Yoga has a lot to teach

About one's self and how one's actions affect others

Tree Pose; Photo by Kamaji Ogino from Pexels

Even the most casual observer notices when the tenor of the room changes because of someone's behavior, for the better or for the worse. In the best of scenarios, one's cheerfulness and laughter will spread through a room like wildfire and infect everyone around. My favorite story about how infectious laughter can be is one comedian Tig Notaro tells about her mother-in-law, Carol. Carol has this joke that she can barely manage to tell because she's laughing so hard. (I am laughing just thinking about the story.) It's not a funny joke, but when Notaro brought Carol onto the stage during a comedy show to tell it, the crowd was laughing simply because she thought it was so funny, because she couldn't stop laughing at her own joke. Her amusement infected the crowd.

On the flip side, rage can contaminate a crowd as well. Imagine the following scenarios:

A man walks into a crowded subway car and has obviously had a lousy day. His face is turned up in a scowl, his tie is loosed, his shirt is partway unbuttoned and untucked, and he is mumbling to himself. He is seemingly recounting an argument he just had with a colleague. When other subway riders bump into him, he gives them a dirty look, and if provoked enough, yells at them to back off or watch out. The subway riders who have picked up on his ongoing irritation grow quiet and begin to move away from him. The more obstinate riders demand him calm down or use expletives to bite back. The mood in this subway car clearly changed once he walked on. Even for those who weren't unlucky enough to bump into him, his presence on the train changed their mood. His actions affected them. 

A similar story can be told of a kid in a school classroom. A young girl shows up at school after waking up to a mom who's hungover from a drinking binge the night before, a father who's not home because he's serving time in prison, or a sibling who relentlessly mocks or picks fights with her. Whatever the story might be, things are being done to her that might be out of her control. She absorbs whatever negative feelings come from the rough morning she has experienced, maybe she even embraces those feelings and thrives off of them, and she comes to school and takes out any and all frustrations on her classmates, teachers, and even the lunchroom staff.

Imagine you are the businessman's friend or the young girl's teacher, what advice would you give to help them cope with life's upsets? My advice: You are not your mind. Your thoughts need not control you. You may not be able to control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it.

These are yoga mantras.

Teaching yoga and mindfulness in schools has gotten a bad wrap. Both get presented as some mushy process of getting in touch with one's feelings for self-serving purposes, or recently, for purposes of social justice. But the physical and mental fortitude it takes to even balance on one foot should not be dismissed. One has to be aware of one's body, align breathing with movement, continuously focus on breathing, and move any thoughts, both positive and negative, that are not about the body and breath out of one's mind.

Take tree pose, for example. You must fixate on one, unmoving point in front of you. Equally distribute weight between your heel, ball of your foot, and toes. Slowly lift your non-balancing foot off the floor and place it on your calf or thigh. Once balance is achieved, you move your hands from your hips to prayer pose at heart center, then reach your arms to the sky. To challenge your balance, you move your gaze up to the sky or close your eyes. Through all of this, you must remember to breath.

As simple as tree pose may look, only the most focused and clear-minded can achieve, then hold, this pose. As with all yoga poses, especially the most challenging, one must be simultaneously aware of and in tune with their body, breath, and mind.

I taught a short yoga sequence to 4th graders, and watching them move into tree pose was illuminating. The goofiest of them all, and I say this in the most endearing terms, struggled the most. But, as the goofy always do, they laughed off their failure, made jokes, and dramatized how they fell out of the pose for the benefit of their classmates. Although they didn't get visibly upset at their failure, their focus was not on themselves, it was on other students and what they might think. Unlike the girl who angrily took out her bad morning on other students, these students had the right attitude—laughing when you fail is certainly better than getting angry at others or yourself. But still, their focus was on other students, not themselves.

Headstand is a more extreme example. It is a pinnacle yoga pose, and achieving the pose requires shoulder strength, arm strength, core strength, and, most importantly, patience, courage, and peace of mind. One must have body strength and body awareness to balance on the head and lift the legs toward the sky. Getting your body into proper physical strength is the first step, and the easiest part. Certainly, you have to be committed to a regular yoga practice, but that alone does not guarantee you will achieve headstand.

The mental effort it takes to get yourself into the pose is the hard part. And if your mind is drifting toward drama with family and friends, frustration toward your teacher or your boss, your to-do list for the week, or self-doubt, if you manage to achieve the pose at all, it will be without grace and with great frustration. One can even go from seamlessly pulling their legs into the air one day to an inability to get their toes off the ground the next day. The difference is a scattered mind versus a clear one. Mindset matters tremendously.  

Both the goofy and the angry can benefit from the mindfulness that comes from yoga. It makes one aware of how their actions and state of mind can impact themselves and those around them. And the practice reminds one of the rewards that come from patience and perseverance. The feeling that results from achieving a challenging pinnacle pose like headstand is euphoria. But this feeling is not relegated to yoga. Accomplishing any difficult task that takes intense mental or physical effort is exhilarating, yoga is just the method for channeling one's energy towards the self and what the self can control to achieve such feats. And that feeling of euphoria is no doubt contagious and is certainly a better contagion than crippling self-criticism and frustration.

I try not to be one of those crazy yoga apostles that endlessly preaches how yoga will save the world, but I do kind of believe that.