Author: bailey shandro

Practicing yoga is about finding alignment with who we are. As the world around us changes, we must adapt to maintain this alignment.

Finding alignment is not an endpoint, but rather a journey. These pauses, reflections, and redirections allow us to be the wayfinders of our own life.

Change is a stimulus – it is a messenger asking you to make a choice on how to respond. And the beauty is that in that choice, the power is ours.

How do we choose to charter these uneasy waters?

We use a “map”!

We might not know where we’re going, but we know what we want to see along the way.

Maybe water, beaches, mountains, rainforests, icebergs, prairies.

Maybe love, laughter, curiousity, courage, connection, truth.

By looking at what we value on our journey, we can make decisions to choose a path that takes us there.

Yoga helps us make that map – the landscapes of our lives. It reminds us of what we want to see, don’t want to see, and gives us the courage to move forward on our path.

Life will always change, but these values, the pranayama, the meditations, the asana, will always be there to help guide you.

While our journey on the mat together may be ending, our journey off the mat never does.

Often you hear yoga instructors say, “If your mind starts to wander, return your focus back to your breath.”

When our mind wanders, we are missing out on the present moment.

We do not know what the future holds, nor can we change the past. But we can always be here in the present. This is where we have control of our lives.

Our breath moves prana, life force, in and out of our body. When we are breathing, we are quite literally experiencing that we are alive. Right here. Right now.

Yoga Sutra 2.49 compares pranayama to water. When water is stored, it becomes stale. When water is moving, it tastes fresh. With every exhale we let go of what no longer serves us. With every inhale we breathe in new energy. As we focus on our breath, we are focusing on gaining energy from this current moment.

Each of the five niyamas, which are values to help you find alignment spiritually, are fostered through focusing on the present:

Saucha – cleanliness
The more we can clear our minds and our bodies, the more prepared we are to be present.

Santosha – contentment
The more we can find reasons to be grateful, the more satisfied we can feel.

Tapas – self-discipline
The more we can focus on the task at hand, the less likely we are to succumb to distractions.

Svadhyaya – self-study
The more we are conscious of our intentions, the easier it is to make choices that align with who we are.

Ishvara Pranidhana – self-surrender
The more we can trust the universe, the easier it is to surrender to the current moment.

As Bill Keane so eloquently said, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, which is why we call it the present.”

There are many things I don’t understand about life.

But I do know if I don’t practice being present – I’m going to miss it.

One day, a student told me he loved me, and the entire school – forever. I told them that was very sweet and asked them what love means. They responded, “I don’t know, but probably a good thing.”

Another day, this same student, mistakes a social cue and becomes ridden with anger. After multiple conversations and grounding strategies, the student can’t regulate, and erupts in tears as they collapse into me for a hug.

As this student reminded me, this life is inevitably full of paradoxes.

Love and hate. Hope and fear. Wisdom and ignorance. Giving and taking. Moving on and waiting. Life and death.

We often identify when we are at one end of the spectrum or the other. We focus on these binaries. And it can feel like a lot of work to get from one end to the other.

But the reality is a lot of life happens somewhere in between.

Balance is not necessarily always feeling love, hopeful, wise, and patient, but rather being able to become grounded throughout the fluctuations that come and go.

In science we talk about homeostasis, the perfect balance for our body to function.

What we don’t realize is our body never stays in homeostasis. Instead, we are in a constant state of allostasis.

Allostasis is our ability to adapt to a range of changes and stressors. We get close to balance, but never perfect.

As soon as we accept that we will never be in perfect balance, we are able to see the ebs and flows as fluid, rather than absolutes.

Just like the tides of the ocean come and go, so do the fluctuations of the mind.

And with practice, we can learn to surf the waves.

Last week I was helping an online student with homework their classroom teacher gave them. In the assignment, they had to write what the wonder about astronauts as part of a pre-reading activity. The student stubbornly insisted they don’t “wonder” anything about astronauts.

This same student can tell me the nuances of what happens if you encounter a black hole, list every racecar and the pros and cons of each, and exactly how an ant colony runs, including that a queen ant lives over thirty years while a worker ant only lives three.

This student is one of the most curious kids I’ve ever met. So why wasn’t he curious about astronauts?

Curiousity is an expansiveness of consciousness, a surrendering to the unknown, a pursuit of passion.

Asking students to be curious about topics in a strategic way can help develop empathy, open-mindedness, and humbleness.

However, asking students to be curious about topics that feel irrelevant to them, can make education feel limiting.

Being internally motivated, by a person’s own desire, creates more sustainable behaivours than being externally motivated. If we want students to be lifelong learners, we need to create space for them to explore that internal motivation., and reduce using external factors – like grades, “because you have to”, peer pressure, and consequences – to teach.

The designer Cas Holman said something along the lines of, “I don’t want to know what students learned in schools. I want to know what students become curious about.”

Slowing down teaching and learning can help create the space that curiousity needs to expand. The more time we have to reflect, the deeper we can dive, the richer learning becomes.

In yoga, there is a practice of finding your edge. An edge can be seen as your limit. Though we often see this physically – pushing the limits of our strength and flexibility, we can push our edges psychologically too.

Finding your edge, and playing with it, is an act of curiousity. Curiosity is the heart of empathy. As we become more curious, we become more empathetic. The more we can explore curiousity, and thus empathy, with ourselves, the more we can do that with each other and the world around us.

When we become curious with our physical body, we start to notice where we tense, soften, and begin to create understanding on why some poses are easier than others.

When we become curious with our emotions, we start to notice what we love and  fear and begin to create an understanding on where our emotions come from.

When we become curious with our mind, we start to notice what we know and what we still don’t know, and we begin to create an understanding of why some parts of life make more sense than others.

In the book, evolving your yoga, Barrie Risman explores how our practice of yoga might plateau over time. Maybe we feel like we aren’t capable of going further. Maybe we’re stuck in the same routine. Maybe we feel like we’ve achieved all we can. Maybe we’re bored. The author suggests, these times of plateau are an invitation to dive deeper, to climb higher, to pick an edge and try to expand it.

A time to become curious about where we are and where we are capable of going. A time to ask questions.

Why do we practice yoga? Why do we learn? Why are we here?

I’ve always disliked the phrase, curiousity killed the cat.

Because without curiousity, did the cat ever really live?

As I was putting away supplies on a classroom shelf, I unexpectedly found a kindergarten student wrapped around my legs giving me a big hug and warm goodbye.

This student hardly knows me.

This student doesn’t know I haven’t felt human touch in a well over a week. Or that it’s Friday afternoon and I’m exhausted. Or the level of loneliness I often feel through this pandemic.

But yet this student knows me.

This student knows I deserve a hug. Or maybe they know they want to give one. Or maybe they just know that we are all a part of this bigger world and we have to take care of each other.

This moment of transcendence is what gives me hope. Transcendence is the experience of Mystery in the universe.

As western society conflated spirituality with religion, secularism removed much of our faith in this world. While not everyone is religious, everyone can be spiritual. When we look to Eastern and Indigenous beliefs, we can learn how to allow spirituality, and hope, to re-enter our lives.

Spirituality is a dynamic and ongoing process to become more aligned with who you are, develop meaningful relationships with others, to connect with the land, and make sense of the world around you.

Faith. Optimism. Wonder. Miracles. Gratitude.

Hope.

These are elements of spirituality.

When we look inside we find hope from how far we’ve come.

When we look to others we find hope that people are inherently good.

When we look to nature we find hope that the world is a beautiful place.

When we look at these moments of transcendence, these unexplained mysteries of life, we are reminded that we have a choice in how we make sense of what happens to us.

Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor famously said, “We have absolutely no control over what happens to us in life but what we have paramount control over is how we respond to those events.”

We are living in unprecedented, unpredictable, and uneasy times. We are tired, scared, frustrated, and confused.

It’s okay to feel that way. But we don’t have to let it consume us.

According to yoga sutra II.34, introspection ends the root of all suffering. If we want to change harmful thoughts of fear, anger, and uncertainty, we must lean into their opposites, like love, forgiveness, and faith.

Calming the worries that linger in our mind doesn’t require solving them. It requires focusing on what we want to embody instead.

Nobody knows what comes next. That’s always going to be uncertain.

But you have the power to choose what you embody in your life. That is always certain.

