Calm Amidst the Storm

Hello,

Nobody seems to be able to tell us exactly why we spend so much of our time in a stressed state, but stress is reaching epidemic proportions, particularly in the younger generations.

It could be the effects of social media, it could be that we hear too much in these days of 24 hour news updates about all the sadness in the world. Certainly our desire to control everything plays its part: if we constantly seek safety, worry about the safety of our loved ones, manipulate this and that to try to create the perfect conditions for life, then we are going to end up stressed and tired.

The yogis of old were correct in their teachings that acceptance leads to peace. We don’t always get to know what is going to happen before it happens, and seeking to control what happens, how people will react to what happens, saving people from the reactions of other people when something happens is a fruitless waste of energy. What will be will be.

This is where practice comes in. If you can stay calm when the world goes to hell in a hand cart, then you have changed your entire experience of life.

What’s more, if you can stay centred when difficult times come, then you become a beacon, a safe place for others less adept at holding their peace, to come and feel more calm.

Lastly, if you can hold your calm centre in the face of challenge, you begin to teach your children how to do the same.

Understand that this is not some otherworldly preternatural state of never feeling anxious, you have not failed if you experience stress. Everybody gets stressed, everybody feels sad. This is not failure, it is just how life is.

The trick is knowing how to stay connected to your inner peace during these times - the world buffets you around like a boat on stormy seas, your practice keeps you afloat, lets you bob upon the waves rather than sinking beneath the deluge.

You can’t change or manipulate what happens in life - there is no rule book you can follow that will save you from the fact of loss, sadness, illness and pain. But you can change the way you respond to it. And that inner shift changes everything for the better.

Love,
Sarah x

Holding Hope in a Troubled World

How do we hold ourselves steady at times when the world feels like it’s spinning out of control? When we feel powerless to make a difference to the things we see happening around us? This is the question I have been asking myself lately. Perhaps you have too.

Meditation has been my solace in the good times and the bad. When my own thoughts are too troubling for the silence I seek in meditation, then I turn to the recorded meditations of my teachers - sometimes I need that safe voice to carry me into the peace that eludes me.

Reading also helps - I find myself re-reading old favourites, since there is comfort in the familiar voice of a novel or poem you know and love. I read To Kill a Mockingbird every other year or so, because it reminds me of the basic goodness of people. The big events that reach us via the news don’t speak to the millions of small kindnesses that happen in communities all around the world, every single day. I went out for lunch today and the waiter was so warm-hearted towards my aunt with learning disabilities that he quite restored my faith in humanity. Not everyone knows how to make a person with special needs laugh, but this young man did. He probably doesn’t know what a difference he made.

Music - ah, music. From the songs I sing (loudly) in my car and kitchen to the classical music that speaks wordlessly to my troubles, music nurtures and restores me. It is also something to share, yesterday my daughter sent me I Have Considered the Lilies by Connie Converse. Such a perfect and beautiful little thing.

In times of trouble it is important that we take what comfort we can from our practice of yoga and meditation, from the sustaining beauty of these autumn days in nature, from the words, songs and art that inspire and uplift us.

We help nobody by being dragged under. What do you do to stay afloat when life feels hard? What poets, writers and musicians do you recommend? I’d love to know.

Sarah x

Dormant Shoots

Thr gifts of yoga are many and various, but for me one of thoe most important is that no matter how long we have been practsising, and not matter how old we are, whether we are healthy and full of beans, or fatigued or even unwell, there is a way to continue practising, developing and learning.

I met a lovely man recently on retreat in Samos who told me how much he regretted not sticking with yoga when he first came to it when he was younger. Now 50, he has committed to his practice with a trusted teacher. I have another student who picked up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita when she was 16 years old and was deeply moved by it, now in her fifties and dealing with an intractable autoimmune disease, she wonders why she didn’t find her way t0 yoga back then, but waited almost 40 years to begin.

It seems to me that our yoga practice begins when we first come to it, whether we committed to daily practice or not. Yoga is a seed that once planted can lie dormant for years, until the right combination of warmth, environment and attention cause it to germinate and grow.

Similarly, I meet students who used to have a dedicated yoga practice, but who fell off the yoga wagon somehow and have only just returned to it. There’s a kind of frustration in these students, they often express how they wish they had carried on, or wonder why they stopped when they know how much good yoga brings to life and limb.

It’s the same thing exactly, the yoga might be dormant within you, but it lives there still. All you have to do is shine some light on it, tend to it a little, water it regularly and it will begin to bloom within you once more.

If you have been away from regular practice and are regretting that fact, the worst thing you can do is to beat yourself up about it. Try to accept it as being your unique path in yoga, try rolling out your mat for ten minutes, moving gently, breathing more consciously. Make some room for yourself to water that seed, which grows in the sunlight of kind care, not the shadow of self-reproach.