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Balance In Breathe

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

Have you ever noticed the way you breath? The rhythm of it and how it ebbs and flows. Ever since I have started doing more and more Moksha Yoga, I have learnt more and more about the movement of breath through my body, my belly, chest, diaphragm, intercostal muscles, all the different assets of my body working together to create life.

I have noticed that holding my breath increases my stress levels. When you are in a yoga class, in the beginning of class, you are breathing normally, you actually pay attention to the way you breath. You are on your best behaviour, your in-breath is as long as your out-breath, and you try to keep your breath to 5 count length. But as class goes on, you falter. The room is getting hotter, your muscles are getting tired, and you do not care much about the breath. You have to ensure that you are keeping up with class, your reputation and pride is on the line.

It is at that point, you start holding your breath, you stop breathing altogether! The most crucial point of the class for you should be, when you stop breathing in a balanced manner. The more you can ensure that your breath is balanced at this point, the better you will be able to handle the rest of the class. This also translates into life. You will notice in high stress situations that you hold your breath. You start sighing or yawning, as your body tries to get more breath inside of you, more oxygen inside of you. Remember, that breathing in a balanced point anytime you feel otherwise, is the way you beat stress or hard yoga classes.

Another thing that comes up with me is that my in-breath is much shorter than my out-breath, and I need to make them equal in length in order to balance my breath. I am more of a giver than a receiver in life, and that shows up in my breath. I give out more than I take in. If that is the case with you, notice it, and correct it as often as you can. It will help you translate that effort into life – where you start receiving as much as you give. Have you noticed something about breath that you found interesting? Let me know.

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Yin yoga and settling into it

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Photo attributed to flickr user HDC Photography

I haven’t done a yin class in a while, and yin being my favourite, I really, really missed it. I went to yin on Sunday at an amazing studio downtown, Moksha Yoga on Wellington Street. I went into class, with pride in my heart. I have always loved yin and because of my love for it, I have always been rather good at it, if you can use the word good, for yoga. I have open hips and knees, that helps me go deeper into the poses. I can’t beat others on flexibility or strength, but I can on being able to bear the heat, and on yin yoga, in general.

I sat down in class, all gung-ho. I was going to beat everyone. I was going to be the best in class. Lalala. The beat of pride and enthusiasm was going to cloak any learning that I could have gotten from class. The class was an hour and a half long. For the first 15 minutes, I pushed myself. There was pain and there was no learning. I was hiding from the thoughts that were swirling around in my head. I didn’t want to concentrate on my body. I didn’t want to focus on the senses. I wanted to push myself through the pain and arrive triumphant on the other side, probably with a few injuries to boot.

But after half an hour of the power flow juice running through my veins, I calmed down. I relaxed. My hips relented. I relented. I was in the yin zone. I didn’t care about the pushing. Or pulling. I wanted to just feel the sensations, the energy running through my body. I felt all the other senses perk up, as I closed my eyes throughout the class, uninterested in seeing what everyone else was doing. The voice of the instructor calmed me, made me realize the futility of competition in a yin class. I succumbed to the energy that was trying to make me loose and gooey.

At the end of the class, I emerged triumphant but not against my body as I had begun, but against my body. The thoughts that had threathened to invade my peace, were all gone. All was quiet on the mind front. The battle had stalled for the moment. I was relaxed and I was ready for sleep.

Receiving is hard for me

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Photo attributed to Thenix

I have written about receiving from the universe before here. I realized though that I really have to force myself to receive. I was sitting in a meditation class, in a cross-legged position, and I had my palms on my knees, as if to protect them from damage. The teacher said, ‘Have your palms facing up, if you wish to receive energy and facing down, if you wish to give.’

I tried to turn my palms upside down, face them outwards towards the world, but it was seriously a mental and physical effort to do that. My hands would not move. When I was in the position to receive with my palms up, I was uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable. I looked uncomfortable to myself in the mirror. I wondered to myself, what the hell is going on? Why am I unable to receive energy? I have no trouble giving energy out, helping others, doing anything and everything for the people around me, but when it comes to receiving I have a real issue.

Why is that? I am a giver by nature, and I have been taught from the beginning of my life, by my parents that giving is good, taking is bad. Taking is selfish. My mother emulates that in her life everyday by giving everything she has, energy, time, money, even to people who do deserve it, even to people she dislikes, because it is good to give. My father does that everyday by giving all his energy, time and money to his businesses and his family, taking nothing for himself, because it is good to give.

