Acknowledgement, acceptance and awareness: the gifts of yoga

I remember clearly during my 200hour yoga teacher training, having a conversation with another student about what we thought we would like to teach. I said I wanted to teach therapeutically, and she thought I meant similar to that of physiotherapy. When I said, “no, I want to support people with their emotional health” she looked confused. We have turned yoga into a physical exercise, selling the illusion of the ‘yoga body’ to all and sundry, yet my personal experience - and that of many others - was that yoga offers so much more.

When I practised yoga, I didn’t really know what was happening and I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it, but I just knew that it made me feel better. That it helped me de-stress, that stretching my muscles and trying to touch my toes somehow helped me feel calmer, and doing weird things with my breath changed the way I could see, actually see. And so when I finally took that step to becoming a teacher, it was natural that I would continue to be motivated as both student and teacher as to exploring the magic of yoga and why it makes us feel more whole.

Now, seven years on, and with plenty of time to reflect in the last year in particular, I am still amazed by how yoga works. Of course we know so much more about the way trauma manifests in the body, and the connection of the mind-body through the nervous system, but I think there are other less material components of yoga which also really help us to heal.

Acknowledgement

I spent many years of life denying what I felt. It felt easer to just ignore my emotions and keep busy, but this can only work for so long. I found myself becoming more tense, my body ached more and more, and I was easily angered, frustrated and impatient. Because I never gave myself any compassion, I found it difficult to offer anyone else compassion; because I never let myself acknowledge the pain I was carrying, I got irritated with others who did show their pain. Somehow, in yoga, I began to really notice what I was feeling. I noticed when a posture was challenging and how I mentally responded to that, and I noticed different parts of body that I hadn’t paid attention to before, like my hips. Without realising it, the parts of class when we slowed down were the only times in my life I was slowing down, and so this taught me to how to relax. In yoga, I began a conversation with myself, guided by teachers, but ultimately learning how to listen to myself, and acknowledge what I heard.

Acceptance

It’s one thing to acknowledge what we feel, and a whole other thing to accept it, especially when that emotion tends to be messy or uncomfortable. Emotions like anger, for example, which is often considered “unladylike” or even “unspirirtual” (as if spirituality was just a case of smiling at everyone you meet) can be difficult to accept. It is tempting to replace it or, as I used to do, ignore it, but emotions tend to find their way out in the end, whether that’s a total over-reaction to a comment made by a friend, or aggressive road rage. When we can acknowledge what we feel, and then allow space for it, the feeling itself often changes slightly. It might not go away, but it might diminish, or change shape, and we might find it’s not as awful as we thought it might be. Accepting all our feelings is a way of accepting ourself, wholly and fully, not just the parts of ourself which we like and admire, but the whole of ourselves, warts n all. And this is a powerful step towards finding more peace and contentment in our life, perhaps not every day, but broadly speaking, a life of greater ease.

Awareness

Shifting from acceptance into awareness is like taking the lift to the penthouse suite. Awareness, which I often think of as presence, is our sense of self that is not overly identified with ourself. By this I mean, I might notice I am depressed (acknowledgement), I might say to myself “it’s OK to feel this way” (acceptance), and I might realise that I have felt this way before, and it passed, and yet I might feel this way again (awareness). This form of awareness allows me to detach from the felt experience and develop an “impersonal mind”, sometimes known as witness consciousous or becoming the observer. It’s important here to clarify that I am not suggesting depression (or any emotion) should be dismissed or ignored - that’s why we have acknowlegement and acceptance - but that awareness is about connecting with a higher part of yourself who sees the narrative and events unfolding through your life and is able to discern that there is a part of you not swept up in your experience. It doesn’t mean you don’t need help or support, but awareness does offer us the chance to rise like a phoenix from the flames from even the darkest or most challenging emotional experiences.

In the last year of pandemic and lockdowns, I have found bringing these three components into my life as well as my yoga practice have allowed me to soften in the face of tension. As we move into a less certain world, a more vulnerable world, learning how to soften when the temptation is to tighten and tense could be an invaluable skill. Bringing more compassion into our lives can help us become more compassionate towards others, to lose the judgement over good/bad, right/wrong, and gain greater perspective and humility over what it is to be human. By acknowledging our fragility, we become stronger, and kinder. By accepting our vulnerability we feel more truthful and resilient. And by taking time to surrender our need for control, we become more aware that life is this, what we are living right now. May your practice sustain and nourish you and all those around you.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash