WFL Final Assignment

Turning to Yoga: Tackling Type A the Right Way

Writing from Life, Assignment #8, 06 November 2007

I am frustrated.

I'm standing outside a large, open room and feeling mentally ill-equipped for the moment. I enter to find fit-looking women territorially positioned and casually dressed in either loose garb or body-clinging tights and tops. Though there’s plenty of space, the ladies congregate in the middle of the room. Each woman has a mat, some sort of rubberized blocks, and a strap. I'm wearing running shorts and T-shirt and feel pretty much clueless about what’s coming next. Why am I here? I need to do something for my health and sanity. Running has taken its toll on my lower back and right hip, and I get agitated if I can’t do meaningful exercise. Though sympathetic, my sports doctor only offered a suggestion. “You could try yoga,” he stated offhandedly but with enough enthusiasm to pique my interest. So here I am, meekly staking out my own eight by four foot hardwood real estate in the first available opening. Then, I unfurl my mat amid the group and mimic my classmates by sitting quietly. I may look peaceful, but inside, I'm churning, wondering whether this is a good idea.

The instructor introduces herself and queries us on our experience with yoga and our physical condition, specifically pregnancies and existing injuries. Then she asks us to close our eyes. As the class begins and I go through the gentle warm-up exercises and listen to the instructor, a change comes over me.

"It's all in the breath," she explains.

We begin to move and stretch deliberately to our own deep breathing.

I think, "This is great stuff. Too bad I didn’t take this up 20 years ago. It might have helped my running."

For a few moments my mind started racing and tried to capture how I breathe when running. Though I experimented with various techniques during my running days, for the most part, breathing “just happened.” The faster I ran, the more rapid the breath. But after a few yoga breathing cycles I realized that my breath was actually quite shallow and uncontrolled. In yoga breathing is almost always through the nose. Deep breathing requires use of diaphragm and expansion into the chest and shoulders. Advanced deep breathing adds abdominal muscle control following complete exhalation. It sounds easier than it actually is – at least for me.

There’s a simple explanation why breathing is a fundamental tenet of yoga. We all draw energy from our breath. And in class after class with different instructors, the theme is consistent and a simple truth emerges: We can live without food, water, and rest for extended periods, but without breath, we expire - and pretty quickly! Breath is first and foremost. This is a central doctrine of Hatha Yoga.

I've learned much in this journey to practice yoga. At first, my motives were purely physical – to restore my back, alleviate past bodily abuses, and balance my muscles. I let the pressures of work limit my exercise options and placed aerobic routines above all others. As a result, I initially favored instructors who taught “power yoga.” I just wanted to muscle my way through the routines and elevate my heart rate. But as I learned the poses and developed greater flexibility, the philosophy of the practice penetrated my thoughts. Gradually, I began to appreciate the innate insight one gains of one's self through yoga. Now, we are all different so I don’t suppose this will apply universally, but yoga has improved my self-patience, and as a result, my patience with others. I attribute this change to the concentration needed to control the body and mind during yoga routines. That effort differs greatly from swinging a bat or tennis racket. In the latter cases, one looks outward to align the body to respond to an external stimulus. With yoga, the look turns inward to align body and mind to task. To help their students, yoga instructors will often remind their classes to clear their minds of distracting thoughts to better accomplish a pose. The better the pose, the greater the benefits. What benefits? I’ll summarize all that has been written in a single phrase: Quality of Life. And I believe the ability to achieve both inward and outward control of one’s actions improves one’s quality of life. Yoga has given me added confidence to draw from within and add my mark to situations, rather than react only to what life presents me. I’m more alive!

Now in Western societies yoga still lags in popularity among the various physical fitness regimens, particularly among men. My past reveals why. I grew up in the typical public school environment where personal popularity depended on how well one played competitive team sports. The workplace is no different. You must be competitive and conventional. And yoga is neither of these, nor flashy, nor public. Yoga requires introspection, but who today promotes the inward look? Are we not manipulated and encouraged not to pursue self enlightenment to better fulfill our roles as consumers? Our distractions and addictions - drugs, sports, alcohol, television, computers, overwork, and pursuit of material and fame - help eliminate the need for self intimacy.

