People come to Rishikesh to find peace and joy. I came to find my own practice, move away from always needing a teacher. To find the discipline within, and knowledge how to do things right.
So I have arrived at the school. I am not prepared to be a tourist at all. But I had one day filled with one resource that I definitely missed badly. I finally had the time. I could take a nap and that was okay. I could take my phone in my hand without the pressing urge to check social media, mobile phone games or the news. I do not feel the urge to drink alcohol or eat sweets. Or coffee. When did I become dependent on all this poison?
If there is one word to describe an addict, it is selfishness. Or, one might say, a misconception of what we should really care about. We may think they drink or do drugs for pleasure. I just recall, drugs make us feel the way we should be really feeling without them.
Self care is to create for yourself life you do not need to escape from.
I realised that when I get back home, I will be returning to almost the same set-up that got me disconnected from my body in the first place. Okay, I will be in Poland, at home, and that will be different. My cat will be there, and my boyfriend. But they are an escape for me and in my current life I need that escape. This is wrong.
We are paralysed with pain, with stress that makes us forget how to feel. We turn away from our feelings and lose integrity. That is what workaholism does to us, like a lined up series of mini traumas that take away our souls little by little. Tyranny of small steps. Then we unrealistically expect from ourselves that despite all that hardship we function like a normal human being.
Reconnecting with the body is not about getting into the body. It is about addressing why we’ve disconnected in the first place. Our natural state is that of embodied beings. We disconnect because something fundamentally is disrupted, missing or suppresed within us and in relationship. When it comes to trauma, one of the qualities that is disrupted the most is inner safety. Feeling unsafe triggers dysregulation and disconnection.
Lesson repeats as needed.
I have experienced it very strongly in the recent weeks when I was abusing my body at work. It has chased me also here, at my yoga training.
One of the students was very different than everyone else. It seemed to us that he joined the training not out of positive motivation, like we did, with passion or excitement about yoga, or even curiosity. He seemed to have joined the training out of necessity.
It seemed like he wanted to be important, to show off. He did it in a way that was making girls unsafe: seeking mind control, teaching us his only and correct ways, trying to excercise dominance over some of us. Interrupting the flow of the lesson, contradicting the teachers and seeking conflict every time he opened his mouth. It does sound terribly familiar, very much like the high context culture I am so weary of. Like the culture I grew up in and learned to move away in my personal therapy. I can only imagine how challenging his life must have been until today.
I did not seek to correct him or impose my views on him, I am too much of a chicken for that. But the other girls did really engage, even though plenty of their reactions could have been taken as aggressive. The natural flow of the discussion led to the things that triggered them, bothered them about him. They have every right to feel that way, although maybe they could have been more productive for their own good by learning about their triggers instead. I did react once, after he suggested in what way we can make the communication peaceful. I wanted the conflict to stop.
It did cross my mind that if it was not for him, I might have probably not gotten along so well with the girls. He was like the scapegoat, the enemy from the outside that brought the rest of the group together. In the past, during one of the sailing trips I took part in, I refused to join the witch hunt against someone and I became the dreaded witch. This time I joined in, and commented on the poor Texan. I told myself I am helping by providing the information. And it did feel nice to belong to a group.
Was this a good thing? It felt like an improvement from my past experiences. But was it really good? I doubt that. If it happened again, would I react the same way? Well, right now I do not have enough skills to have difficult conversations to resolve such conflict. I would like to change it in the future though. I would like to react like our teacher did. Because saying “maybe he is a mosquito in the room, but I feel unsafe” does also tell a story about me. What I can tell for sure is that both of my egos got engaged here. The actual, primitive one and the spiritual one, feeling reassured that my disengagement was the right thing to do.
Judging is the reflection of the self
When self awareness and willingness are present, our triggers become our teachers. They show us where we have been wounded and invite us to honor the hurt, betrayal and anger uwe may have never let ourselves feel at the time of the original injury.
I find it hard to work on my attitude towards myself. It is easy to resent things I struggle to accept. There are things I was brought up to believe are flaws. Unlearning to judge is a great starting point towards acceptance. Realising my perception of others is merely a projection of the inside of my mind can help in shaping the inside. By accepting others I learn to accept myself.
Whatever resonates with us, makes us have a strong reaction about, whether it is positive or negative, this is a quality that we ourselves possess. It is about bad qualities, as well as the good qualities, which we may deny. In other words, if someone pisses us off, it is because we behave in exactly the same way (perhaps without noticing).
“Understanding is difficult, therefore most of the people judge” – Jung
In working to accept the negative qualities that we possess, it is good to recognise what purpose does the particular feature serve. It is also about processing the the triggers that are engraved in our psyche. Yoga helps to find comfort in discomfort, that can let us gain enough distance and awareness towards what happened. Yogic philosophy shows us how much ownership we can find in our own reactions and behaviours. Nobody can really hurt us or influence our well being unless we let him. So either refusing to be bothered, not taking thing personally or setting and executing a boundary. It is not on others to listen to us once. It is also on us to make sure we are heard, understood and respected. And if not, well, we can always look for a different sandbox to play in. (See, this is another thing that I see in others, and only now realise I myself am guilty of, in a slightly different set-up!)
So I am working on compassion. Towards others, towards myself. Yoga has already helped me heaps, and it seems like something that can help me some more still. To truly embody what I have learned, I must pass it on. 12th Step in the recovery from addiction is contribution. Giving back to others, helping someone else. That is what I want to do. Wound is where the light enters, I can either let it consume me or consume it myself and transform into something good for the world.
Hey, this place is actually cool. I will try to write about India and Rishikesh some more 🙂
