Returning home not an arduous journey

A ‘journey’ is forward facing; has forward momentum that involves going somewhere new. A journey means you start from one place and you move on to somewhere else. A journey infers a linear path where change happens from experiencing something new.

I don’t use the word journey much anymore. The word has always made me cringe slightly. Only certain people have the time and resources to go on journeys (at least that’s what I’ve told myself). It feels like an aspiration - kind of generic - and not one grounded in reality. Let’s all go on a beautiful journey together…mmm.

Over 25 houses, four different careers, many relationships, weight up and down like a yoyo - change is what I did when I was triggered. But at the same time I also had the sense that what I really needed to do is stay put, calm down and face what was already there.

My inspiration for this blog is a wonderful talk and practice: ‘Quantum Breath Meditation’ by Amrit Desai from The Amrit Yoga Institute. I did my yoga nidra teacher training with his wonderful daughter Kamini Desai. Amrit Desai talks about returning home to your self instead of going on a journey.

A journey takes you away from where you are.

And accepting where you are right now is so very important, even if staying is painful or confusing.

In our Advance Your BeCalm series of classes at BeCalmed Studio we talk about being in the present moment as a way to transform tension. How you are now in the present moment is who you will become. The future is made up of little and big present now-moments. So learning to transform tension right now is our jam.

It makes sense to me to deepen what I’ve been guiding by exploring the difference between a journey and a returning home. As always, I teach from my own experience. I’ve been exploring for myself how much of my reactions are to do with the past or a distracted mind.

Practices that lead you to calm make you aware of where tension is in the body and how many layers to that there are. A muscle may not be just a muscle - it may also be a response from the past. The path to transforming tension and therefore behaviour is to find a lovely kind of ease, no matter what is going on.

Accepting all that I have been so I can be all that I am.

Returning home to yourself first means accepting where you are right now, instead of trying something else new. There are millions of reasons not to start: don’t have time, money, responsible for too many things, not strong or well enough. It can also be an uncomfortable way to spend your time! Frustration half way through a restorative yoga shape is not because the shape is dumb or not right. The frustration can be because in restorative and yin yoga we stop long enough for other things to arise . We may recall a felt sense of not feeling safe. For me there’s a deep-seated sense that I don’t deserve to feel ease and free enough to be great. If I fidget or leave the pose early, I miss the opportunity to breathe into that experience and see it for what it is (and was).

Using the approach of observation I can view the experience differently. My breath softens it, lets it move, dissolve, pass on. Things come up to go. Often this kind of transformation happens without me doing a thing, especially after MindRest (Yoga Nidra) meditation. Peace arises from space not tension.

We face ourselves right now with a new found sense of care for ourselves - our gurgling stomach, tight neck, feeling of irritation, the things we tell ourselves, feeling shitty. The experience first arises as something we are familiar with. Then comes the opportunity for change, or at least to just feel good.

First we observe the sensation or energy in the place that calls our attention. Then we focus on our breath. We send breath to our place of attention and create space. We focus on release of the outbreath. Sometimes the experience shifts, morphs, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a new thought will pop in a few days later.

There’s a shift.

If we don’t face ourselves as we are right now we may end up vacuum packing certain life experiences. We might shove them into storage and go on a journey somewhere else. We are this for a reason. But all that hard, stunning and painful stuff we put in storage - the tight muscle, lack of energy - it’s not going to change by locking it up. And who we are now is who we will become. Of course if we have complex PTSD or trauma, we may need more support than restorative yoga. Yoga can be a complimentary therapy in this way.

I’ve recently worked with a senior manager who is experiencing vertigo. She’s worked with doctors on the medical explanations like inner-ear imbalance. But from a yoga perspective it could be that her nervous system is out of balance from living a full life. Most people have some kind of imbalance especially if their new normal is chronic stress. Imbalance is fine as long as we know how to balance it! it’s created a new normal of chronic stress. We are doing a balancing breath together which involves breathing through alternate nostrils. It’s a mechanical experience that balances the two sides of the brain but it’s also about slowing down enough to see what presents itself.

Another teaching from Amrit Desai: “If you are in conflict with our symptoms, you cannot solve them”. I’ll add, “cannot solve them just with a medical approach.”

Another person I support had sudden heart surgery and is now experiencing ongoing and varied complications. It’s like her body just screamed, “That’s enough!” We’re working to hold both - the life-threatening disorder and the experience of being well. If her body and mind are constantly paralysed from danger then her body won’t be able to do what it does best - heal itself.