They lament about the fact that they have a selfish daughter who doesn’t give, who doesn’t really take from them, but doesn’t really give back for all the years that she was dependent on them. I have learned slowly, but not completely, that giving is good, but there has to be a balance like everything else in life. You have to give as well as receive. You have to be comfortable doing both with equal intensities. You cannot be generous to the world and then refuse to take its presents and gifts to you. You cannot give away your energy to the world, and then refuse to take time to heal and rest yourself.

How are you with receiving and giving? What do you do more?

Hard Working or Only Working

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Photo attributed to flickr user robysaltori

I have been surrounded by so many people in my generation who believe in work-life balance, who like to work only as much as they need to, that I was really surprised when I met someone who wasn’t inclined to believe in the work-life balance. Who genuinely enjoyed working every day and the weekends and evenings. Who enjoyed missing lunches and eating dinners from a take-out box at work. Who hasn’t dated in years, and who hasn’t seen her friends in ages because she’s working so hard.

I was so surprised to meet someone like that, because I haven’t seen someone like that in ages. I guess, I have been systematically changing the people in life to the kind of people who actually genuinely enjoy life in balance. Who are self-sufficient because they work, but work isn’t their life. They have several interests outside of work, and they have several friends outside of work, whom they mingle with. They take vacations every year, and do not take pride in carrying three or four years of vacation over, because they just didn’t have ‘time’ to take their vacation.

I felt, maybe wrongly, but I felt that she was proud of herself, she was so happy with herself for being the kind of individual that her company could rely on. She felt needed perhaps. She felt happy that she was needed, maybe. I don’t know what she felt on the inside, but I know she portrayed the feeling of delight in missing her lunch, in complaining that she hasn’t had a vacation in years, that she hasn’t had a moment in the last three years that she hasn’t thought about work.

What do you think about Working and Only Working?

Do you believe in the hype of a strong core?

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Flickr photo attributed to mikebaird

I have always had a weak core – which has been a point of contention that I have with myself. I will not give up carbs, but I want a strong core. In the past few weeks, I have been noticing myself and my body a little bit more than I normally do. It is one of my new year’s resolutions that I am working on every minute of every day. I believe, if I do not know myself, I cannot progress in my goals.

I noticed that in February and March, I was teaching a lot of hot yoga. I taught six days a week, seven classes per week, for two months. I lost a lot of weight, but more importantly, my core was the strongest and sleekest it had ever been. I felt lighter, I felt stronger, and I felt like I had more energy than ever. I was able to sit for ten hours at a desk, and work productively, without losing steam in the afternoon, then go and teach two classes of yoga at night, and still have energy to go out dancing at night, before collapsing in a heap around four in the morning.

I stopped teaching so much yoga because it was all I did with my days, and as summer came along, I wanted more time to myself, more time for my own practice, and more time with friends and family. I wasn’t in balance.

I noticed that I gained some of the weight back, but more importantly, I gained some fat around my mid-section. I find that this little amount of fat that I have, really restricts my energy flow in more ways than I can delineate.

I am hungrier more often, I eat more than I normally do, I am guessing to feed the fat that is around my belly. I am not as efficient in yoga as I used to be, because my belly comes in the way. I can feel it restricting my movement, and my breath. I also feel my energy levels have gone down, because my body is not as sleek as it was a few months ago.

This really motivated me, because it confirmed even further the importance of having a sleek core. It is not just because it looks good, which it does. But because of the myriad factors of efficiency, strength, balance, and movement.

I am working diligently at taking care of my diet, and doing as much yoga as possible, to get back to that zone of toned belly and high energy.

What do you think of the hype around a strong core?

Balance – a lifelong journey

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Why is there such guilt associated in my head with liking someone? Of putting myself over my family. Am I just not important enough? What is this thing in the Asian culture of always putting the family over yourself, your needs and desires. Every time I like someone, I am in the honeymoon phase with them, I want to spend as much time as possible with them, I do. And then a massive dollop of guilt is just ladled over everything I do. I am unable to really, truly enjoy myself in his company because I am boggled by all of this guilt. Why am I feeling guilty, I wonder. Why am I not allowed to feel pleasure, to feel good? Does everyone on this planet have to be miserable together? Aren’t we allowed to be happy? Of course, it doesn’t make any sense.

