by Nina
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| Landscape in the Rain by Vincent van Gogh |
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post Another Word for Stubborn? Tapas, Maybe? , in which I sort of promised I would soon be writing about truth (satya) as a aspect of acceptance. No, I didn’t forget about it. It’s just that while I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind since then, didn’t feel ready to write about it because I needed a personal story or two to illustrate my point. (I feel that understanding abstract concepts, such as tapas and santosha, is much easier if there are vivid examples to illustrate them.)
This all started because Baxter made this comment about my yoga practice, “But the thing about you is that even while you’re being stubborn, you also know when to stop practicing poses that aren’t working for you.” And I felt that this combination of being stubborn (which I renamed “dedicated practice”) and knowing which poses or practices aren’t working for you expressed what Baxter and I are now calling the Yoga for Healthy Aging approach: acceptance and active engagement.
The new thing that I realized was that acceptance wasn’t just about contentment (santosha), or the ability to be comfortable with what you have and what you don’t have. Because in order to practice the yoga that serves you, you first need to look honestly at the aging process and how it is affecting you. Rather than practicing for the body you wish you had—or used to have—when you step on your mat, you need to meet yourself as you are. So that means truthfulness (satya) is the first step toward contentment.
Then a friend of mine who is a long-time yoga practitioner came back from a meditation retreat and told me how difficult the first couple of days of the retreat were because she was so attached to the image she had of herself as someone who could and should sit on the floor, that even though she was having some physical problems, she spent the first couple of days of the retreat on the floor in pain. It was only when she admitted the truth to herself, that it was time for her to meditate in a chair, that she was able to get what she was looking for from her practice. That’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. It’s possible that some of her physical problems will get resolved in the future, and she’ll be able to return to sitting on the floor or maybe that won’t happen—there’s no way of knowing for sure. But, she learned, for sure, that for this particular retreat, meditating in a chair was the right practice for her.
A couple of days after that talk, I read Ram’s moving personal story Coming Out: My Personal Experience with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and I realized that this story was also a perfect example of the Yoga for Healthy Aging approach. Because even when Ram first started practicing yoga, the extreme flexibility caused by his EDS seemed to his teachers like a sign that he should be doing “advanced” poses. It was only when he faced the truth about how the practice he was doing was causing severe pain in his joints and limbs, and even blood clots, that he realized the truth:
I soon realized I was responsible for my own safety and learned to become my own teacher. I used extreme caution to go very gradually into poses that required exceptional flexibility. I developed the qualities of dharana (focus) and dhayna (total awareness to the pose), watching every step and alignment, and taught myself to go to the edge without hurting or experiencing pain.
Again, this is the essence of what Baxter and I mean when we talk about practicing Yoga for Healthy Aging. Facing the truth about his condition led Ram to a practice that served him, rather a practice for a body that he wished he had:
Suffice it to say that over the years my asana practice has now metamorphosed into a stage where the focus is not on seeking a “macho” body balancing between two rocks perched over a deep gorge. I have not only gained experience and inherently improved my skill level, but my practices have taken my skill sets to a higher state of positive experience, contentment, and a sense of accomplishment.
I have stopped questioning why I possessed this body as I have started experiencing a positive mental-emotional balance that has resulted in improved health and happiness.
Yes, for Ram, facing the truth (satya) about his physical limitations was what led to contentment (santosha) and even happiness. And, ultimately, for Baxter and me, that’s what Yoga for Healthy aging is all about. From the beginning we’ve talked about how we were not recommending practices to extend our life spans; we said that instead Yoga for Healthy Aging was about extending our “health spans" (see Yoga for Healthy Aging is Not Science Fiction). However, despite our best efforts, the truth is that even if we don’t already have a health problem the way that Ram does, any of us can develop age-related diseases or conditions—whether that means bad knees, Parkinson’s Disease, or cancer—and it is only by taking the initial step of facing the truth of our aging bodies that we can fully take advantage of yoga has to offer us: the end of suffering.
Practice.
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