levels of transformation, or layers to be shed, or veils to be lifted, but each time it feels like that, transforming into a new way of thinking or being.
Well, that pressure you feel, which can often feel like a completely real physical pressure, is the neural synopses pulling away from one another. Now you may read that and say what the fuck?!? But when we get in a pattern, or a habit of thought or of doing things a certain way it gets comfortable and when comfortable there is no transformation happening, yes I said that. So when you're trying to change a habit, either of thought or of physical action, those synopses in the brain that are used to firing together, trading electrical impulses that help keep you exactly where you are, and you introduce a new way of doing something or of thinking, they start to have to pull away from one another, to learn to fire in a new pattern with a different set of synopses and many will say "its making my head hurt." Well, yes, it literally is making your head hurt, that pulling away can also feel like pressure. Not pressure in a specific place, but just pressure, like stress, like you're on the verge of changing and it's easier to go back to the old way but you're drawn to the new way so you want to keep moving forward and its too much! AAaaaahhhhh!!!
LOL
This is the time when people often stop their yoga practice, they can't take it, they don't want any more change to come and are ready to just relax and be comfortable for a while. Well, this is exactly the time to not give up and to push forward, now I don't mean push as in physically because that will result in injury, and learning from an injury is a whole other topic of conversation, but pushing past the boundaries of your limited thinking. Stopping thinking in scarcity or lack, start thinking in abundance and fertility. But that's hard, isn't it? Yes, but if you do it and once the pressure lifts you are on the other side of it and it feels like ease, like feeling better, like flow and allowing yourself to go with the flow. And that's not to say there won't be new obstacles to your thought processes in the future but once you've made it through one transformation, the next one you may be a bit less apprehensive to tackle.
Think of it this way, a diamond and coal are essentially the same in chemical properties right? But the diamond is viewed as the most precious of stones used in jewelry, especially for a wedding band, so a big symbol, but it's also used to channel light into a laser beam, in fact its the only stone hard enough and strong enough internally to be used this way, all the others are inferior. So what's the different between it and coal? I huge amount of pressure is applied, yes pressure. The earth squeezes the hell out of the carbon compound until it pressurizes, its atoms actually come closer together and turn it into this harder than rock substance.
So if you think of yourself in these terms, would you rather be a piece of coal, or a diamond?
The transformation of yourself into a better version of yourself is always a noble goal and something I think we should all be being trained to do in life, not just in yoga practice, but to create that state of being known as yoga (union).
So if you're feeling pressure, lean into it, think of the outcome. Don't run away from it, then you'll just be the same person and will still draw more of that same situation to yourself until you actually do it. A teacher said to me when I first started this trip to becoming a more conscious being, "at first you'll get a tap on the shoulder, then when that goes unattended you'll get both shoulders grabbed and a good shake given to you, then when you don't respond to that you'll trip in the street and hit your head on the concrete, then when you still don't notice or do anything about it maybe you'll have a serious car wreck... Now this may sound extreme, but we're meant to grow, to expand and to transform ourselves. We are all caterpillars waiting to become butterflies and the universe won't stop knocking on your door until you answer it. Would you rather answer that tap on the shoulder? or once you're lying in the hospital recovering from that huge car accident where you broke some limbs, that's up to you, but me I feel every tap these days and say, oh what's that about?"
I love that, and its stayed with me all these almost 16 years I've been practicing and the many more years that I was wondering about the deeper things in life before finally taking a step toward them instead of away from them.
