Breathing through the “crazy New York life”

New York City - if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, right? Those of us who dare to venture into the big city come willing to do whatever it takes. We work 7 jobs, with 40-hour days, neurotically attached to our iPhone/Blackberry/e-mail/etc for any “opportunity” to bend over backwards for someone else.

Over time, in theory we “succeed.” Our reward? More emails, more meetings, more responsibilities pulling us in 45 different directions. Thus we must work faster, try harder, budget better. But damn it, we’re “making it” in New York! Hooray!

This crazy New York lifestyle is all too familiar - its the security blanket we love to hate. Many of us have no idea how to exist without the constant flow of adrenaline pushing us to keep our head juuuuust above water. Lets be honest, theres always something new and shiny I’m sure I can fit into my to-do list…

A former gym-junkie, with an extreme type-A personality, I’m the first to admit that I hated yoga the first 5 times I tried it. I mean, seriously people, working out involves running, jumping, lifting, spinning, and every other action I can perform to exert every last ounce of energy I have left in my body. Sitting still is not only uncomfortable, it wastes time I could be doing something productive. I was all to happy to leave that “yoga-shit” to the hippies in California.

Given the prevalence of yoga mats being toted around the city though, it was only a matter of time before I gave it another shot. Through one of those cheap online deals, I fell into a studio that actually made sweat (and no, not because it was hot yoga). Ok, I’ll come back…but only because you promised me a yoga butt.

While I was lured into yoga with the promise of a perfect body and flat abs, my practice soon became an addiction that delivered on a much deeper level. A level that essentially saved my life.

Yoga is first and foremost a spiritual practice, based in meditation and self-exploration of your mind and body. While the asanas (physical postures), especially in western culture, do invigorate the physical body, the sequence is designed to invigorate the mind (whether or not the student is aware).

The more I practiced yoga, the better I felt. And not just in the physical “look how healthy/skinny/strong/revived” I am. I suddenly found that I was less likely to bitch out the cab that tried to run me over in the street and more willing to say yes to that potentially annoying favor. In fact, my even boss yelled at me for being “too calm”…wtf!?

Over 2000 years ago, Patanjali compiled the Yoga Sutras, a collection of “truths” that are essentially the core of the yoga ideology. Yoga Sutra 2.46 talks about how your seat (or whatever pose/asana/position you’re in) should be steady, stable, and filled with comfort/ease.

Now, if you’ve taken a yoga class, you know this sounds mildly absurd. Comfort in Utthita Hasta Padagustasana (Extended Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose), balancing precariously on my left foot with my right foot being pulled out to the side? Ease in Utkatasana, (Chair Pose), where I’m fairly certain one more second here will rip my quadricep in half?! Absurd.

Yet the core of the yoga practice lies in the breath. Vinyasa is the pair of the movement with the breath (and the intention, but I won’t get into that right now). The beauty of yoga is that you breathe through everything you’re feeling - physically, mentally, and emotionally. The more I practiced, the more I could breathe through an uncomfortable pose and remain steady, even calm.

Plus, as opposed to everything else in my life, in yoga you want to try less. Yep, less. Tensing up and exerting more effort gets you no where - releasing and letting the tension go allows you to relax into a pose naturally and (more) easily. 

Inhale…”let”…exhale…”go”…

Guess what? The same idea applies to life. The stronger my practice got, the more equipped I was to breathe through an uncomfortable situation OFF the mat. Annoying project? Inhale. Rude subway rider? Exhale. Overwhelming to-do list? Inhale. Coffee down my shirt? Exhale.

Now lets not get carried away: I am ridiculously far from perfect. Life is messy, people let you down, shit happens…every fucking day. But practicing yoga, I practice that pause - that extra breath that acts as a filter between me and my next panic attack. 

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali defines “yoga” as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. So when you’re practicing, you’re working on calming all that mind-shit (chitta-vritti) that clutters up your focus all day. 

There is no such thing as “yoga perfect,” but my daily “yoga practice” has enabled me to be more steady, stable, calm, at ease, focused, etc., despite the level of chaos my life reaches on a daily basis.

