Inside Yoga 80 (28/6/13)
“I can’t seem to face up to the facts; I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax; I can’t sleep ’cause my bed’s on fire; don’t touch me I’m a real live wire.”
When I was a teenager this song by the Talking Heads, “Psycho Killer”, resonated with me so much that I thought that it was “my” song. It summed up how I felt during those years. Of course, I was not alone as most teenagers feel like this – it goes with the territory.
Unfortunately, for many of us this does not change, as we enter adulthood the pressures of work, family life and everything else means we remain this “real live wire”. From the anxiety and tension of being a teenager – young, free and lost – we become trapped by our own habits and lifestyle, we could blame the job or our family, but perhaps it’s time we stopped blaming something or someone else and look at ourselves.
As the song says, we might have always been tense and nervous, and it is about time we learn this and look for a solution?
It helps to understand ourselves; and for myself, I found that meditation practice does this. A meditation practice is similar to holding up a mirror to our self and seeing our true nature, warts and all. We might not like everything we see, and perhaps we might see some aspects of our self that we appreciate, and like, so it’s not all nasty and unwelcome.
Through meditation, and also yoga practice which works in a similar reflective manner to meditation, we learn to rid ourselves of the things we do not need, and to work with aspects of our character that perhaps might not change or leave for good, but at least we can learn how to cope with these traits and control them – or guide them towards a better relationship.
I was restless – always have been. My mother said I was born in a hurry and have lived like that ever since. Yoga and meditation has taught me so much about this part of my character. I think it was my restlessness that led to my travels around the world that lasted more than a decade! I simply kept on moving on, and it became a way of life. Some might have said I did it to get it out of my system. Far from it, I did this because it was in my nature. I harnessed this restless energy to do so many interesting and rewarding things while I travelled.
But I did realise I needed to understand this restlessness and learn to control it, otherwise it might have led me the wrong way or worse, harmed me. The practice of meditation and yoga has taught me to control my restless energy, and to use my restlessness in more effective and beneficial ways.
This is where I found yoga asanas (physical postures) practice so beneficial, especially when got into the more intense practice of ashtanga vinyasa taught by K. Pattabhi Jois. The demands, both physically and emotionally, of ashtanga vinyasa channelled my restlessness, and I do believe the results were positive. These days, my practice is less physical and less intense, because perhaps my restlessness has mellowed with age, or perhaps I have matured and I am no longer the tense and nervous teenager I once was?
And at the other end of the spectrum from physical activity as an antidote to restlessness, the sitting practice of meditation helped me to let the restless energy disperse and leave me. Like a tumbler of muddy water all shaken up, meditation lets the muddy water settle to the bottom to reveal crystal clear water – which represents our own clarity that was previously hidden by the muddy water.
Sometimes my meditation feels restless, while other times, I am quite still. Over the years I have learnt to recognise these patterns, and to accept who I am (mostly). Of course there is always room for improvement, but being self-aware is such an important part of life – we do need a mirror in our life.
The Indian epic, the Bhagavad Gita points out, “the mind is restless and difficult to restrain, but it is subdued by practice.” And Lao Tzu (author of Tao Te Ching) said: “If you can cease all restless activity, your integral nature will appear.”
This is very true, meditation and yoga has given me a glimpse of this. From personal experience I would add that being mere mortals who perhaps cannot totally master our mind through practice, at least if we become more self-aware we can learn to work with our restless nature. We can not only learn to accept it we can use it to help us when its energy can be harnessed, as I believe restlessness is a form of kinetic energy that has its uses at times.
Perhaps I can say that these days I am no longer “tense and nervous and can’t relax”. I have learnt about my restlessness, though I suspect there will always be the teenager in me who refuses to grow up, and why not?