I want balance in my life as does anyone else on this big, beautiful planet. We are all striving for balance. I find that it is truly hard to find a balance. I am either really skewed towards myself and my goals, or towards spending time with family or towards spending time with friends, or towards spending time with someone I’m dating. Those are the four areas of my life I struggle to balance out. With a limited amount of time on my hands, after a long day at work, I have a few choices I have to make. I can either de-stress from the day by going to a nice yoga class, after which I am too exhausted to make conversation or do anything, besides eat a hurried meal and go sleep. Or I can go home and have some conversation and maybe even have a meal before everyone hurries off into their own complicated, filled lives. Or I can spend some time with my friends or with the boy.

The options are limited, as time is limited. Balance is key. I do everything I can to ensure my health is up-to-date. But then I have to prioritize after that.

How do you prioritize the various important things in your life?

Finding balance

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I love my parents. I really do. Being in a nuclear family away from all of our extended family in India, living in the Middle East, I am close to my parents, extremely close to my siblings. I love them, but I cannot be the daughter they wish for me to be. I was hoping to have a balance of things, do all the things I wish to do in my heart, and still make sure that they are happy with my choices, but that balance is not to be. It is hard finding balance in life, it is hard enough without the external pressures that are constantly intruding upon you from your parents, family, friends, colleagues, media, role models, universe.

I want to live a different life. I find marriage to be such an antiquated boring way of living life. Of course, my parents have an argument for that. Right now you are young and hot, you are fine. As soon as you are old and ugly, no one will want you and then it will be hard for you to find a partner. Then, you will regret not finding someone then.

I find the modern view of success to be harmful to everyone around, environment, universe, self and family. My parents feel the only way I will ever find happiness, or be able to help the other poor souls on this planet is by becoming successful. My father says, you cannot help others, if you need help yourself. If you are poor, who are you going to help? The best way to help others is by becoming a millionaire, and then giving away your wealth, like Bill Gates is doing.

I believe the environment needs help right now. There is waiting, there is no debating whether global warming is happening or not, there is no later. Right now is when we need to start working on helping Mother Earth. My parents, especially my father, doesn’t see anything wrong with the way we treat the environment. He believes technology will always find an answer. There is nothing technology cannot do, he says proudly.

As you can see from the examples above, we are from opposite viewpoints. It is hard finding a balance, finding a meeting point, when we are so far apart in space, we can barely see each other.

I do not want to lose my relationship with my parents. They are important to me. But at the same time, I refuse, refuse, refuse to bend the way I want to live my life to their way, so I can keep our relationship intact. I refuse! I am going to live the way I want, without fear of criticism. I refuse to relent to pressure.

Non-relationship woes

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I am in a non-relationship right now. We are in that stage of the relationship where either party is wary to put a label on the relationship. We are ‘dating’. We are not exclusive. We are seeing other people. We are not there yet. The problem is that despite being really good on paper, I do not want this relationship to go anywhere. I do not want to be exclusive. I do not want to be a couple. I would rather we keep on going on like this. Having a physical relationship occasionally and going out to dinner maybe once or twice a month. I do not have the time or energy for a relationship. I do not want or need all my insecurities bought overboard to be thrown to the wolves. I want to be the strong, independent woman that I normally am, when I am not in a relationship.

But I know and I believe that human beings need to be in a relationship in order to be whole. In order to grow as a person, mature as a person, you need to feel the bumps and ruts of a relationship. Being single and alone is easy. You do not have to deal with any demons that you didn’t even know existed. I never knew until my first relationship that I was one of them, the insecure, jealous, possessive, double-standard girlfriend, who checked up his phone texts and emails without his knowledge to ensure he wasn’t cheating on her, when he gave her no indication that he was doing so. I never knew that I would start behaving like a psycho and drive away the guy when all I wanted was for him to love me forever. Crazy, but true. I wouldn’t have known that until I got into the relationship. Those two years is where most of my growth internally happened.

I also do not want to end up like those girls who are so comfortable being single that they are unable to even face the thought of being in a relationship. They drive away perfectly great mates, because they are not interested in being in a relationship. Balance is what I am striving for, as a good yogi should. Balance in all aspects of my life. I do not want to be muscular in one area, and puny in the other. Good relationships with family, friends and boyfriend is one of the items on my vision board.

I know that this one might not be the one, but I am not going to stop looking. I have to keep on going. That is the only way.