You Are Not
Your Thoughts
When it comes to happiness, we’re taught to look for it outside ourselves. We’re trained to focus on and work toward external markers of success or accomplishment, as if those determine our value and lead to a feeling of peace and well-being. Asmita is one of the kleshas, and it means “egoism.” We strongly identify with what we have and how we’re perceived, but true peace requires inner work. It doesn’t matter what you build around you, how you look, or where you travel. If you aren’t at peace within yourself, none of it will matter. Pratyahara is one of the yoga sutras; it’s the fifth limb of the yoga practice. Classically, pratyahara means “withdrawal of the senses,” but it also has to do with what we’re feeding ourselves and with dropping away from the egoistic existence.
Years ago, I worked with a famous film producer. I’d go to his house twice a week to give him private yoga lessons. He had an assistant, a housekeeper, and a grounds staff. He had four homes in different locations, all equally maintained. He saw me twice a week unless he was out of town.
One day, after a session, he asked if we could talk. He asked me if I was happy. It took me by surprise, because generally we didn’t have personal conversations, but I said I was happy. And he asked me why.
He said he assumed I couldn’t make a lot of money teaching yoga, and he didn’t think I had family money. He didn’t want to offend me; he just wanted to have an honest conversation. I told him he was right. By his standards, I did not have a lot of money. At the time, I lived in an incredibly tiny one-bedroom house. My whole house would have fit into his kitchen five times, easily. I had student loans I was still paying off, a car payment, and nothing saved. I was on a dating hiatus, so it was just me and my dog at night, and a good book. I got up at the crack of dawn to practice, and I taught all day. Sometimes I felt lonely, even though I had tons of social interaction with students before and after classes, and I’d begun to form some friendships in Los Angeles that have lasted to this day.
He asked me what, exactly, was making me happy. He seemed genuinely confused and interested. I told him I had a deep sense that I was on the right path. I loved my days. I loved my practice. I loved teaching and the feeling that I was helping people. I loved my dog. I felt good about the friendships I was building. I felt hopeful about the work I was doing. I felt like I was healing.
He asked me what I’d thought I was going to do for a living when I was younger. I told him that at one point during high school, a law degree seemed interesting, but when I got to college, I was drawn toward psychology and English. He asked if my parents were disappointed I’d become a yoga teacher, if they thought I wasn’t living up to my potential. I said I suspected they might have been wondering what the hell I was doing with my life the last few years, but that they seemed to understand I was following my heart. I was finding my stride, figuring out what I was doing here. I said I thought they might have been concerned, but not disappointed. And ultimately, my life had to make sense to me.
He looked at me for a long time. I asked him what was prompting these questions, and he said he’d just had his sixtieth birthday. He looked around at his life, at his homes and his cars and his success and his girlfriend, and he felt like he had everything everyone else seemed to want, but he wasn’t happy. He felt like something important or essential was missing, and he just couldn’t figure out what it was. He told me he thought maybe he should marry his girlfriend and have kids, because that might solve things, but he didn’t really know if that was what he wanted to do. He wasn’t sure he loved her, he wasn’t sure she loved him, he wasn’t sure he liked kids. We both laughed at that point. He said his work was satisfying because he was good at it and it was fun, but he wondered what he was really contributing. He said he’d been waiting for a “happiness payoff” at some point, a return on his investment of time and energy spent accruing all the important, coveted things, and he was starting to worry that no such payoff was coming. He thought continuing his bloodline might bring him the meaning that seemed to be missing.
We talked about the kleshas, especially asmita, which means “egoism.” It’s an inflated identification with the intellect. It’s when we’re focusing on what we have and how we look instead of figuring out who we are. We’re attached to our likes and dislikes, and we see ourselves as people who “always” or “would never” do one thing or another. We compare ourselves to those around us in order to figure out how we’re doing. We look at our big houses or fast cars or phone calls from movie stars, and we think, This is good. I should be happy.
The funny thing is, I was a lot younger then, but I understood my client’s confusion. I, too, had followed the external path. I’d gone to a great school and gotten my degree. I’d dieted until I was tiny. I’d had the boyfriend with the shiny toys and big houses, and none of it had mattered. I was really focused on trying to figure out what I needed to be happy, and I had followed the path that was supposed to lead to happiness, but all my troubles and pain had followed along with me. At some point I wondered, where was the peace?
Pratyahara and the Inward Path
Culturally we don’t talk much about the inward path. We’re all so focused on what we have and how we look that no one says too much about how they feel. And, of course, that’s the source of everything, isn’t it? Feeling at peace, feeling comfortable in your own skin, recognizing your gifts and sharing them, feeling inspired, feeling empathy—all of these feelings are the stuff of happiness. You don’t find happiness in a piece of paper, even from an Ivy League school. You don’t find it in a dress size, no matter how small, or in a house, no matter how big. Happiness doesn’t reside in a car or a relationship. You certainly don’t find it by marrying someone you don’t love, to continue your bloodline when you’re not even sure you like children. But this is the kind of stuff we start to ponder when we have no clue which way to turn. If you have four homes and eight cars and more money than you could ever spend, the ability to fly to Paris for the weekend, and a staff at your beck and call, and still you aren’t happy, of course you’re going to be confused—especially if you’ve been following the directions society has laid out for you.
