Do We Really Need More Boundaries?
Photo Credit: Lee Jordon
Recently, I was asked if I felt that yoga was actually (perhaps) an imposition on natural, organic movement. I think it depends. For those super-attuned people who are aware of what feels healing for them based on previous experience or understanding, maybe yoga is an imposition creating boundaries that actually stifle free movement and flow. Maybe.
In my humble experience, the boundaries offered by yoga, specifically the technology of Anusara® yoga, gave me my first taste of freedom and the most interior expansion I’ve ever known. To that point, dear friend and colleague Christina Sell points out, “…when I use the word ‘practice,’ I am not referring only to asana. For me, practice involves an approach to life that is anchored in a commitment to see clearly and to act from that vision. Practice, for me, includes but is not limited to, asana, pranayama, meditation, what I eat, how I eat, why I eat, observing myself, my thoughts, my actions, my reactions, my responses, the cultivation of compassion for myself and others, study, serving, being a friend, a mate, a daughter, a sister and so on.”
All of the aforementioned “practices” are boundaries of a sort. All require observation, a crucial boundary. We must be watching if we are to make progress in our process. We have to be able to SEE what it is that isn’t serving us. When we think we will fail, we do. And to change that pattern, we must first observe that our thoughts are leaning toward failure. Then we can create the conditions for a shift from doubt to gratitude.
Having been taught by Dr. Douglas Brooks that boundaries can be exquisite pathways to a greater freedom, I’ve been looking at what behaviors aren’t working. The highest on my list: rushing. Haste. I’ve been looking at how a boundary refinement of my own needs to happen. And there’s only one that I want to mention here. It helps us all move from haste–in our bodies, minds, and hearts–to a place of much more presence.
It’s called pacing: pacing of my breathing; pacing of the intervals between my thoughts; pacing of my words, my gestures; pacing of the way I stir the agave into my tea. I recently read that to shift a negative state of any kind, we must strive to significantly reduce the speed of whatever it is we’re doing. At this particular moment, I want to be a more patient mama. We can all learn to pace ourselves around our kids and set examples of patience. After seeing time and time again how some ridiculous agenda to do something perfectly is preventing me from listening to my child’s musings on the world, I know this is where I want to improve. I want to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n.
The boundary of pacing is key when I’m teaching, listening, spending time with family, friends, students and teachers, traveling or writing. It’s helping me to smooth out the features of my face as well as my gestures. It’s teaching me how to eat more respectfully and receive more nourishment from my food. It’s keeping me healthy by reminding me to go to sleep by 11:00 p.m. instead of 1:00 a.m. It’s making my son so happy to look into my eyes and be heard. It’s bringing me deeper into my backbend practice than ever before and helping me appreciate the significance of simple foundational awareness in all the wildest yoga poses. Because I’m applying this boundary, this awareness of pacing, things are shifting, slowly, organically.
What’s your boundary, and how is it helping you?
4 Comments
I love the concept of pacing as a boundary — that feels very right to me, and very relevant. As an entrepreneur, it’s too easy for me to get into the go-go-go mentality, and I’m finding that slowing down (in every area, from eating breakfast to planning a project) is crucial to my success and wellbeing.
I also love the boundaries imposed by Ashtanga yoga. Every morning I do the same poses in the same order for the same number of breaths, and although I was skeptical at first (“what if I get bored?”), I am finding immense freedom within the boundaries of the Ashtanga series. I’m free to explore each pose because I’m not thinking about what comes next.
I have no doubt that yoga, in all its forms, has its foundations in the concept of creating and managing boundaries– Christina Sell summarized this idea elegantly.
In hatha yoga, we impose boundaries on our movement and breath. In karma yoga, we impose boundaries on our work and our interactions with other humans. For example, I “do” because it should be done – not because i will get something out of it. Likewise, I do not demand of others to “do” because i feel it is owed to me, or to correct a perceived injustice. I have created a boundary of action and thought, movement and breath, with objectivity at its heart and sweet freedom as its result.
There is a continuous juxtaposition between boundaries and complete, unadulterated freedom in the practice of yoga. We enter this practice freely; and as most practitioners of yoga can attest, we receive from our practice limitless freedom – freedom from pain and suffering in myriad ways.
if we utiliize freedom to create in our hearts the boundary of acceptance (of time constraints, of people not doing what we want them to do), with non-attachment, and without anger/anxiety/hurt/want/desire, we will reveal infinitely more freedom – Astounding!
LOVE reading what u write..the authenticity behind it is beautiful..and I NEED to do more of the same w/ my daughter… BREATHE and slow down…I have been making bracelets to try to make a little extra money and I was getting frustrated w/her. She was trying to help and I lost all the beads on the bracelet…I took my frustration out on her. Trying to hard to accomplish a task and it wasn’t going well..THANK-you!
Martha Graham said, “Technique allows for freedom.” Excuse my paraphrasing.
There may come a time when yoga feels too boundary creating in many ways, but this time will come (or not) at a different pace for everyone.
I have studied classical hatha yogas for about 15 years and Kundalini broke me open about 8 years ago, but it has been my return to dance at the age of 40 that has really allowed me to grow the most.
So now I am a certified YogaDance instructor, and in those classes, we work to break down these boundaries between “poses” and “natural movement.”
But it always begins with structure. :)
June 28, 2010