What Yoga Teaches Us About Uncertainty (Season 7, Episode 24)

I think it’s fair to say that I’m not the biggest fan of uncertainty. I mean, is anyone? In this time when uncertainty is more apparent than usual, I’m digging into what yoga teaches us about it — and how you can draw on the tools I bet are already in your toolbox to support you.

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Transcript

(00:05):
Welcome to Love, Curvy Yoga, the podcast where sitting with uncertainty is among our least favorite things, but we’re working on it. Now let’s get into it.

(00:21):
Hi, Anna here. Okay. Let’s do our check-in. How are you feeling? And what do you need in your body? Ooh, I just did a little check-in at the same time as you and I do not feel like I’ve been asking myself these questions enough this past week. It feels really easy for me to check out from them right now. Uh, not even consciously so much, but I would say for me it feels like being in my body is more work than usual. It requires more conscious effort than it has in the pre pandemic past, let’s say. So I am still doing my best to not be hard on myself about that and just, you know, maybe with a sigh come back again. Okay. So up next in our main segment, living with uncertainty

(01:30):
[MUSIC]

(01:34):
When I sat down to think about what I wanted to talk about this week, I realized the thing I’ve been working on personally in many ways lately is also what I’ve been hearing from many people, which is how do we live with this level of uncertainty. I was going to say, how do we accept it or get comfortable with it, but let’s just be real and start where we are. I was listening to a podcast not too long ago with the yoga teacher Kaya Mendlin and in the episode she said this line that I really liked, she said “yoga is a letting go program,” and I just thought, yes, that is so true and I’ve experienced this in a lot of different ways over the years.

(02:25):
I would say probably the most obvious way is how yoga helped me let go of my ideas about what my body should or shouldn’t look like or do and that particular letting go is always in process in one way or another. But it’s one I can see more clearly and directly. I think the question is how and why is yoga a letting go program? What does it teach us and why? Well, there’s a lot to this, but let’s just start on the yoga mat. I think that will be a good example. I think many people, definitely me, come to yoga, came to yoga, ready to push themselves and just do a lot. And of course we do because we learned that in our culture, right? But at some point, whether quickly or much later, as is the case for me, we find out that that strategy doesn’t really work. Maybe you push too far and you get injured or maybe you start to have a better, just a better sense of your body over time and realize that pushing wasn’t working even if you didn’t get physically injured.

(03:45):
I think for many people, as you refine your ability to notice what is happening in your body over time, you come more into the present moment. So rather than wondering what’s next, assuming what’s coming and jumping ahead to that pose, et cetera, you pay attention to the teacher’s or your own invitation to notice what’s happening, to your breath as you hold a challenging pose, or to soften your jaw in Savasana even though you already thought you were relaxed. In other words, you come more into the present moment where there’s really little available besides letting go because past and future aren’t there. We are simply here.

(04:38):
On another podcast I listened to a while ago, the yoga and Ayurveda teacher, Myra Lewin, talked about each Isvarapranidhana, which is one of the niyamas. And we’ve talked some about the yamas and niyamas, which are the first two limbs of the eight limbs of yoga here on the podcast. So just a quick little reminder: the yoga teacher, Donna Farhi translates the niyamas as codes for living soulfully, which I really like, and Isvarapranidhana is often translated through some combination of surrender, letting go, Donna Farhi has it as celebration of the spiritual. So circling back to this podcast with Myra Lewin. She said “acceptance is letting go of the resistance,” and I just thought, okay, I am really good at resistance, especially resisting uncertainty. If I am inside of a paper bag, I will make a Google spreadsheet. I plan my way out of it. I am somewhat notorious for my organizing/planning skills among people in my life. But guess what? Planning in an uncertain situation can only take you so far. And look, I hate to say that! It literally makes me so sad and angry, but it is inherent in its very nature. There’s something un-pin-downable, unplannable about uncertainty, something uncontrollable, something that requires space and presence and letting your shoulders drop down even a centimeter away from your ears.

