Inside Yoga 95 (13/1/2014)

Listening is something that takes time to perfect, and above it takes patience. How many of us are in a hurry to achieve something? How many of us get frustrated when confronted by a delay of some sorts?

And how many of us react as opposed to responding to an adverse situation? The teachings of both yoga and Buddhism show us how to respond as opposed to reacting. Reacting is an automatic knee-jerk action that lacks thought and perhaps wisdom – and in some cases, fails to improve upon the situation.

An appropriate response is what we learn to do; and this is the part that takes training. Many years ago I was listening to the Zen teacher Reb Anderson and he explained about appropriate response and how this was a major teaching by the Buddha.

Take any situation and ask ourselves did we react or did we use an appropriate response? Response implies that even in the split second, a thought went into our approaching reaction and then we responded – hopefully successfully because it is perhaps not foolproof but at least we have more chance of getting it right.

I heard on the radio this morning one of those thoughts for the day, the speaker said that scientifically it takes 90 seconds for anger to disperse or fade! Even if I misheard or missed an element of his fact, he was simply saying that when we feel the flash of anger see if we can give ourselves 90 seconds before responding and then see what happens.

In our practice of yoga we learn how to respond appropriately, through the application of the three main features of a yoga practice: body, breathing and mind.

With the body we learn to listen to our body before asking it to perform an exercise: it is such a simple action, yet we can forget when we become too goal orientated, too much in a hurry and oblivious of what our body is saying. The perfection of a posture in yoga comes through this listening and responding appropriately.

In similar way, we learn about our breathing and to listen to it, and in the long term, we learn to have control over it. The physical benefits of breath control  are numerous, such as larger lung capacity and improved efficiency when breathing. But it also works on an emotional level, teaching us to listen to our breathing, as the breath does reveal quiet easily how we are internally at that moment – for example, erratic breath can indicate stress.

And the third part is the tricky one, our mind! By working with our body and breath we do manage to control our minds a little better. That’s why every in class I ask everyone to pay attention to their body and breath, and while we are busy doing this our mind will quieten down and listen too. Simple to explain, harder to achieve, but that is exactly why we learn to practice.

By improving our yoga practice and with it our understanding and control of our body, breath and mind, the above mentioned appropriate response will come more readily to us, instead of the mindless and reactive response that might do more harm than good.

Have a listen to yourself and see what rings true.

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