Day 13: First Step to a Higher Self is Hairy Armpits.

Day 13:

So I have to admit, I went with my uncle Mark to a hot yoga class today. Not Bikram! Just hot yoga. It was a really beautiful class and very energizing. At no point did I feel overheated and the teacher had a nice, soothing voice. So different from Bikram that I was pleasantly surprised! At one point, she instructed us to use straps, of which I declined. She was surprised and tried to convince me that it will take me further and deepen my stretch. Yet, I was not inclined as I heard Shakti’s voice in my head saying, “Never go further than your body will allow. If your body doesn’t go there naturally, don’t force it!” So I sat happily in Pigeon, looking up to the ceiling, and had a great stretch anyway! I’m really glad I went. Hot Yoga is definitely different than Bikram; a lot more spiritual and smooth. My uncle is a pro too! He’s probably more flexible than I am!  I like to be open to go to hot yoga classes or even Bikram classes so I don’t feel a ‘holier-than-thou’ mind concept going on. That is something I want to avoid completely. I do things that I may be against or participate in things I have banned once in a while, just to reassure myself that I am doing the right thing (in my mind) in banning it or to stretch my mind and maybe change my opinion! Know your enemies better than your friends right? Haha! I love integrating Machiavelli into everyday life.  : { --> thats my mustache man evil face.

Sometimes, I have a problem being obedient to authority figures. I love how Ruth serves Shakti in setting up the computer, getting her water, and I think that’s great! However, I could never see myself doing that for a teacher. For one, I don’t want to be perceived as brown-nosing; which I don’t think Ruth is because she is as genuine as one can get. And for two, I just don’t see myself as being that obedient student who sits at the front of the class and caters to a teacher’s every need. Yet, these reactions are just fears. I fear being perceived as a brown-noser; I fear diminishing myself as I serve the teacher. My ego holds me back from putting myself on a lower pedestal than her. I am afraid of what people would think of me if I became the ‘servant’ the ‘obedient one’. This is also remnant of elementary school and how everyone hated the Teacher’s Pet. It’s cool to be disobedient. It’s cool to have a huge ego. It’s cool to not change! Isn’t that interesting, how from a very age, we are encouraged to be selfish and hate the person who acts different from everyone else? 

Shakti was talking about obedience today in a general sense. She said that from any fear or insecurity stems ego-tistical violence and anger. If you refuse to be obedient it is because of the fear of losing yourself, and that’s a weakness. It’s a weakness because you are being controlled by your ego and it’s fear of being perceived as something less than you are. You are afraid of what other people will think of you. If you want to learn in your own way and stop listening to other people’s direction, it’s a result of you not being able to accept change. You are being controlled by other people and your ego’s need to be seen a certain way. Your ego doesn’t really even care what you are truly, it only cares about how you are SEEN! Depth has no meaning to your ego unless it wants other people to see you as a deep, spiritual thinker. 

The higher self, on the other hand, does not care what other people think. It does not care how it looks to other people. If you quiet your ego, and stop caring about how you are perceived, obedience is beautiful. You obey, you serve because you genuinely want to honour that person. It’s not a way of diminishing yourself, because ‘yourself’ is committed to honouring people and part of being authentic to yourself is serving. If you are powerful, meaning you push away the insecurities of your ego, then you can be authentically obedient. You won’t care what other people think of you; you’ll just think of how you can serve this person wholly. 

As a yoga teacher, this is very important because the teacher needs to put away their ego during the class, and serve the students by teaching them the instructions of the yoga practice. What if a yoga teacher constantly thought, “Oh how do I look? Do they think I’m a flake?” The instructions would suffer because the teacher would be consistently somewhere else, and the students would feel really disconnected because of it. 

So here I go. Quiet my ego. Quiet my mind. I do not care what other people think. 

I’m not shaving at all anymore. Hello, hairy body! 

Take that ego! 

First step to a higher self are hairy armpits. 

DAY 12: stress and yoga don't mix..

Day 12:

Meditation isn’t about going somewhere else or having an out of body experience. It’s not about transporting yourself to another dimension or concentrating on elevating your body above the ground. Meditation requires you to stay in the moment; to be aware of your surroundings and stay conscious in the living world around you. It’s imperative to stay in the moment; there is no past or future. When meditating, watch your thoughts pass through your mind. Don’t ignore your thoughts or push them away; which is what I usually do. Instead, just become the observer of your thoughts, don’t give them any extra energy and then watch them float away. Observe your actions and thoughts in your mind in order to see life through your own eyes and not through the ones you have been programmed to see through cultural conditioning. You can either sit and observe then dismiss all thoughts or you can reflect on one issue in your life that is troubling or significant. When concentrating on this thought, bring the issue into your hand (mentally) to make it smaller than you think it is and take responsibility for the issue. The effects of meditation can create a calmer, clearer mind, more compassion for other people’s actions, and a decreased sense of self-absorption. In meditation, the ego is quieted because of the act of observation; increasing one’s ability to separate the self from the body and gain a recognition of other people’s lives will continue without you. 

OKAY,

LETS 

TALK

ABOUT 

STRESS.... 

ah jeez.. i’m already getting stressed out...

In modern day society, specifically in developed countries, people can’t seem to find an off-switch for their stress responses; it goes NON-STOP! Some stress can be healthy; a moderate amount of stress that is temporary helps keep the body’s ‘fight or flight’ reaction sharpened. However, when there is too much stress in someone’s life, the body begins shutting down the immune system (one of the many), making you more prone to diseases. It can affect your digestive systems, causing constipation or your endocrine system, causing an irregular release of hormones. Too much stress can also affect your sex life and your sexual drive. It can also give you a pounding heart, an irregular beat, and high blood pressure. If you are in a lower social rank than you are also more prone to higher stress levels and disease. A study done revealed that stressed rats’ brain cells were extremely smaller than the normal rats. The stress shrunk the memory part of the brain, indicating that stress can cause difficulty in remembering the simplest things. Did you ever stay up really late to study for an exam the next day? Remember feeling stressed because it was one of the only times you’ve studied for this hard exam? The next day, you go to write the exam, then all of a sudden you draw a blank. You studied for 8 hours last night! How could you not remember? It’s because you were so stressed out that the cells in your brain shrunk causing you to lose your capacity to remember those facts. 

For people in a lower social ranking, the brain doesn’t receive as much dopamine (the pleasure-giving hormone) that people do in middle or upper class. This could be the case in the ghetto, where things are often half-heartedly done, because the doers don’t receive as much satisfaction in cleaning up their yards. It doesn’t matter to them because they have other stressors that cause them to overlook the simpler things. In contrast, the richer neighbourhoods are often dotted with nicer, clean yards because people gain pleasure from them. Weight gain is also related with stress and people’s  status in rank. A person in a lower rank is more apt to gain weight distributed around their middle due to stressors and lifestyles. This is also due to the fact that people in a lower class find more pleasure in eating lots of food than in their everyday lives. Eating is then the most satisfying activity that they could do and so they get fat! 

Scientifically speaking, long-term stress can shorten your telomeres, the caps on the end of your DNA strands. This can cause serious aging even when you are young. 

An absence of long-term or elevated stress levels is so beneficial to your everyday lifestyle. A low amount of stress helps lower blood pressure, help weight loss, encourage career and social growth, strengthen family relationships, as well as creating a harmonious environment where your body’s systems (immune, reproductive, digestive, endocrine) can function without being inhibited by stressors.