Self-inquiry as radical self-care
Self-inquiry is a way to feel empowered in your practice and development. Learning how to self-inquire brings you back in your body, teaches you about your moods and feelings, and helps you develop a compassionate yet more detached attitude towards yourself. Self-inquiry means accepting yourself just as you are - whilst also recognising that “who” you are is much, much more than your thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
For most of my life I have been disconnected from my body. I had learnt through magazines and popular culture that life was about pushing through, fighting and staying busy, and I have experiences of childhood trauma that I was still carrying in my body. I read articles about what to eat, thought exercise was something you made yourself do whether you want to or not, I disregarded my own need to rest, my need for creativity and my need for simple pleasures. Needless to say my journey into yoga and spirituality has been a re-learning of many of these beliefs, and an essential part of my progression has been learning how to self-inquire.
Self-inquiry is a way of creating a dialogue with ourselves. As tempting as it is to force ourselves to think positive or ignore our body when it aches, this can easily become an act of violence towards ourselves, and create mental anguish and increase body disconnection as we refuse the present moment. Self-inquiry teaches us to welcome and accept ourselves, and in doing so, we actually begin to free ourselves from the burden of pretending everything is OK. When we let sadness or anger move through us it does just that, move through us, and very often then it’s gone.
Learning to listen
Self-inquiry is also a way of learning to listen to the sensations of your body, which is a very powerful act for anyone who finds it hard to read their body’s signals, or perhaps has learnt to override their body’s messages (i.e. not eating even when hungry, not sleeping or resting when tired). By learning to feel the sensitive sensations of our body, we start to become more grounded, and more connected with ourselves. This helps us to recognise when things are wrong - we may start to notice how we punish ourselves with food, bingeing and then withholding, or when a yoga teacher is touching us in a way we do not want to be touched, or even that we are practicing yoga in a way which actually makes us feel bad about our bodies. When we start to recognise how we feel in a situation, we become more able to respond and make more positive changes.
I consider this a form of radical self-care, and a modern interpretation of the yogic idea of pratyahara, which is often translated as ‘withdrawal of senses’ but I prefer to think of as ‘not abandoning ones self’. Withdrawing the senses implies that we are directing our energy inwards, towards ourselves, and traditionally towards God/Divine/Universe. This might not be everyone’s reason for practicing yoga today, and we could argue that the idea of transcendence and of union with something ‘spiritual’ could be discovered by actually bringing our energy down into our bodies, rather than escaping out of our bodies. I think the expression ‘not abandoning ones self’ reminds us that when we draw our energy in, we proactively explore what we find and we become interested in our wants and desires, and interested in understanding ourselves.
Practice by yourself
Some ways you can begin to explore self-inquiry on your own:
Start a regular journalling routine. Use this as a way to explore what you are feeling and thinking each day. Warning, this can often start negative especially if you are new to self inquiry, but try staying with it for 3 month and see what arises. If anything particularly disturbing comes up, seek help from a trained therapist.
If you have a menstrual cycle, track it. There are lots of useful apps out there, or you can just keep a note in your diary. Day 1 is when you start bleeding, and ovulation is roughly 14 days after that, although please note this can vary greatly woman to woman and also month to month. Menstrual cycle charting is a wonderful way to see patterns in the fluctuations of your mood and cravings and you can also connect when you bleed to the cycle of the moon - most diaries note the fluctuations of the moon, and you want to look out particularly for new moon and full moon as ‘peaks’ of the lunar cycle.
Change your mindset about yoga. Stop trying to ‘do’ postures. Stop trying to force your body but work with your body instead. That doesn’t mean you can’t challenge yourself, but that you do so with an attitude of fun and play. It means you work hard when you want to work hard, and you rest when you want to rest. Without self-inquiry it’s really hard to know what you body needs moment to moment.
Practice with others
My online live New Moon Gatherings are a great chance to connect with your body in a deeply restful, to practice yoga nidra to help relax you mind, and to explore the art of journalling, based on the sign of the moon in Aquarius. The next event is on 12th February, and you can find out all the dates and book here.
You may also be interested in engaging with one-to-one work with me. Clients who work with me over a longer period of time are supported by me using yoga and astrology. The joy of one-to-one work is that it is relational and personal. I usually look at your own astrology chart, and use this as a touching point for each session, as we talk about what is emerging for you, and then I can provide yoga (recorded on Zoom if you like) to support your needs, be that body confidence, deep relaxation, building strength and balance or healing aches and pains. See more about my one-to-one work here and feel free to book a 20 minute free phone call to find out more.