If you are going through hell, keep going-Winston Churchill
Just like food, alcohol and drugs, yoga can be used as a numbing agent. When we try to suppress or avoid our emotions and feelings or numb them , we create a vicious experiential loop. Because the emotions are not dealt with or fully experienced, we are doomed to repeat all the circumstances that got us there.
Unconscionably, many people chose yoga classes that provide distractions from their issues instead of those that shed a light on them. So they don't have to deal with their feelings of inadequacy, they attend the easy class. So they don't have to be with their thoughts, they chose the hot and loud class. So that their feelings of superiority can be fed, they chose the advanced class.
There used to be a time in the history of yoga where you just showed up and did what the teacher said and you never knew what to expect. The teacher would look at your energy and demeanor and give the student what they needed to grow physically as well as mentally. One of these great teachers was Pattabhi Jois, the father of Ashtanga Yoga. To students with huge egos, he may give them very little attention, kept them working on basic poses or make them watch instead of practice so that they would find humility. To students who showed up with deep emotional wounds or physical ailments, he would be a huge teddy bear full of comfort and love so that they could find healing. To students who didn't realize their strength, he would be a strict task master pushing them to their limits so they could find their full potential. This created an environment were you had to face your issues.
This model worked because students would dedicate themselves to the one teacher no matter what. In westernized yoga, if you don't like a class or a teacher, you go to another one. This creates a tremendous opportunity for avoidance behavior and results in a lost opportunity for growth. The final destination of yoga is freedom and liberation for our mind. Not just freedom during a 90 minute yoga class or while in seated meditation, but freedom 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Our yoga practice can take us closer to freedom or further away depending on how we use it. If we use it to avoid or reinforce habits, than it is negative. If we use it as a window to the soul and wipe away all the dust and dirt that mires our ability to see clearly, than it is positive.
There are times in our yoga practice where we will have to go through hell. Throughout the practice, things will continuously keep popping up either mentally or physically in the form of injuries, emotions ,tears and pain. If we avoid them, they will keep popping up in our lives just wearing different clothes and in different environments. If we use our yoga practice as a 90 minute opportunity to look at our pain, allow ourselves to enter the front door of hell and go through it, we will eventually exit hell as well.There is a difference between not attending classes, working with teachers or doing poses that don't work for you and avoidance behavior. Below are some signs that you my be exhibiting avoidance behavior.
- You know that a class is good for you but you keep coming up with reasons not to attend or you don't' make it a priority
- You avoid classes that have poses that you find difficult, challenging, or in your mind, are impossible to do
- You need the class to be perfect. If anything is "off", the experience is immediately ruined
- You avoid the same poses every single class
- You overcompensate in other poses to make up for the poses you don't "do well"
- You can't really explain why you don't like the teacher, the class or the pose. "I don't know, I just don't like it"
- When emotions come up during the class or while doing the pose, you immediately give up or don't come back
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