Just let go

Some people think yoga is a cult. That to be in it you have to: be a hippy, give up meat, go all organic, be super skinny, and a health food fanatic. People think you have to change to do yoga. I think it's the one thing you don't have to change for. A person when they go somewhere or meet up with someone is expected to be, look, and act a certain way. Society constantly attempts to pressure us into stereotypes. In yoga we come as we are to a mat, do what we can, and in the end it doesn't matter good or bad how we did. It is for the connection within us mental to physical and not how advanced a posture you can do. As one of my former yoga teachers put it "I consider a student advanced when they stop focus on the physical and start focusing on the mental."

The main point of yoga is stated in the second line of the Yoga Sutras "The restraint of the modifications of the mind is yoga." The modifications being anything that takes us away from our pure core self. It then goes on to talk about the modifications of the mind as they are the source of all suffering. Then in line twelve it states how to solve this problem: "These mental modifications are restrained by practice and non-attachment."(Satchidananda) In two lines the Yoga Sutras explain what is suffering and how to fix it with practice and non-attachment. The practice aspect seems easy enough to most with enough motivation. It's easy to drag your body to the yoga studio two or three times week. The non-attachment aspect some will ignore, others will avoid at all costs. When you bring up non-attachment people think of a monk; they think of a person with no possessions, no source of income, no sex, no pleasure in life at all. This is one of the biggest misconceptions I have dealt with myself.

It is better to think of the original Sanskrit word vairagya which is normal translated to non-attachment to mean instead letting go. The idea is to let go of the self-defeating behaviors, to fix ourselves so then we can begin to help others. With letting go, we free more energy for ourselves allowing us to move forward in our lives. This energy was previously locked up mentally by constantly repressing things, and physically by tight, painful areas of our body.

This letting go can be physical things such as drinking too much coffee and not enough water. It can be mental like letting go of past memories, especially the embarrassing ones that no one can recall any longer. It can be emotional attachment such as past hurts still held onto. All of the nonphysical attachments can be part of the vast arsenal for an internal selfhate campaign. This is the part of the constant brain chatter that most people become so accustomed to that they don't even notice it happening. I used to have it, some days I still do. There are other days I do not. Such as the day I will that follows.

Between classes at the community college I attend, I went to a Starbucks for some tea. As I was getting back into my car the tea slipping out of my hand going everywhere in the floor of the car. Thankfully not burned I began to laugh at myself. The old me would have been pissed at myself for dropping the tea "you're so stupid you should have paid attention" I would have thought, then I would have been mad at Starbucks for using cheap cups, and at the money I just spent on nothing. I would have then beaten myself up about the whole thing all the rest of the day, and then repressed it. Months later the memory would have popped back up out of nowhere. The anger and embarrassment would have surfaced with it, and I would be beat myself up all over again.

Instead I saw there was a little bit of tea left sitting in the cup. After cleaning up what I could I enjoyed what was left. I let go of what I couldn't control and only focused on what I could. The only thing we can truly attempt to control is ourselves. As I have let go of my past mistakes, hurts, embarrassing memories I have made room for more self-acceptance and love. All this letting go isn't letting go of the true you.

A person's true identity isn't anything physical we own, wear, or keep locked away in some cabinet. People can't seem to figure out who they are because it's buried under so many attachments and possessions. A person mind is like a room the first thing in it is a letter saying who they are. Then as they grow up they learn, and those are the books along the walls. In the center of the room is where the junk gets thrown. It begins to fill the room, hidden that letter is forgotten. The only way to find who you are is to let go of what is not needed. No longer stuck in the guilt of the past, not distracted by the fears of what could happen in the future. We are free; free to focus on living in the moment. To actually live so that I won't wake up one day around age fifty and have a mental breakdown about who I am and that I have done nothing with my life. This quote from the Dalai Lama sums it up perfectly. 

Work Cited

Satchidananda. "The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali". Yogaville. Buckingham, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publication, 2011. Print. 30 Sept. 2013