Yoga, however, helps extract the individual from social pressures, generates a communal spirit with fellow yogis, and eliminates any need for competitiveness or adversarial interaction. Skeptics may argue that running, tennis, golf or popular team sports stimulate mental discipline and the self-criticism required to motivate self-improvement. Further, working as team members and developing strategies of play enhance our social skills, ultimately improving our societies. While these premises have merit, they overlook several critical aspects of self-intimacy and self-awareness that yoga naturally incorporates.

In yoga there is no need to critique or analyze performance. You are in control of your body and mind, not outside influences. You are who you are, and you perform a pose or routine to whatever level you're at. Try your best and benefit by focusing the mind on your body and how it is responding to what you are doing with and to it. Inhale to reach relaxation. Exhale to release tension. Also, regarding teamwork, yogis share an intimate bond through self-acceptance and inner peace that ease contact with others.

Can walking or hiking, combined with a solid stretch and flex routine, substitute for yoga? Perhaps. But I have found a deeper appreciation of these activities from my practice of yoga.

Yoga can be very challenging for some and still is to me. When I first started and got into the basic seated posture, my stiffness and lack of flexibility showed. I succumbed to pain and fatigue in only a few minutes. Not now. And my breathing is no longer shallow. I have even used yoga breathing to calm myself prior to key meetings – and I was CEO-equivalent of a 5,000 person organization. Whether standing before a large crowd of hundreds of employees, hosting VIPs, or conducting a staff meeting, the slow, methodical breathing helped to clear my mind, relax me, and subsequently focus on meeting objectives. I could be sitting at my desk prior to a meeting or standing near a podium waiting to speak, and all I had to do was clear my mind and take a few deep yoga breaths. The result: Little or no stress and improved confidence. I also no longer feel I have to live up to some idealized wannabe manufactured by society. All these benefits, and more, emerged by embracing yoga without being obsessive about it. I just stuck with it and kept an open mind.

When do you make a personal breakthrough with yoga? It‘s not when you can touch your heels to the ground when performing “downward facing dog” or when you can sit in the traditional lotus position. I may never reach such an advanced level, but I have matured my practice past the “part-timer” phase. This breakthrough consists of two interdependent practice elements. I first had to get my body and mind to work together to best execute a stance or pose at my level of expertise. “Best effort” matters, not the picture-perfect posture. But typically, the novice struggles because the mind won’t focus and listen to what the body is telling it. I was no different. Maybe the mind wants to plough ahead and move directly into the pose when the body is not ready. Or perhaps the psyche wanders aimlessly in thought about dinner, work, school, or anything but the task at hand, diverting attention from the body as it tries to maneuver itself gracefully into a pose. The second element simply involved doing yoga regularly on my own, whether it was a few minutes of breathing or a full blown routine similar to those in formal group sessions. These two elements feed off one another. The more you practice, the better your ability to concentrate and form the necessary partnership between mind and body. The better you are able to concentrate, the easier it is to practice independently. For someone like me, a former driven-to-excess, type A workaholic, the process can, and in my case did, take several years. But once I broke through, I not only felt better physically, I also thought more clearly and freely, improving my interpersonal interactions. Now, through yoga, I look forward to lifelong self-learning and well-being, helping me get the most from life. And if your spouse or partner participates, that’s an added bonus.

I encourage everyone to consider yoga as part of an exercise routine. And if you’re male, I doubly encourage you to break out of that traditional mold and experience a refreshing yet still physically challenging experience, with health benefits for mind and body. Sure, you may have to endure some classes being the only of your gender, but how bad can that be? Also, find a branch of yoga that best suits your objectives. Since yoga means a union between self and either a supreme being or an ultimate principle, it fits within any major religious doctrine, agnosticism, or atheism. Yoga, then, is both universal and highly personal. Enjoy the journey, and may you find your own internal synergy along the way.

As for me, I am no longer frustrated.