People ask me all the time why I’m such a yoga dork, specifically why I went through extensive lengths to get certified to teach. I tell them, honestly, yoga saved my type-A New Yorker ass and all I want to do is share what I’ve learned. 

Bonus: now I have a killer yoga butt.

Practicing an imperfect practice

Yoga Teacher Training comes with exciting ways to geek out -  like sutra studies and book reports. Below is my study on Patanjali’s sutra 1.12:

Yoga sutra 1.12:  abhyasa vairagyabhyam tat nirodhah 
Through consistent practice and detachment from the results of the practice,
one achieves a serene state of mind.

I am a perfectionist. It is both my greatest characteristic and my most detrimental flaw. For as long as I can remember, I have been driven by an insatiable need to succeed. From a young age, it was engrained in me that failure is not an option. I suppose the positive spin was that I could “do anything I put my mind to.” Given that that statement is true, if I put my mind to something I should, therefore, achieve it.

When I was younger this usually appeared in an academic setting. Getting good grades, taking more AP and honors classes, having a resume full of achievements like membership in the National Honor Society…all check marks on my list to get into the perfect college.

Outside of academia, though, this need for perfection coursed through my veins, –  a constant state of self-criticism that fed an unhealthy obsession and quickly took over my life. I mastered the art of false appearances – I excelled at playing the part of “Lindsay,” as I assumed she should be played. I could control my body so I looked the part, my personality so I could attract the right type of friends, my workload so everyone would know how talented I was, and somehow even my social calendar so I never missed anything. I was so good at controlling the way people perceived me that I lost sight of who I actually was. But who cared?! Look at how pretty my ducks look all in a row…

As I have grown-up, I have discovered cracks in my perfectly designed persona. Terrifying chunks of my wall that threaten to crumble before my eyes and expose things that have never been revealed to the outside world. As I scramble to regain control, I find myself no longer able to juggle so many impossible tasks at once. Wait, you mean I can’t do everything?! No seriously, I don’t understand.

A gym junkie for as long as I can remember, it took me a long time to find yoga. I felt that I needed to exert energy to get the results I wanted. That’s how life works, right? You bust your ass until every cell in your body hurts, then (and ONLY then) you might get a gold star. Of my many gold stars, NONE of them came from sitting still and just being. Sounds like nonsense to me. Poppycock, if you will.

In sutra 1.12, Patanjali gives a prescription for stilling our chitta vritti (calming our mind shit, like my head full of overly critical and often unrealistic obsessions). Offering two parts to his solution, he first talks about abhyasa: practice. Now this I can do – I can learn poses, fit classes into my busy schedule, perfect my downward facing dog and nail that forearm stand. Look at me go!

The second part, though, is vairagya: nonreaction. Detachment from the results of the practice. Referring to the relationship that arises in the instant one perceives something, vairagya literally means “not getting stirred up.” Patanjali is challenging us to let a phenomenon arise without reacting to it. By not reacting, we subtract more of the confusion of our experience by allowing things to play out naturally, and thus allow for profound stillness and clarity.

Now, if every action has an equal and opposite reaction, how does this work? How could I possibly practice, and yet not react to my practice? I will NEVER be perfect at yoga if I can’t nitpick and fix every tiny little detail of my pose!!!!

First off, newsflash: no yoga practice can be perfect. Ever. But what would happen if, not only in my yoga practice but in my everyday life, I didn’t panic at the sight of imperfection? What if I observed the situation and honestly allowed things to exist, just the way they are? Can I possibly remain unattached? Overtime, my actual poses will progress on their own. Everyday I’m learning and growing, naturally evolving in ways that I can’t physically comprehend – whether I’m obsessing over them or not.

While I suppose the goal of yoga is yoga, the process is why we practice it. The experience of getting there is the game changer. So the question remains: why am I obsessing over an unattainable goal and allowing myself to miss what’s right in front of me? Why am I allowing the ever-present panic alarms to ring out, dragging me into the future or past, and away from right now?

The healing process starts with identifying my mat as a non-judgmental space, keeping my focus on this intention rather than my imperfections. Someday, perhaps that intention will extend to life outside my mat. No judgments on how long that takes me. For right now I’ll just work on being awesomely OK, right here.