Inside Yoga 96 (20/1/14)

Every winter some of us struggle with the cold weather and shorter days which at times is compounded by the greyness and wet, not to mention the lack of sun due to cloud cover. When will it ever end is a frequent retort and perhaps even question?

How does one cope with this? Why do we have to cope with this? The answer to this question is not really about the weather but about what is going on inside us?

For example, why do we struggle with something which happens every year? Surely, we would know the winter is coming along? It does every year, and we even get a warning of the change with autumn, yet when it is here, we can be heard exclaiming, “I cannot believe this weather”, as if cold, wet, wintry weather is totally unexpected in winter! Now, before you say global climate change my point is not about that, because even though this might be causing more extreme weather patterns, winter has always meant shorter days, and wetter and colder weather.

This is really about our inner world and our relationship with it and how we relate to the world outside.

I see this as a case of our resistance to what is going on outside and struggling to deal with something that is beyond our control. Sometimes I hear language to describe winter as an event that is unprecedented and unexpected. Do we have collective amnesia because as far as I can tell this an annual event.

Yet we fight what is happening and by going against the flow of what is happening around us, we can simply drag ourselves down into a miserable, angry, fed-up or even depressed mood. This can get so bad that we develop SAD (seasonal affective disorder) where we develop a depressed state due to the weather and season.

What is the answer? In many ways it is summed up as learning to accept what is happening and even surrendering – and in terms of the weather and season, there is little we can do about it, so why not work with it instead of against it? We could move home to a warmer climate, but this is not guaranteed to solve our inner relationship with what is going on around us. When I was living in Australia, I was told stories about Brits who had moved to the country only to end up complaining about the amount of sunshine and heat they had to endure! Some of us are never happy!

If we choose to live through a British winter then we perhaps need to look at our reactions – and respond differently (see my last blog – Inside Yoga 95). If we learn to work with what is happening and not fight it, we might notice that our mood is better in the long term. If we feel we have no choice but to live here, there is still a case for acceptance, because (as the advice that is often given) we need to work with what we have.

This is where meditation can help: as we meditate we are exposed to all our thoughts and reactions, a stream of conversation which at times can reveal to us something that perhaps we realise is not so good for us, and then we can decide to change our behavior. For example, why get so down over the winter weather, it’s not going away, and while I fight it my bad mood will not go away. Which is going to budge first? My money is on the weather winning, unless we change our patterns and entrenched views.

Adapt to our inner and outer world, and live in it with a sense of ease: this is a principle message and lesson from meditation (and I include yoga, because yoga is a meditation practice). It can take time to change our entrenched behaviour, but it is a lesson worth learning, because as mentioned above the winter weather is beyond our control, but how we relate to it is within our control!

The teaching within both yoga and Buddhism is about learning to find contentment which is unconditional on anything, especially an external factor – and this would include not depending upon the weather, but learning to feel contentment with our daily existence despite the weather.

It will take practice and time to turn around our way of thinking about our weather and winter, but it is a journey worth taking rather than metaphorically trudging and dragging our complaining body and mind through the rain and wind of a winter’s day – every year.

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