Breathe Through The Pain

Yoga is a breathing practice. We all hear this over and over again. However, if you are someone like me who practices Ashtanga and Vinyasa, you may realize at times that you are more caught up in the poses than concentrating on your breathing. This happens, against all your efforts. Yesterday, though, in my Ashtanga practice, I experienced what a strong breathing practice yoga is.

Yesterday someone who is very close to me, and my family passed away very suddenly. There were no sicknesses that gave us any warning, nothing… She was only my mom’s age… All deaths are hard for people who are left behind, and this one certainly shook us greatly/heavily. 

We heard the news yesterday, and since then I had been feeling like I can’t breathe. As if someone is sitting on my chest, and not allowing me to take deep breaths, or give out long exhales. I was feeling like I could only take short inhales, leaving me feeling like I can’t breathe. When I woke up this morning, it was hard to get out of bed. It was as if I had balls and chains attached to both my ankles, and I had to drag them with me every step I take. I felt heavy and lethargic. Nevertheless, I got dressed and went to mysore class to do my daily Ashtanga practice.  I had already told my teacher about the devastating news the night before. I needed someone to know my pain…

When I came up on my yoga mat, and started practicing, I was practicing and thinking that I was breathing just fine, until my teacher walked up to me and gently said “long exhales”. I let out a long exhale, and that’s when I realized that I was still holding my breath… It was as if I was afraid of giving out long exhales, because I didn’t know what else I would be letting out if I allow myself to let go… My teacher whispered in my ear, “Your practice and breath are stable enough. So today your practice is to keep her in your heart and in your mind during your practice. Let it pour out”. As soon as I thought of her, it was like opening the doors of a dam… Wow… how much was I holding in? Tears rolled down my eyes. I was trying to breathe while I was crying and my whole body was shaking because I was still trying to hold back. The tears were rolling down my cheeks, and I was holding myself not to let out a cry.  I literally couldn’t breathe. One thing you can’t do without, when you are practicing yoga, is breathing. “Long exhales”, I reminded myself. My body already knows the whole primary series, so I directed all my attention and awareness to my breathing. And my practice turned into a breathing practice.

All my concentration and awareness were on my breath. In every single pose, I was in the pose but already forgotten about the pose; I was just trying to lengthen my breathing. I was counting my inhales, and exhales. Inhaling in five counts and exhaling in five counts every time. My body already knew the poses; I didn’t need to worry about getting in the pose. What I didn’t know how to do today was breathing. It wasn’t easy… It wasn’t easy to keep her in my mind and heart, and still breathe smoothly…

I realized that the past two days I have been dealing with the situation and keeping a straight face by not thinking about her… The knowledge was in my head, but I was pushing away the feelings in order to get through the minutes, the hours and the day. However, right now I was thinking about her and trying to soften every part of my body, especially my throat and breathing… I realized that that’s the actual practice of working on your feelings. Allowing those feelings to stay on the surface, simultaneously softening your throat and your face, and breathe smoothly, letting those feelings go through the whole body with every inhale, and release it out with every exhale.

Even while I was in Savasana I had a moment where I couldn’t breathe and felt like I was choking again… My teacher came and touched my throat, “soften here” he said. I softened my throat and there it was: the key to breaking out of the feeling of choking, and figuring out how to breathe again was softening your throat.

My practice lasted two hours and I didn’t even realize how time passed. Every day my practice lasts two hours, and at the end I always feel exhausted. I always feel the hard work of the past two hours. Today, I was feeling soft. Emotionally drained, but at the same time soft and refreshed.  I didn’t feel like the practice lasted two hours. It was as if I went on a journey through time, and I was waking up two hours later feeling lighter than the way I did two hours ago…

I poured my sadness, devastation, and heavy load of the feeling of helplessness out with my breathing all through out my practice. Since after the practice I can breathe better, and I keep reminding myself to lengthen my breathing… I breathe through the pain; I let it travel to every part of my body, let myself feel the pain, and then with an exhale release that pain keeping my throat, my face, my fingertips as soft as possible…

In Ashtanga practice, even though we may do the same poses over and over again day in and day out, what we practice may change. And these days my main practice is breathing… breathing through the pain…

Attachment

            Yesterday I woke up with an excruciating knee pain. I couldn’t bend my knee, I couldn’t put any weight on my leg, I was hardly able to walk, I couldn’t climb up the stairs. I was in so much pain that even when I was just standing still, it hurt. My eyes got watery. I tried to push through the pain and went to the office, but I realized there’s no way I could sit there with that pain. I was so upset and frustrated with myself and with my body. The doctor at the office building took me to a hospital. I got a shot to ease the pain or relieve the muscles. I was sent home to rest for two days.