If you’re still not feeling hopeful, or maybe cultivating hope feels like too much work, I leave you with a beautiful passage by Richard Wagamese, an Ojibwe author, from his book, Embers as a response to wondering if this practice of spirituality really works:

“Can you think of a better way to live than in gratitude? Can you think of a better way to be than to be kind, loving, compassionate, respectful, courageous, truthful and forgiving? Even if we’re wrong, can you think of a better way to breathe than through all that?”
(p.139)

 

Do you ever notice how when you forget something and you are so focused on trying to remember that you can’t figure it out, but as soon as you stop focusing on it, you remember it later?

Often in those moments we focus on why we don’t understand why we couldn’t remember it. But isn’t it beautiful that all it took was time?

We knew the answer all along. We just needed to be patient with ourselves.

Patience is a bit of a dance. If we wait too long, we might lose our chance. If we don’t wait long enough, we might not even give ourselves a chance.

But it’s a dance we must live in if we want our lives to flow.

When we are taking our time, we are engaging in our parasympathetic nervous system. Our body is resting and relaxing.

When we are rushing, we are engaging in our sympathetic nervous system. Our body is on high alert, ready to fight, flight, or freeze.

While we might think going faster is more efficient, this creates stress in our bodies. The sympathetic nervous system redirects energy to fuel survival instincts, narrowing what skillsets we are able to access. Instead of being creative, curious, gentle, and open, we become rigid, impulsive, rough, and closed off.

Going faster can actually slow our growth down because we can no longer access everything we are capable of. The more we can invite our parasympathetic nervous system to be present, the more we can truly be aligned with who we are.

In the yoga sutra II.1, Patañjali describes the path to perfection as the need to purify body, speech, and mind. The niyama, tapas, is the self-discipline to make this commitment. This commitment requires us to realize that the journey is ongoing. Embodying patience reminds us to focus on the progress, not the endpoint, which helps us stay committed.

We can practice patience with our bodies by setting boundaries, allowing ourselves rest, and slowing down our breath to bring our parasympathetic nervous system into action.

We can practice patience with our speech by learning to listen first, thinking before we talk, and embracing silence.

We can practice patience with our mind by letting go of our ego, knowing there is always more to know, and focusing on the joy of learning, rather than the rewards.

We can only be as patient for others as we are for ourselves.

Consider this an invitation to go slower.

To let go of expectations. To embrace the sounds of silence. To take a deep breath.

Consider this an invitation to encourage others to go slower too.

The trouble isn’t that time constrains us, the trouble is that we let it.

The more we slow down and practice patience, the faster we will get to where we were meant to go.

I was playing would you rather with a student last week and they asked me, “Would you rather have a teacher that is a terrible teacher but is really kind, or a teacher that is amazing at teaching but super mean?” I felt humbled by the question and replied with the former. The student quickly replied, “Me too.”

Often we put so much pressure on ourselves and get caught up in trying so hard to be innovative and interesting, that we forget to remind ourselves that even if all you do is offer compassion to your students, you’re teaching well.

Growth requires taking risks, making mistakes, and accepting that there is always more to know. Compassion reminds us that we are loved regardless of our flaws, giving us the inner strength to be open to growth. If we want students to grow, we need students to feel compassion first.

If you were asked how often you gives students compassion, you undoubtedly would have an endless list of examples.

But if I asked you how often you give yourself compassion, how often would you really say?

Prior to the pandemic, teachers experienced as much stress as paramedics and police officers. The pandemic has increased the stress in an already stressful role, while preventing us from being able to connect with each other in usual ways.

Acknowledging this pain is the first step to accepting that you deserve compassion too.

In yoga, the niyama of ahimsa means, “non-violence.” We are connected to ourselves, each other, our environment, and the entire universe. Every action (or inaction) we take affects each one of those aspects.

When we practice compassion, others feel that compassion. When we find that peace within ourselves we inspire others to do the same.

The beauty of teaching is that is a way of being. Everything you need to be a teacher comes from within.

So let’s take the time to remind ourselves that. That we are loved. We are capable. We are brave.

That we are worthy of compassion too.

If we can give ourselves compassion, patience, and gratitude, if we can be vulnerable, sit in discomfort, and learn to accept both our strengths and our limitations on the mat, then we are much likely to embody those practices off the mat.

The more we can show compassion for ourselves, the more we can offer it to others too.

Compassion comes from our heart chakra, anahata. If receiving compassion is the foundation for learning, then compassion is quite literally the “heart” of teaching well.