I was
recently reminiscing about the first time we took my youngest son Rakhi
skiing. The Saturday night before we went we had a family movie night and
watched Finding Nemo. There is a scene right at the beginning of the
movie where his dad, Marlin, is about to take Nemo to his 1st day of
school. Marlin is instructing Nemo on how to leave their home cautiously:
poke your head out, look around for danger, pull your head back in, then do it again,
and again “just to be safe”, until Nemo gets so frustrated with his father’s
anxiousness that he just swims away when Marlin isn’t looking. The next day I
spent hours on the bunny slope with Rakhi, then 3 years old, surrounded by both
little and big people, learning to conquer their fears on skis. Most of the
little ones, including mine, were completely fearless, leaning into the hill,
skis parallel, bombing their way down in a racer’s tuck, knowing some big
person would get in the way to stop them before they crashed. Or they
would just crash and then get up and do it all over. I couldn’t help but feel
that there is a middle ground between these two extremes.
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| Rakhi on his skis for the first time |
Yoga
teaches us the middle ground. When we practice regularly we come to learn
that most of our fears exist in our heads and serve no more purpose than keeping
us imprisoned in self-limiting thought patterns and behaviors. Here are
some of the daily fears I live with: FOMO, saying the wrong thing, gaining
weight, not fitting in, my kids saying or doing something hurtful to someone
else, my classes not being interesting enough or inspiring enough or good
enough...I could keep going but you get the point. Here’s the thing about fear
and what it does to us. Fear of falling off a ski lift is a legitimate mortal
fear and one we should listen to. The fear of saying something stupid is not,
and yet from a physiological perspective, the reaction is the same: fight or
flight, otherwise known as the stress response. Living with fear, or its punky
little sister anxiety, is no joke. Fight or flight pumps adrenaline
through the body, which, when you are actually facing a bear on the bike path
or saving your child from falling off a ski lift, can be super helpful.
But when it’s not a life or death situation, that same adrenaline that can help
you fight the bear or catch the child causes increased heart rate, higher blood
pressure and breathing rate, and slowed digestion. When we succumb to these
daily little fears, we become perpetually stuck in a fight or flight cycle,
which, since most of us are not in mortal danger with any sort of regularity,
only functions to hold us back from the life we really want to be living.
One of the
more popular slogans I hear in yoga and other mindfulness circles is “the
opposite of fear is love”. Although I understand where this comes from, on the
practical level this does not ring so true for me. In fact, I think love
(the love of my children and husband for example) has almost made me more
fearful, because the more you love, the more you have to lose of course. For me,
one of the best antidotes to fear is joy. I was in a mindfulness seminar
a couple of years ago and the speaker taught us that if you can connect to joy
in the present moment, it’s nearly impossible to feel things like fear,
anxiety, disquiet, or unease. I have found this to be completely true in
my own life. When I am present with happiness my fears disappear.
And the ones that don’t, well those are the ski lift variety and those are the
ones you should pay attention to. Melody Beattie says it like this: “Do not
allow the fear of what if to ruin the joy of what is.” Connecting
to pleasure is the doorway to releasing fear. Life doesn’t have to be so hard!
A friend asked me recently “Is it possible to get where you want to go with
pleasure rather than pain?” YES! But it is a choice, and not always one easy to
make because it requires vulnerability, authenticity, and the courage to stand steady
and strong in your own light. It
requires the risk of being seen in all your glory.
The actor Jim
Carrey speaks about fear both eloquently and hilariously in his commencement
address at Maharishi University in 2014. It is worth listening to the
whole thing when you have 25 minutes to spare (I often listen to motivational
clips on YouTube while I make my children’s lunches in the morning), but here
is one of my favorite clips from the speech:
“My father could have been a
great comedian but he didn't believe that was possible for him so he made a
conservative choice. He took a safe job as an accountant and when I was
12 years old he was let go from that safe job. I learned many great lessons
from my father, not the least of which is that you can fail at doing what you
don't love, so might as well take a chance doing what you love. Fear is going
to be a player in life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend
your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but
all it will ever be is what’s happening here, the decisions in that we make in
this moment, which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose
our path based on fear disguised as practicality. What we really want
seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never ask the
universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the Universe
for it. And if it doesn't happen for you right away it's because the
Universe is too busy filling my order.”
For more
YouTube inspiration, as promised, check out this video of the making of the
song “This is Me” with Keala Settle from The Greatest Showman.
In yoga
practice we open to the bigger energy of the universe, the energy that moves
the planets, that breathes our breath, beats our hearts, and changes the tides.
We come to know the part of ourselves that is an integral part of creation and we learn that we can participate in its
unfolding in whatever way we uniquely can. We learn to take pleasure in
what our bodies are able to do, the joy of challenging poses and the sweet
reveling in their release and integration. Joy (Ananda) is one of the attributes of the Divine. When you
choose joy you deepen your connection to God, Source, the Universe, love, or any
other name you want to call whatever it is that is bigger than you and me and
all of us. We don’t have to look for it, it is always there, just like
all the possibilities and passions of our hearts. When we are living with
constant fear or anxiety joy can be hard to find and we feel stuck. We often
find ourselves staring at what we think is a wall but it’s actually a
door. Sometimes we know it’s a door but we still choose not to open it
because we don’t REALLY know what’s behind it. But if we believe we are truly
worthy of love, of success, and of being happy, the barriers will disintegrate
before our eyes.
Off the Mat:
Visuzliation
exercise: Unrecognized or unacknowledged fear keeps us from moving forward. Melody
Beattie tells us that power comes from being vulnerable enough to say “I’m
scared”.
Take a moment to close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and get
quiet with yourself. Then ask yourself “What
are you afraid of? What scares you?” See what comes up. As each fear arises, acknowledge
it, face it then release its energy, let it dissipate. Usually the little things
come up first but let yourself go deeper, and then deeper still. What are you so afraid of you’d
never voice it out loud? Acknowledge it, see it, then release it.
Breathe it out with the exhale.
Into the
space you’ve created inside by releasing your fear, now invite in joy. What
brings you joy or connects you to pleasure? Bring to mind all the things
that make you feel full, content, and connected, like a happy little parade
marching across your consciousness. The big things and the little
things. Really let the feeling of joy arise inside you. Let it well up and fill you up until you can’t
help but smile. Then let go of your parade and just sit with the joy of simply
being.
On the Mat:
I made sure we did some scary poses this week,
so we all got a lot of good practice at connecting to joy in the face of worry,
stress, and challenge. I encouraged all
my students to judge their practice by the level of joy achieved, rather than
the depth of pose. Because nothing magical
happens when you finally nail ganda
bherundasana (ok, maybe for a second), but it sure as hell does when you
can live with joy in every moment.