            During this time, many thoughts came to my mind, running one after the other, and I went through an emotional roller coaster. The first thing that came to my mind was that I wasn’t going to be able to practice yoga. I didn’t know for how long, but just realizing I wasn’t going to be able to practice asana hit me hard. It hit me so hard, that I couldn’t control myself and started crying. I was feeling devastated. What if I could never practice asana, what then? Then I realized how devastated I was feeling, and that got my attention. Why was I so devastated? My knee pain was not a life changing experience. I was in a lot of pain, and yes it did look like it is going to take a while for it to heal and get better, but it was going to get better. So, what hit me so hard that I felt so beaten up? That’s when I realized how much I was attached to my yoga practice…

            I had come to define myself through yoga. A practitioner of asana and Yoga. People define themselves in many ways: a banker, a doctor, a wife, a husband, an athlete, beautiful, handsome, strong, rich, poor, etc. Many people define themselves with what they do, or what they have in their lives. What happens when you lose the things that you defined yourself with? Let’s say your company was downsizing and you were let go, what if you get old and you don’t have your good looks anymore, what if you loose all your money because the goverment takes it all from you, then what? Who are you then? If you have defined yourself through what you do or what you have, then when you can’t do those things or have those things anymore you lose a big part of the definition you had made up for yourself. Without that part, who are you?

             I realized today that I define myself as a yoga lover, and a practitioner. It’s a big part of who I am. I live by it, I talk about it, I really made it a big part of my life and who I am. I define myself through it. I see myself that way, and since there are not that many people interested in yoga and its teachings in my social circle, people now know me that way too. They come to talk to me about it, ask  questions, want advice. So, today, when I woke and I wasn’t even able to bend my knee without feeling an excruciating  pain, it got me thinking “if I can’t practice yoga, then who am I?”

            I realized that when I was trying to practice non-attachment, I was actually still practicing attachment, just not to the things I used to… It’s as if an addict gives up one addiction, and picks up another one. Just because practicing yoga is healthier on the body and mind, doesn’t mean that it can’t become an addiction. If I feel devastated that I can’t practice yoga for a few weeks, than by definition, it has become an addiction.

            When there is addiction, there is a fear of losing. Fear of losing my health, fear of not being able to practice, fear of not getting better. Fear of not being able to regain my self-concept, the way it used to be. The ground is pulled under you all of a sudden, and I wanted to get it underneath my feet again, to feel secure, like it was the day before… But that’s where I was wrong. As if the day before the ground was still underneath my feet….

When things are fine, we buy into the illusion that we are in control, and life is going the way we want it, and as long as we stay in control we can assure to make things keep going well for us. And then one morning, you wake up with a pain that you don’t even know where it comes from, the way I did today. And you realize that you actually never had that ground underneath you. You never had the control. You always live in uncertainty but it is easier to believe that we stand on a secure ground. Otherwise living knowing that all is uncertain and impermanent and changing constantly is tiring, and gets us to rush to hold on to something. Why is there fear of uncertainty? Why is there constant desire to control things, when we know that we can’t? My department in our firm had 17 people only 14 months ago, and now there is only 2 associates (including myself) working in my department. The rest was either let go by the company or they quit. My grandmother died only a few weeks ago, after a very successful surgery. I woke up with a knee pain that prevented me from even walking or bending my knee without even presenting any signs recently. We are not in control; we just like to think that we are, because then we feel safe somehow…

Today I realized that I had to let go. I had to accept my pain. I had to accept that my grandmother passed away and there is nothing I can do. I had to accept that having fear of the unknown future would not help me. I had to accept that I defined myself through yoga. By attaching myself to my yoga practice, I was disguising my “attachment” need from myself. This incident brought it up to daylight. I had to accept that this incident today hurt me a lot, more emotionally than physically actually, because it brought me face to face with the inner workings of my mind. It wasn’t pleasant to see that side of me, and how much I wasn’t practicing spirituality. However, maybe it was about time that I face it, and acknowledge it.

Once you come to accept yourself as who you are or your situation the way it is, you feel calm and at peace. Maybe not for long, but definitely long enough for you to have a taste of it.

            “What we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends. What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck.” (When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron).