Today's message was simple and repeated several times throughout the practice: you are in charge of your own happiness. You are in charge of your own happiness.
It sounds obvious, and it's easy to understand on a surface level. In the words of Jen Sincero, "an epiphany is a visceral understanding of something you already know." I have intellectually known that nothing and no one is in charge of my happiness. I can't be gifted a ukulele (that I would most likely play once and get discouraged) and suddenly have a clear, spiritual understanding of what I'm meant to do in the world.
There have been times when I thought I was happy, but I've started to develop an awareness of the distinction between happiness and ecstasy or elation. I have been ecstatic when I was surrounded by wonderful friends, when I got a job, and when I received positive feedback that I was killing it in school.
All of this happiness came from external forces. And the trouble with relying on external forces is that they are largely out of your control.
I once had a therapist who told me to think about control as a hula hoop. We are surrounded by people and experiences that we cannot mold to fit our wishes or our perceptions of the ideal. We each have a very limited space that is within our control: the hula hoop. When we visualize this control, when we ask "what's in my hula hoop?" it's (slightly) easier to let the other things go. Having to go to work every day is largely out of our control. Leaving a job is not. Having to feed your kids breakfast is out of your control. Deciding to start your day with some meditation and tea is not.
Your yoga practice is in your control. Whether you choose to follow Adriene's cues exactly, or curl up into child's pose for a rest, you are curating a practice that works for you. Moving into week 2 of this journey, you might notice a stronger awareness of how you react to difficult postures, and begin to shift that reaction.
Day 12 has shown me that the way I approach yoga is drastically different from the way I've practiced it for six years: rather than doing postures, I have been experiencing them. This might sound like mumbo jumbo to some, but essentially what I mean is that rather than show off a difficult posture, or feel like I must prove via Instagram that I can do side crow, I have been noticing how each posture feels, how I can modify for my own body, and how I react to situations off the mat.
It's not perfect. It has been long ingrained that I must be anxious and panicky that I cannot be a person in the world, that I cannot do what I have set out to do in a day, month, or lifetime. But I have started to make that shift between doing things in order to placate some abstract being that demands I have hobbies, and curating my own experiences because I want to.
I started jogging and knitting to seem like a person who does things, to appear interesting to those around me. In response to roommate ads, I said I liked hiking, despite having hiked like 10 times in my entire life. While I still mostly detest running, I have noticed a much more prevalent sense of calm and strength throughout the day. Knitting has turned into one of the most transcendent meditations I have ever experienced.
So yes, most things are out of our control. But how we choose to spend our precious time on this earth, and how we choose to react to others and more importantly, to ourselves is very much in our hula hoops.
Namaste.
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