(06:33):
One of my favorite yoga teachers is Erich Schiffmann and in his book, Moving into Stillness, I think he says this really well. So he says, “you surrender your best sense of what to do or not to do and instead trust in the flow of being. This is when yoga becomes more than practice and practices and becomes your way of life. Then you realize there’s no such thing as practice. Never was. There’s only the real thing ever and always.”

(07:07):
And then I as I was preparing for this episode, I came across something from the meditation teacher, Tara Brach, who you probably know that I love, and she said something similar with a slightly different spin in one of her podcasts from a few months back. So she said “on the spiritual path, we’re not getting anything new. We’re not learning, we’re not building up anything much. We’re actually in a process of remembering, reconnecting, rebuild, belonging to what’s always and already here.”

(07:43):
It all brings us right back to the most frustrating and truest thing, doesn’t it? Planting ourselves right where we are: back in being, back in embodiment, back in breath, using all of that to inform our path. And I am certainly not saying that planning is pointless. You will pry that from my cold dead hands! But rather that when uncertainty is uncomfortable, it’s in large part because it feels like there’s no ground beneath our feet. When we get so caught up in what was or what might be that of course we don’t like it, but if we can start using the tools we’ve learned on the mat, making the next right move, taking a deep breath, placing our feet, noticing what we’re feeling and aligning from there then we’ll remember that we do have some ideas of how to live with uncertainty after all.

(08:51):
Okay. Up next. A few reminders.

(08:53):
[MUSIC]

(09:05):
Okay. Reminder, uncertainty sucks. For many of us, we do not have to pretend like that’s not true because that would not be honest, but it being hard doesn’t mean we can’t also find ways to support ourselves. In fact, it means doing so can be a huge gift because what is truer than acknowledging something’s hard and then finding ways to still take care? As you know I hate but need to be reminded of often — it’s a both/and.

(09:43):
Okay, so some logistical reminders since June is just a few days away. I know I can’t process that either. I wanted to share what we’ll be exploring in our online studio. So our theme in June, I surveyed our members, and this is what people chose. It’s going to be learning to hear your body better through yoga. So I think this is pretty well related to what we’ve talked about here today actually.

(10:12):
So when you want to learn how to hear your body better through yoga, there are lots of different doorways that you can go through, but not every door works as well for every person at every time. So for example, sometimes the door of rest can be very beneficial. Other times the door of movement is a better fit. The point isn’t that you’re going to find one door and always go through that door. Rather, it’s helpful to explore many different doors so you can discover what each one has for you. By doing that, you increase the options you have of where you can turn when you’re wanting to listen to your body. So in June we’re going to explore six different doorways.

(10:59):
On Mondays it’s going to be practice. So we’re going to explore on Mondays the process that we call Curvy Yoga Practice around here. And that involves four components: presence, get curious, challenge and affirm. On Tuesdays we’ll be exploring the doorway of strength. So investigating what messages your body has for you when you work on building strength, including noticing any places that you run into resistance. So Wednesdays is going to be sensation. Experimenting with noticing how your body feels and responding to that. Thursdays is flow: so getting curious about how you listen to your body when you’re on the move. Fridays is rest: noticing what your body has to say when you it a chance to relax. And Saturday is going to be choice — so inquiring about what your body needs in any given moment and then meeting those needs. And on Sundays as always, we will have a new practice.

(12:09):
So if you are a Studio member, you can look for that on June 1st. That’ll be right there on the site or the app, depending on what you’re doing. If you are not yet a member and that sounds like something that’s right up your alley, you can join us at curvyyoga.studio and use the code C U R V Y to save 50% off your first month.

(12:33):
So questions, comments, ideas, please send them my way. podcast@curvyyoga.com. And we will close with one breath together here. We’ll inhale and exhale. The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste.

(12:52):
[MUSIC]

(13:01):
Stay tuned next week. I have no certainty about wha