Yoga of Resilience
Photo by J.R. Berry
I am constantly curious about the world, and the ways we as humans respond to it generally, as well as uniquely, carrying in us our own innate reactions, patterns, and world views. In particular, I am inordinately curious about resilience; how to access it, build it, and grow it, and maybe most importantly, how resilience is synonymous with the experience of Yoga. That both Yoga and resilience give us the experience of approaching life with the most buoyancy and the most capacity that we have to offer keeps me thinking and exploring the connection between the two with diligence.
I’ve been contemplating for years whether or not what I teach is Yoga, at least in the modern definition of the word. I always find that I am having to explain what I mean when I identify myself as a Yoga teacher, because almost none of what I do pertains to tight hamstrings or one's ability to touch their own toes (refer to previous rants about this HERE). Suffice it to say, I’ve struggled for a long time about whether or not to let go of the idea that what I teach is Yoga. In response, I’m constantly trying to understand more deeply what Yoga is. I've been blessed with some amazing teachers that have a really fantastic scope of understanding of the practice and background in study, and that's helped stretch the boundaries of my perception of Yoga. The result has been the discovery that the experience of Yoga and of the experience of resilience are almost identical.
My discovery also has an interesting twist. In order to access the space where Yoga and Resilience are synonymous, we must first unlearn what we believe Yoga to be almost entirely. So much of what we know as Yoga is at it’s best just a fraction of what Yoga actually is and what it can show us. (See that rant HERE) But the professional path that I have spent years creating, refining, and sharing is to teach YOGA. So it's very interesting that my job in the world and my life has been built around learning Yoga, practicing Yoga, and teaching Yoga, but now I'm discovering that in order to access the space of Yoga that is analogous to resilience, we might have to unlearn much of what we’ve been taught. Basically, to really know Yoga, we must dare to unknow it, to leave behind all we’ve heard and dare to consider that the study of Yoga might be our greatest obstacle to experiencing the Yoga of resilience. If that seems to be a bit paradoxical, well you are in the right place because in Tantra, if it's not a paradox, we need to poke around until we can find the paradox in it. So, what if instead of learning Yoga, perhaps it’s time to unlearn what we've been taught so that we can discover more.
I’ve spent the last year inside this possibility. Peeling back the layers of my practice, my study, and my understanding to see where (and if) the experience of Yoga exists. This process of undoing has led me over and over again to a single point of awareness; that when we stop trying to use our Yoga as another way to know more, or be more perfect, or make fewer mistakes, or be right, then Yoga transforms into the experience of living a resilient life.
Throughout 2020, I’ve been probing more and more into the tools and skills needed to live a more resilient life, and what I’ve observed is that the very tools and skills that Yoga has been teaching for centuries are, in fact, the tools needed to live resiliently. Not with the intention to perfect life, but with the clear and unmistakable desire to allow life to be fully lived regardless of the circumstances, challenges, or traumas that it throws our way. Yoga, at its core, is a practice of ALIVENESS, and resilience is “the ability to mentally or emotionally cope with a crisis or to return to pre-crisis status quickly,” in other words, the ability to return to a state of aliveness after a challenge, disappointment, or travail. Its main tenets teach us how to connect to and anchor in our core vitality, how to see the world as a living, giving, thriving expression of something bigger than our individual dramas, and how to live within it.
When times are hard, it’s easy for aliveness and vitality to be diminished, for resilience to be in decline. The heavier the load that we carry, the easier it is to forget the full dimension of our aliveness. Some of our loads are much heavier than others, and some of our loads are so heavy that even the thought of trying to access our vital force, the force that allows joy in and allows the buoyancy of resilience, feels like another weight to carry. Yet, when we experience moments of our own aliveness, the experience of Yoga, and actually take the time to feel it, what we notice is it lightens our load. It metabolizes some of the heaviness of our existence, and it gives us access to more. Tantra is a practice of more.
Trained by a culture of colonization, often our aliveness seems accessible only after we have achieved the necessary prerequisites. The myth that once we have achieved the necessary successes, then we have earned our right to really live, doesn’t hold up in the practice of Yoga or the experience of resilience. So though lives are built around chasing successes and the idea that someday we can land in the space of joy and vitality, that day is often consistently out of reach. The result is that years are spent not seeing what's right in front of us, not remembering that we have and will always be a miracle.
Yet, there is always an opportunity to see things differently, to see more than we thought we could. When we do, we open up the possibility that we don't have to achieve anything to be worthy of experiencing everything. We don't have to get everything perfectly correct. We don't have to do everything right, we don't have to make the money, or please the people, or look this way, or act that way in order to be fully alive. Life is, literally, always, right here.
To be clear, this approach doesn't take away any of the challenge of living. That is also always here. This is the difficult part about the Tantric idea of more, because more isn't just the good, it's also everything else. The tendency is to focus on only the good and to resist or avoid the bad isn’t the more that the Tantrics were referencing. They included all of it in the Yogic life.
So, our incessant striving for the good may be unconsciously rejecting our aliveness, keeping our resilience at a distance, and denying the opportunity to live Yoga in addition to practicing it. Yoga teaches that there is aliveness to be found in the challenge as much as in the ease (maybe even more), so coexisting with both is the union which we are encouraged to seek. So how do we do it? For starters, what if we just celebrated everything that feels awe striking? What if we dared to experience joy in the tiniest and most insignificant of places, even if it's wrong? And then what if there were a million of us daring to live resiliently by experiencing joy in tiny ways? How would that shift the whole picture? I know only this, I will only ever NEVER know enough. And for me, that makes everything an opportunity to be awed, surprised, and amazed.
This year-long exploration continues, and though I don’t have any answers, the questions are getting juicier, and the contemplations are getting deeper. At long last, we’ve decided to share the conversations we’ve been having about it all on our new podcast, The Yoga of Resilience. We are making our conversations available as a way to keep curiosity and exploration alive in your own practice. Check out our podcast page for more information, and subscribe wherever you listen. We will be releasing a new episode each month (maybe more), and many of the episodes will have affiliated asana practices available on the podcast page. We hope you will enjoy this new addition to the VBY treasure box, and share it with your friends!