She is recognising that the life events and personality traits that got her here in the first place are not the ones to transform her experience of life, starting with her health. It’s really, really hard for her to do this work. I’m surprised she can even get out of bed some days. But she’s moving slowly and thoughtfully with care. She’s shifting everything she thought about herself and the world, one shape and breath at a time.

Restorative Yoga is a way to drop down into our bodies and to feel something other than our over-achieving mind.

In yoga we talk a lot about energy. It can be allusive at times. I think it’s just a way to go inward and release the grip our mind can have on us. On another level, energy is the feeling that something is going on inside our body. Heat, tingling, gut feeling, tension, something else. It’s like deep listening. Restorative yoga is the recognition that we are more than our mind and body. We are all the other subtle things going on.

Everything we think, see, feel and do effects our energy. I was talking to someone in the weekend about music festivals. He was going to one over New Year which meant three days of pumping, base music for 24 hours a day. It will be extremely fun but I wonder what happens if you don’t realise the affect that all that stimulus has on your body. And if you don’t realise this effect, then how do you know how to balance it? Pumping music, no down-time, alcohol and drugs all have a combining effect on our body’s internal (how we feel) and external (how we make others feel) energy, largely controlled by the nervous system. It also takes us away from the self that has been reacting and triggering for some time.

An aside… I studied Pacific climate change adaptation as my Master’s degree. I read this beautiful piece of research from a small village in Papua New Guinea. An international charity came into the village to tell people how to eat better (I mean, really). The first thing they did was sweep up all the rotting papaya and leaves that had fallen on the ground because they said this was leaving unhealthy bacteria. But that rotting material was fertiliser for the next crops of papaya. So those next crops were more susceptible to disease. Someone coming in and telling them what to do, dismissing their indigenous knowledge, worked for no- one.

Locals were blamed for the failure of that project. Locals said, “If people don’t know what’s important to us, how can they do what’s best for us”. It’s the same with our bodies. If we don’t know what’s going on inside, how can we know what to aim for on the outside? If only they’d started with what was really going on right in front of them.

Everything we see, think, feel and do has a response or a reaction in our body.

Sun on our skin. Food in our bellies. Being yelled at. Recalling a painful scenario again and again. Our subconscious guiding us to pull out of something because we’ve failed at something similar in the past. Telling ourselves, “I’m so stressed and there’s no way out of it” over and over. Energy is subtle. Our body hears everything we tell it.

Energy that does not create ease in the body builds up and creates blockages and sensitivities. Our cells change. They have to. They are influenced by our diet, our thoughts, exercise, emotions, trauma. If someone slams a door in your face, the door may not touch you, but you’re going to get a fright. Your heart rate will go up and your nervous system will go into fight or flight, releasing cortisol. It has to. Your limbic system’s job is to keep you safe so when it senses something is dangerous it triggers your nervous system and hormones to react. People who are highly empathetic just cannot watch horror movies or go on Roller Coaster rides. It makes us feel like shit.

The same, of course, goes with influences that calm us like calming music or doing a restorative yoga shape - your limbic system thinks all is well and it curates the relaxation response: your heart rate lowers and chemical goodies like serotonin are released in your body. Of course we can’t live in Relaxed Land all the time. Our bodies are designed to swing from stress to relaxation. It’s finding a balance and dealing with trapped tension that’s a key.

Excess stress shows us as excess tension in the body. It’s gotta go somewhere.

So, if your tight neck may not just be because your neck is tight. It may be because of how you hold yourself when you are threatened or stressed, ongoing. And your gut - well, that’s a whole blog on its own. I used to have irritable bowel syndrome which included shocking cramps and vomiting. Now that I’m less stressed and more aligned with who I really am, my irritable bowel is about 80% less.

I continue to face myself and often feel this beautiful sense of care for the pain I feel. But only because of regular meditation or other practices of yoga. It’s quite incredible how I can flip back to negative thought, doom and pain, when I don’t practice regularly.

Beyond stress release is this feeling of meeting yourself where you are, warts and all.

The pain of childhood, loosing someone, feeling oppressed, intergenerational trauma - it can sit in your body like a dormant firecracker. When lit, it explodes in all sorts of ways and wreaks havoc.

The potential for yoga (meditation and breathwork as well as the physical asana movements of yoga) to transform your life is more like a slow returning home than a journey to somewhere else. I’ve been taught that we have everything inside us already, we don’t need to go looking for it somewhere else or wait for it to emerge on its own. And for some, it can happen quite quickly. For others (like me) it took decades. But I always knew I had the potential.

We are already it - already whole. We just have a bit of nurturing housework to do!

