While driving to work recently, I realized I was feeling content and calm. It is a rare experience for me to exist without wandering around in my mind. I examined the experience and realized I could have it because I wasn't preoccupied with problems. Several things that had been weighing on my mind had been cleared up and therefore my ride to work was unburdened. I went into the day without any preconceptions of what it might contain. I wasn't dreading anything, nor was I anticipating anything.
Expectation and anticipation reared their ugly heads two days later at work. I encountered a patient that I expected something from and was disappointed when the situation turned out to be very different. It was with my expectation that the problem lie. The patient was as she was. I brought my preconception to the situation and had a negative emotional reaction because she didn't live up to it.
In addition to expectation and anticipation, going back in your mind to review something you experienced will prevent you from being present, and therefore rob you of any chance to be content. As I thought about why I was able to feel calm and content, I was taken away from the experience. As I move mentally into the past, I am subject to the emotional reactions of the past. As I relive those emotional reactions, I strengthen them, and move even farther from contentment.
Recently I have asked you at the beginning of class to notice and honor whatever you brought into the room with you. Your experiences and how you feel about them will color your practice. This is also true of any encounter in your life.
Sometimes we have emotional reactions that are so deeply ingrained that we are not really sure why we have them. I spoke a couple weeks ago about the idea of judgment versus discernment. Those ideas are operating at a level of aware decision making. But sometimes we have emotional reactions that are not so easily seen and understood. We have lower levels of mind that are functioning all the time and reacting to stimuli. So, not only do we react on the level that is related to our experience and memory but also on a level that is more instinctual; more guttural. I noticed it when I worked this weekend for people I had never met before. There were those who made me feel at home and those two made me feel like a stranger. It's not that anyone was unwelcoming or unkind but that there was a reaction in myself, probably set up when I was a child, to what I consider comforting and warm and what I don't. So even when we don't mean to, we walking to a given situation with a level of pre-programming that is going to affect the way we perceive; the way we feel in that situation.
We aren't always going to feel content. I noticed a couple days after I had that brief and lovely feeling of contentment that I left the house with a weight, so I was unable to have contentment. And I encountered things that were upsetting. But the mark of a regular yoga practice is, in part, your recovery time. When you're taken away from calm, how quickly can you return to it? Our practice this week will give you some tools that you can utilize when you're feeling upset to bring yourself back to that place settled, centered calmness and hopefully move you closer to contentment. We will practice a slow flow, without any anticipation, expectation or preconceptions to color the experience of the practice. Keeping the mind centered on the flow the breath while matching the movements of the body to that flow will allow us to be calm and centered, acting as a cohesive unit.
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