Breathe Into the Resistance

We tend to get so caught up in life. We have responsibilities, jobs, roles, hobbies, passions, chores, relationships, entertainment, and countless other things to occupy our time. Sometimes, it's helpful to just take a step back from our reality in an attempt to see what's really going on.

"How did I get here? Was it my choices that led me here, or was it the hand I was given? What is the purpose of me experiencing exactly what I am experiencing in this very moment?"

Although the details of the answers to these questions may vary, there is one answer that will always fit.

"You are always experiencing exactly what you need in order to learn, grow, and evolve as a human being."

It's too often that we forget that each moment is special, and that everything in our life is an opportunity. Especially when life gets stale, and we get too caught up in responsibility and routine, we lose sight of the significance of where we are. If you take the time to contemplate all the events that led up to this very moment, it's impossible to not be captivated. So many things had to go right, or wrong, in order for you to be here, now. It might not be where you want to be at this moment, but that's besides the point. The point is that you are here for a reason, and to deny this is to miss out on what life is offering up to you.

Since I currently find myself here in India, training to be a yoga teacher, it would be obvious to say that why I'm here is to learn yoga. But when I asked myself this question, yoga had nothing to do with it. Okay, okay, technically, yoga has everything to do with it, but for the sake of this article, it may as well not have. Instead, I find that I am here to learn about myself, to learn about life, and that's exactly what I'm doing. That's not why I came here, at least when analyzing the conscious driving force that brought me all this way, but that's the real reason I came. This is the idea, that we think we do things for the reasons that we have to do them, but really, there is something else at work. We are always being guided to what we need next, and the most important aspect of why we are in a situation usually isn't the one that we are immediately aware of. If you told me that I should go to India and participate in a yoga teacher training course so I could learn about myself, I'd say why bother? I can learn about myself anywhere, in any situation, and that's true.

But I'm telling you, there is something magical about me being here, and it's difficult to describe. It's that feeling that I am exactly where I need to be, and I don't take that lightly, considering that I already dropped out of two yoga teacher training courses precisely because I felt like I wasn't where I needed to be. Something is guiding me, something brought me here, and I intend to take full advantage of this beautiful opportunity to get in touch with myself.

So what I am learning? Honestly, it's nothing new, but when it comes to getting through this thick skull, repetition is key. I need to learn something over and over and over again until it really sinks in. What I'm learning, is to breathe into the resistance. On the yoga mat, we try to put our bodies into all sorts of weird shapes, but why? Is it merely a show of ability? Is it just for exercise? Absolutely not.

It might not be a secret to you that yoga means union. By willfully putting ourselves into difficult situations, we learn how to deal with them. It doesn't matter if a difficult situation is standing on your head or arguing with your spouse, both problems can be solved with the same principles. By breathing into the resistance, we find space, we find clarity, and we find an opportunity. How will we define ourselves by what we do next? Are we just going to give up? Are we going to grit our teeth and fight it out? Neither option will solve the problem. Both are forms of avoidance.

Instead, we need to learn to accept life's challenges, and find our self somewhere in the middle. When your body is twisted and turned this way and that, you can barely breathe, and you are struggling to stay balanced, you find yourself behind all of it, silently witnessing the inner battle. Suddenly, you realize you are not this body, you are not the mind that is judging the situation and complaining about lack of flexibility or having to hold the pose too long. Amidst all the suffering, you remain unaffected.

When we breathe into the resistance, either literally or metaphorically, we can come to understand the true nature of the resistance. Why are we resisting when we can just let go? That doesn't mean we let go of our pose on the yoga mat, and it doesn't mean that we let go of our poise in life. We still need to act, we need to be engaged in life, but the battle is impersonal. Even if the battle is happening, we don't need to cast ourselves as the hero, or the victim. Don't we get enough drama from outside sources?

I think having sat silent meditation retreats has made this experience much easier for me, but this concept of breathing into the resistance is something that I don't get to use on those. On these retreats that I've sat, the only tool for dealing with resistance is the mind, which is quite difficult. It's too easy to get lost in all the layers.

In yoga though, there are many physical techniques to deal with the mind, and many of them involve the breath. If we take a deep breath in, tension is released. If we are working on a certain part of our body, and there is tension there, we breathe into that part and we find that we can open up even more. This is a metaphor for life. When we have resistance, and we breathe into it, we can rise to the challenge, find our center, and practice letting go. It's that mental block that's holding us back, and the blockage is only effective if we aren't aware of it. By identifying the block, and breathing into it, we are sending it love and healing energy. Blocks don't like love, they don't like to be healed, it scares them. But we don't like blocks, so we don't worry. We want to remove mental blocks, whether on the yoga mat, or in our daily life, so that we can see clearly, and put things into perspective.

If we aren't happy with where we are in life, maybe this perspective will help us to understand what it is that is waiting for us here. What can we learn from this situation? What kind of action will it take to change things? Remember, that if you didn't have difficult situations, you couldn't experience the joy of overcoming them. If you didn't have low periods, there wouldn't be any high periods either. Everything is relative. If we don't learn from the changing conditions, if we don't use the opportunities to grow and evolve, we are just drifting around in circles, caught in a back-eddy of life. We need to untangle ourselves from the debris that keep us stagnant, and allow the river of life to take us to the ocean of freedom.

Throughout these days, on this one-month course, many obstacles present themselves to me, both mentally and physically. If I can stay connected to this idea that there is a deeper purpose to my being here, I'm sure to make things easier on myself. Whether it be frustration, judgment, or just a bad mood, can I see it as a beautiful opportunity to breathe into the resistance, and thereby open up a whole new dimension of being alive in that moment? I hope so.

May all beings be open to the idea that there is a reason that they find themselves in whatever situation they find themselves in.

May all beings use resistance to open up to the opportunities that allow for personal growth, change, and evolution.

May all beings be at peace with difficult situations, keeping the perspective that they are right where they need to be, and that by realizing this, they can get to where they need to go.