On Yoga, Balance, and Frustration

Since last writing, I haven't had much to say. The five year anniversary of this blog came and went in June. In my absence of writing, I've been trying to listen more - to my own body, to Black people, to people of color, to the air around me. It's very rare that I have nothing running through my brain, so I must admit I've been a bit unnerved by what seems like more than writer's block to me. 

My life continues to be almost entirely virtual. I'm teaching dance online, tutoring students in writing online, becoming a yoga teacher online. I got an online internship for the fall. For someone who still prefers to read a paperback book over an ebook, it's a bit overwhelming. I feel like I am getting so much media thrown at me that I can barely sift through and form a coherent thought.

Part of my yoga training requires that I meditate five times per week. I'll let you in on a little secret - I hate meditating. Or, I hated doing what I thought was meditation. Somewhere in my life somebody told me that meditation was about clearing your mind of all thoughts. For me, who loves to think, that is terrifying. I'm attached to my thoughts! 

I've been trying to unlearn the ways I've been conditioned to meditate. One of the tactics I am practicing is to try to let the mind wander and to not judge where it may go. At first, this was really difficult. After so many years of organized schooling, I have mastered mind control. I can make my mind think about one thing for hours, or at least long enough to write a research paper on something.

Usually, I associate mind wandering with anxiety. Similarly, I associate yoga with frustration. Both meditation and yoga seem a bit too out of my control, especially because neither offer opportunities for perfection. There are no grades in yoga, only exploration.  (I like grades and to-do lists and perfect compartmentalization.)

This week, I have been working through a series of guided meditations on grief and loss. At first, I was pretty resistant to the terminology used in the series. There was a lot of talk about acceptance of current circumstances (pretty hard given the state of the world) and compassion for oneself (not something that I find super soothing when it comes to grief). I stuck with the program, though, because that's what I do. 

I finally clicked with a meditation on identity in relation to grief. The teacher talked about how the transient parts of our identity, including grief, don't take away from the deeper essence of our true self. This concept of the yoga as applied to identity was really powerful for me, as I have struggled with conflicting parts of myself, like my deep cynicism and also my ability to dream or how sad these past few months have made me but also how grateful I am for my community.

Yoga gives me the freedom to treat my identity as a dialectic, a concept that I first encountered four years ago in a theology class at LMU. Dialectic is the art of investigating the truth of opinions and also the inquiry into metaphysical contradictions. A dialectic holds two things that are different and does not invalidate any one part of it for the sake of another. Many people use balance when they mean dialectic. While balance implies compromise, a dialectic can hold two things with contradictions all at once. 

One definition of yoga is exactly that - the ability to hold two contradicting things at once and understand that both are true. That's why it's so hard! A simplified explanation of dialectic is the perspective of "both...and..." For example, practicing yoga encourages both breathwork and postures. More personally, my life right now is both stagnant and exciting. How do we move when everything is still? 

The meditation ended with a mantra "I am that," which brought up a lot of emotions for me because the first person who introduced me to yoga as a spiritual practice, to the concept of dialectics, and to the use of "both/and" used to tell me "you are that which you are looking for." I cried when she told me that (I was 19 and very lost and did not know how to be all the things that I am). This meditation reminded me that yoga can be applied to my inner life too, and it affirms the things I already know and love about myself.

Moreso, I've been worried that my journey inward during this yoga training would detract from my ability to take action in my community toward antiracism. There's this spiritual misconception that "love and light" will solve all problems when in actuality, fixing this messy world takes a lot of work. These past few weeks reminded me that I can both focus on taking care of myself and take action. I can both heal from grief and fight for justice. I can both listen and write.