Inversions

“What we do accumulates, the future is the result of what we do right now.”

Pema Chodron

In my early twenties, I got stuck in a blizzard on the New York State thruway while driving home from a trip to Cleveland. It was late at night and the driving was treacherous, with white out conditions and snow piling up quickly. It was nearly impossible to see the road and, given it was a remote area, I had no other option but to keep driving. The only thing that kept me on the road were the taillights of the tractor trailer ahead of me and the deep ruts its tires made in the snow as we inched along the interstate. With a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel, I focused on those taillights and navigated those ruts for at least two hours until I finally reached my exit and made it home safely.

Being in a rut is typically not an ideal situation, but during that snowstorm it kept me on the road. In general, we feel “stuck” in a rut when a thought, habit, or even a lifestyle becomes burdensome or uninspiring. Any experience that is pleasurable can become boring and dull, and even painful, when it is repeated too often. That Greek salad you looked forward to every Friday isn’t as tasty after a few months. Or the excitement you felt your first day in a volunteer position dulls to monotony once you master the assigned tasks. All of us are subject to the emotional pendulum that swings between pleasure and pain, bringing us to the heights of attraction, only to eventually pull us down into feelings of disappointment.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the fluctuations between pleasure and pain are seen as the cause of suffering as they disrupt our sense of calm and create an unsettling atmosphere that keeps our minds churning. Patanjali calls these mental fluctuations kleshas, which in Sanskrit translates to “affliction”. Kleshas are described as part of our physical and mental nature that are hard wired into our human condition. Although Patanjali distinguishes different types of kleshas, as a group they refer to patterns of attachment, aversion, and a fear of loss. We experience them as a strong pull on our behavior, such as the desire to have something or be someone (attachment), or the fear that makes us flee from painful experiences (aversion). Kleshas are based in ignorance that is rooted in our inability to discern the true nature of things and are tinged with a fear of loss or death.

These disruptive mental fluctuations start when we act on the feeling of the klesha, and then its power over us is reinforced by the emotionally charged memory of that experience. For example, the experience of humiliation in a school play forms a painful memory that sets in motion a lifetime of fear of public speaking—the sway of the klesha of aversion. Wanting to avoid the pain from that one negative and brief experience in childhood can lead to a fear of all future instances of speaking in front of a group. Even though one may be good at public speaking, each instance will be evaluated through the filter of that initial humiliation and perceived as a disaster, reinforcing the fear and aversion.

In yoga philosophy, memories that carry the emotional impact of a previous experience are referred to as samskaras. They are impressions that may or may not reflect reality but have a strong influence over us due to the strength of their emotional “charge”. Not all memories become samskaras. Only those that are associated with the kleshas become samskaras, such as the hankering for pleasure based on a remembrance of a previous pleasure, or anger that festers around the memory of a hurt from long ago. Due to their deeply emotional nature, samskaras are powerful, creating deeply embedded grooves in our behavior that draw us into the sweeping fluctuations of the kleshas.

Samskaras are what get us stuck in ruts. Their origins may or may not be in our awareness, but their pull is quite powerful. They trick us into thinking that we are in control of our behavior when, in fact, they keep us caught in the sway of the kleshas. I worked for a woman whose father abandoned her when she was 4 years old. She was typically quite charming but could also be quite cruel. Without provocation, she would lash out and berate her best employees, seeming to do everything in her power to get them to quit. Although she recounted the story of her traumatic abandonment freely to anyone who listened, she flatly denied that her fear of loss held any influence over her tyrannical and erratic behavior. Instead, she attributed her outbursts as a justifiable and necessary reaction to the incompetence of her staff.

How do we break free from the pull of the kleshas, especially when these memories, the samskaras, associated with them lie buried deep within us and have such a strong influence over our behavior? The deep grooves of samskaras show up as patterns throughout our lives that can be found in our thinking, behavior, even in our bodies as tension and discomfort. The first step is to identify these patterns so that we can find a new way to respond and break out of the endless grooves that create disruption in our lives. We loosen their grip when we notice, taking a step back from our reactions, and creating some space between stimulus and response.

Patanjali set forth the eight limbed path of yoga in theYoga Sutras as a systematic way of breaking free of the pull of the kleshas. But if a deep dive into Classical Yoga is a bigger hurdle than you would like to tackle, a regular yoga practice can offer some clues, provided you are ready to notice. A yoga practice is rich with patterns, found in both the asanas themselves as well as in how they are strung together. Once we notice a pattern, we can then see how we react. Perhaps we dread a certain pose because we feel wobbly. By noticing those feelings of dread, we can take a breath, pause, and wonder what changes we might make to feel stable. Can we tweak the back foot? Can we step out wider? Noticing gives us the opportunity to disrupt the pattern and create a new way of reacting that starts to settle the swing of the emotional pendulum.

We also become more sensitive to patterns when we practice taking a different perspective. Inversions are a particular category of poses that, by positioning our head lower than our heart, help us to look at the world differently, to see new patterns. The goal of inversions is not to get into crazy poses that are “Facebook” worthy, but to notice how you react when you look at the world through a different lens. I invite you to notice how you approach inversions in your practice. Do you wish you could “look” a certain way or can you simply delight in how the pose feels? Can you remain lighthearted when you stumble in a balancing pose? Or do you sit out a pose, refusing to try out fear of failure? Remember, there is no judgment, just noticing. The power of the kleshas are certain to show up when we practice these challenging poses. And, as always, there will be plenty of modifications that will make the poses accessible for everyone.