Taken with a grain of salt

Grain of Salt ~ Issue No. 1

I think I love Yoga because I’m really not naturally "zen" (at least, not on the inside). Like, at all. I’m not the person who was born calm and found yoga as a complement to an already peaceful inner world.

I found it because I needed it – because my brain moves fast and after years, and more years, of being wired to achieve goals I felt like I "should" have, my nervous system needed somewhere to land. The practice didn’t come easy. It still doesn’t!! Which is probably why I trust it. So many sayings explain this - "good things take time", "nothing worth having comes easy", "smooth seas don't make skilled sailors", you know, those kinds of sayings. All are actually rooted in science. There's a psychological concept called effort justification - where we tend to value things more when they cost us something. The harder you work for it, the more meaningful it becomes. Which is why the practices that came easy never stick, and the one that didn't... did. 

*Now, does that mean everything "good" costs us something? Maybe a topic for another week... 

But, precisely because of this, I’m also skeptical of it . And from this was born a tension between trusting and questioning. That tension has never fully resolved – and honestly, I’ve stopped expecting it to. Or even wanting it to.

This practice is genuinely profound. But, the culture around it runs deep, and can be a lot to digest. Both things are true and I hold them at the same time – which is actually something the philosophy itself asks you to do. Hold complexity. Sit with contradiction. Don’t flatten things just because it's more comfortable for the time being.

The philosophy underneath it though – that part I keep coming back to. Not because it’s ancient or poetic or cool to say in Sanskrit (all true!). Because it’s actually useful. It shows up in arguments and bad weeks and moments where I genuinely can’t figure out why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling. What it really does is it gives me a language to express what I used to think were un-expressible thoughts, feelings, and reaction. With the 1) language to express these, and 2) knowledge that these are relatable, collective experiences, the baggage that comes with simply being a human being starts to feel approachable. Familiar rather than scary; uniting rather than isolating; Resonant rather than foreign.

But I’ve learned to hold it loosely.

Aka, take it with a Grain of Salt.

Now, lets back up a bit - Saltwater itself. By literal definition, water with something in it – unfiltered, raw, but still clear. It doesn’t pretend to be something easier than it is. And it works slowly. So slowly that most of the time we don't even notice it happening. But, over time, it wears away at whatever it touches (stone, shell, shoreline... beliefs, doubts, Ego), until the real thing appears. It does this work in what seems like random patterns, but is really a rhythmic, ritual governed by forces we still theorize and research. It purifies, gets below the surface, and then reflects that depth to the outside world (read more about these three pillars here)

And so... Saltwater; Not yoga philosophy made more palatable or easier to swallow; But rather, philosophy, served with the questioning that comes with it, held honestly. The parts that are beautiful and the parts that are hard and the parts that show up unexpectedly on a random Wednesday when you least expect them. The ones that get us to dive a little bit deeper into ourselves.

Who's the agent doing the work here though? The one doing the real, nitty-gritty, work? Well, all of those tiny grains of salt, that's who! The purifying agents, the artists that slowly reveal the inner world of their canvas. They're my reminder to stay a little skeptical – of ideas, of Ego, of my thoughts at 2am, anxious and worried, and my thoughts at 10am, dialed-in and confident. Skepticism, not for the sake of combat, or of tension, but for the sake of noticing, honoring, and then sending on its way. Of asking the question to simply observe the response, not to get attached to the output. For the sake of digging deeper.

What's really cool here, though, is that yoga philosophy actually already has a word for this. Viveka – one of the foundational concepts in Vedantic thought, translated roughly as discernment - the ability to distinguish what’s real from what’s been layered on top of it. What’s true from what’s just familiar. It’s not cynicism. It’s clarity. The practice of looking at something you love or hate or don't even know how you feel about, and still asking – is this feeling actually true, or does it just feel good to believe? 

That’s the Grain of Salt. It was actually built into the philosophy itself!! Which reassures that same feeling - of finally having the language to describe what's going on in my head and in my heart, while also proving that it's not only me who thinks and feels that way. My questioning led me to discovering that questioning is inherent in the practice; a spiral, full circle moment of sorts.

Now, getting down to what you can actually expect from this thing:

At the beginning of every class that I teach, I do what's called centering, or a Dharma talk - Most days, my style is to use these first few minutes to take a concept from the philosophy and relate it to “real” life. Not abstractly. Think less world-peace-esque and more like, here’s what this means for what you're literally and physically doing on the mat, how it relate to the movement part of practice, and how it could show up in your actual life off of the mat. (you'd be surprised how I can find relationships & patterns between your hamstring stretch and your moral compass...). For a while, I didn’t realize I had much to say beyond those first few minutes. 

But, the talks kept going after class ended. In my head, in conversations, in the notes app on my phone at random hours. I’d say something on the mat and spend the rest of the day playing devils advocate with myself, sometimes figuring out if I actually believed it. Turns out there’s a lot more underneath these ideas than a few minutes allows for – and apparently, I have opinions (or at least questions...) about all of it.

So this is where that goes... just, the longer version. The part where I'm truly not performing, and laying out my unfiltered first draft (well, aside from spellcheck) - just me thinking out loud. Where I admit that I teach this stuff and I’m still getting it wrong. I personally find that more interesting than pretending otherwise. Maybe you to too, or maybe you disagree. Even better. Just you opening up that dialogue with yourself is my hope by sharing these.

But wait, why do you care? What do you get out of all of this? I don't know! That's up to you! You might not, or might not know. But even realizing that is data, collected from a conversation with yourself.

If nothing else, consider this: it can be messy and still true. You don’t have to have it figured out to have something worth saying - and so, here I am, saying it!! Yoga is life because life is Yoga... because the point of both is simply to experience yourself. To ask the questions during this weird, crazy human experience. To experience the experience! To find aliveness in the joy, the pain, the silly, the spiritual... to ask the damn questions, and maybe most importantly, to be okay if the answer never comes.