The Discipline of Happiness at Halo Hot Yoga: Boise, ID: September 17, 2018
Friends help us on our path. Gretchen is awesome and is a lot of fun to tour with. Thank you Gretchen xoxoxo
The Tao says, “Life is made up of ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows”. Its not that difficulties don’t exist, they do. Its not that pain isn’t part of life, it is. I’m learning through the practice of yoga about how sorrow, in all her ten thousand forms, is expensive to cling to. It hijacks our view of joy, all ten thousand of them. As the Buddha says, ‘with our thoughts we make the world”. My world this morning consisted of a room heated to 105 degrees and a spunky yoga teacher asking me to vinyasa and do toe stand and a host of other shapes, that under normal conditions don’t make me growl. Add a little heat and a fast pace and I’m fully living in sorrowland.
I have a long spicy history with hot yoga including a big break-up with her because it became unnecessarily harsh following a three year almost daily practice. I’d burned out my marriage and my adrenal glands. Tapas, translated often as heat or discipline, is one of the recommended practices and is especially potent when used in combination with self – study and dedication to a higher self (PYS 2.1). Of course Patanjali is not talking about a literal heat, rather its about discipline. I left the Bikram practice in search of serious chilling out which took a lot more discipline that showing up everyday for three years in a practice I thought I had to do. Listening to my own heart and my own body that was begging for a different path and following directions from beyond, from inner knowing, was a new skill set that took mad amounts of discipline, self study and Trust. it still does and probably always will but with some practice and some hard lessons of not listening it is getting easier. The sorrows have provided context for joy.
Rumi says, ‘in the field of right doing and wrongdoing, I’ll meet you there” and until hot yoga class today I don’t think I’ve ever bought into what Rumi was saying. Like the cloud of dust that follows Pigpen everywhere, the smoke of judgment usually clouds my mind: good v bad and all various shades of good, better best and bad, worse and ‘totally sucks, dude’. While discernment is necessary to maneuver in life, ultimately it is exhausting to place value judgments on every little thing. The practices of yoga are here to help us open into the what is. Clinging to anything out of sheer principle will send your life up in flames.
The hands are said to be the motor organs of the heart. Many Gods are portrayed with eyes in their hands to help us understand discernment is part of wisdom. We don’t reach out to everybody in the same manner. We reach out to them from our hearts in appropriate -to -the- relationship wisdom. But what else is required is non-attachment to our beliefs about the person and a willingness to reach out to all in Love because we all want to be Loved. Once we see ourselves in each other, we will be kinder and more loving.
On tour when I land in a city I determine if and when I can get to a yoga class. If there is a choice, usually a hot yoga studio is way down my list, but if it’s the only choice then I’ll go if I’m desperate enough. If it wasn’t for Gretchen wanting to go to class this morning, I might have ditched it altogether. Friends are helpful like that; they keeping you accountable if you say you’re going to do something, and they help you through things that might be otherwise uncomfortable.
I was already sweating before class started and my mind was already dissing the practice, the teacher, the studio, Bikram, and anyone ever in my life who has suggested I’m doing anything wrong and their way is better. That’s a heap of people at 57 years of age and such (unfounded) resentment added fuel to my already overheated body. The practice of turning ten thousand sorrows into ten thousand joys started with one thought, and that was to stop hating it all so much. The problem with focusing only on ‘ten thousand sorrows’ is that we cut ourselves off from the big picture. Its not the whole story. Its not the whole truth. Its a lopsided perspective.
Amidst beads of sweat rolling down my body and sunscreen dripping into my eyes upon closer examination I was actually enjoying myself. It felt so good to move my body in non-bus shapes. It was delightful to step away from the hum of the generator, and, as awesome as the show is, its loud, so the faint sound of my own breath was soothing. Never-ending tour tasks melted from view as I slowed down enough, whereby all I had to do was stretch a little and breathe. How bad could that ever be? By the end of class I was lying in the pool of my own sweat, but more importantly, in my own ocean of happiness.
I loved that class and practice. Its possible I might have actually found my way back to loving hot yoga.
This is a miracle. A small one, but what you’re practicing is what you’re getting better at and noticing miracles and happiness, sorrows and joys, and hating one less thing makes an hour in a hot room this morning well worth the price of admission.
Health, Love, and Rock N Roll