I can’t explain how to do it except from my own experience. The more time I rest in stillness and silence and accept what presents itself, the more I am able to resolve my body’s quirks and experiences, the more I’m able to experience something other than anxiety, pain and stress. This includes the feeling of unhappiness even when life looks exceptional. I know when it’s working because I feel this effortless ease - this calmer energy - and I can trust in how I feel and what I do. It always amazing what opportunities arise from this space.

Return home.

Yoga Nidra: the letting go

BeCalmed Studio’s Janie Walker has completed further Yoga Nidra teacher training at InDepth Yoga Academy.

I’m aware of the absence of things, just for a second. I’m lying on the floor in a cool roof-top yoga studio in Phuket. I know there’s chaotic traffic half a kilometre away. Dogs barking. The yells of fight from the boxing academy up the road. But I’m no longer conscious of that . I’ve reached a withdrawal of the senses and there’s a new experience happening. I’m loosing control of my thoughts. I can feel them slipping away and I’m trying to fight the natural desire to grasp them back. As I let go I fight too. What am I letting go into?

For the first time, I’m experiencing this fight and letting go as a duality: as anxiety as well as calm. I used to think I was one or the other at any given time. I thought the point of all this yoga and meditation practice was to spend more time in the calm space, blocking out the anxiety and worry. But after this new Yoga Nidra teacher training, I realise that both exist at the same time. There needs to be an awareness and acceptance of all our icky stuff instead of blocking it out in the hope that we will eventually be somewhere else. We have to find love for what we’re letting go of.

I think that’s what holidays and changing jobs or relationships do. They force us to leave ourselves instead of love ourselves. It’s easer to leave.

A brindle rescue cat and a black and white rescue dog have made their home here as they saunter and stretch in and out of our class. They’re both splayed out in front of me on their tummies. These animals had a hard start in life but they’re learning to rest here too. I like the addition of animals - easy compassion.

The lovely yoga teachers here are a mother and daughter team - Nathalie and Anastasia (Ana). Ana, the daughter, is my Yoga Nidra trainer. She’s much younger than me and fires between a wise sage and a youthful pocket-rocket. I love her quirkiness and absolute love of yoga. She explains complex yoga terms in easy ways. I also love the way she’s spent her young life questioning the teachings of the buddha and ancient wisdoms instead of blindly following them. She’s very smart and I can’t wait to meet her when her years catch up with her mind.

Ana reminds me that this letting go in Yoga Nidra leads to the heart of this practice - resting in wakeful awareness - the systematic letting go of physical, mental and emotion tensions during the different states of a Yoga Nidra session. Tension ceases to exist for a time. This brings a profound state of relaxation, rest and healing - well beyond the 30-40 minute practice.

Resting in awareness of the present moment is the whole point of, well, pretty much anything to do with yoga!

I think we can experience a brief, shallower state of this - a taster - in our daily lives. You’ve finished work and you rush home (because that’s just what you do). You do the essentials and instead of turning the TV on, you sit on the deck, garden or bed. Alone. There’s so much to do and achieve. But you’re overwhelmed. You listen to the wise part of yourself and decide to just stop for a minute. You get comfy, take a deep breath in (of fresh air) and sigh out (stale air). There are a few seconds before your brain kicks in and tells you to get a move on and you rest between the outbreath and the inbreath. Something else exists. A beautiful pause. It’s the resting place of our true nature. You don’t really know what that is, but you know it’s there. Intuitively you know it’s something you want/need more of. Awareness of your present moment without the shitty past or the anxious future. This resting in awareness decides how you live the rest of your life. The longer you stay - and the deeper you go with practices like Yoga Nidra - the more you naturally transform your life. Because there’s no reaction when there’s no tension. There’s just an awareness of things as they are. You get to experience the why of your conscious and subconscious.

So, what’s the point of resting in wakeful awareness? There’s the easier to grasp stuff - you relax, lower your heart rate, digest better, relax your nervous system to lower stress, manage pain and increase yummy neurotransmitters like dopamine.

Then there’s the energetic and personality stuff: Yoga Nidra, over time, changes your relationship to thoughts, emotions and how you interact with the world.

Only yesterday, I had another moment of realisation of this for myself. We were deciding whether to lock up or not before we went out. I’m more cautious than my partner and can get anxious about leaving. We were about to enter the familiar argument when I said, “Just do whatever you think is best”. I thought to myself, “Wow, who was that?” Way calmer. Less reactory. A much nicer person to be around.

Letting go can be scary but clutching makes us fight. And fishing spins us in mental circles. Letting go with practices like Yoga Nidra is what will ultimately transform our lives and the lives of others.

Ana from InDepth Yoga Academy. A wise and quirky soul.