I think there’s a wide consensus about this now; if you want to be happy, you have to be at peace within yourself. Most people have tried the path of externals and come up short, but there’s still a dearth of information about paths that do work, that do lead to fulfillment. I believe this is the reason yoga and mindfulness have become so popular and so mainstream. Lots of people are looking for a different path, and yoga provides a road map for the journey inward.
Pratyahara is derived from two Sanskrit words, prati and ahara. Prati means “away” or “against,” and ahara means “food,” or anything we take in (things we read, watch, listen to, or eat). Pratyahara means weaning ourselves away from this idea that we are our thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and tapping into the energy underneath all that racket. It means we’re dropping away from this strong identification with our likes and dislikes, our ideas and our attachments, and we’re allowing ourselves to explore what’s beneath that. We’re allowing our authentic self to emerge. Who am I without all these ideas about who I should be? What would I want if I weren’t worried about what other people think? What would I do if I weren’t scared?
Patanjali believed there were different states and patterns of existence and that most people were living in a stupor, in a state of numbed-out dullness, while others were in a state of restlessness and attachment, longing for one thing and recoiling from another. There are a lot of analogies for the mind in yoga. Sometimes we call it the “monkey mind,” where thoughts are incessant, like a monkey jumping from one branch to another. We can’t finish one thought before three others are crashing in. Sometimes the mind is described as a wild horse. There’s an allegory about a man going by in his carriage at full tilt, his horse galloping down the road. His neighbor calls to him from the side of the road as he’s passing: “Hey! Where are you going?” And the man says, “I don’t know!” The wild horse is in control. If we don’t gain some mastery over the mind, we are its servant. A big part of the yoga practice involves training the mind to focus.
Dharana means “concentration” or “to hold firm.” Instead of allowing the mind to take us on a wild ride, we train it to focus on one thing at a time. On our mats, when we’re doing the physical practice, we’re also learning about the focal points, or drishtis, for each pose. For example, in Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II ), we’re gazing over the front fingertips, toward the horizon. The back arm is in the past, the front arm is in the future, we have a soft but steady gaze on the horizon (which we can’t see clearly because it’s way out ahead of us), and we are sitting in the present, breathing in and breathing out.
Postures in yoga are called asanas. The name of every pose we do ends in that word. Asana means “a steady seat” or “to sit quietly,” but we aren’t sitting. We’re moving, we’re breathing, we’re flowing, we’re on our hands, we’re on our feet, we’re on our forearms. The point is to sit quietly in your mind as you’re doing all of these things; to be present, to be curious, to be aware, to be steady. If we can do this while we’re moving on our mats, eventually we can do it in seated meditation, or dhyana, another of the eight limbs of yoga practice. We can also do it when we’re talking to our children, our partners, our friends, and total strangers. We can be present when we’re driving, eating, buying food to feed ourselves or our families, making love, having tea with a friend, or working on a passion project.
There’s a reason mindfulness meditation has attracted so much interest. We’re living in a crazy world where we’re supposed to be able to say meaningful things in 140 characters or less, where we can’t expect to hold anyone’s attention for more than three seconds on social media, and more and more, this inability to focus and be present is following us into our everyday lives. People text while they drive, they text while they’re having dinner with a friend, and they even try to text in yoga class sometimes. It’s hard for people to unplug and really connect, but at the same time, people feel a greater sense of being alone in this world, and it’s no wonder. True connection, the kind that feeds your soul, needs to happen face to face, at least some of the time. You have to be able to get quiet and put down your device so you can feel what there is to feel. You have to remember to breathe deeply and slow down.
But the Internet mimics our brains. Our minds are moving so quickly that we want everything fast. And the faster we get information, the harder it is for us to focus for long periods of time. We have no idea how much time we have here in this life, with the people we love. I don’t believe anyone gets to their deathbed and thinks, I wish I’d texted more, or spent more time on Facebook, or sent out more tweets. But the desire to stay distracted is the desire to avoid feeling alone, confused, or vulnerable. We don’t want to feel those feelings because they’re uncomfortable. We have an aversion to feeling anything other than good. The biggest problem there is that healing requires a willingness to lean into those painful and raw places. If you want to feel good all the time and you’re using your energy trying to stay distracted, you’re not going to heal. You’re committing to a life on the run.
Feelings are not problems to be solved; they’re invitations to pay attention and explore. Yes, some of them hurt. They aren’t all pleasant. But a feeling doesn’t last forever. Feelings arise and peak and subside, if you let them. It’s when you push them down or run from them that they keep you on the run. There will never be enough houses or cars or movie stars or vacations. To go from focusing on how things look to how they feel, you really have to have exhausted the idea that having things or looking right is going to solve your problems. Heading inward gives you the chance to finally get real with yourself.
Journal Exercise
1. Make a list of everything you have. Write down all your prized possessions, big things and small.
2. Make a list of everything you want.
3. Make a list of everything you are. Don’t hold back here; write it the way your best friend or mom would write it. What are your best attributes?
4. Make a list of your favorite things to do, see, read, listen to, and explore.
5. Look at all your lists. What jumps out at you? Circle the things that are really meaningful to you.
6. If you only had a matter of months to live, how would you spend your time?
7. Is there anything you want or need to say to anyone that you’ve been putting off? Why is that?
Yoga Exercise: Half Sun Salutes
Today we’re going to sync up our breath with movement. By training the mind on the breath and syncing up the breath with movement, we create union and a mind-body conversation. This is a moving meditation that allows you to be in your body, to travel inward, and to take a look at the inner landscape that is your true home.
Stand in tadasana (mountain pose). Feel your feet rooting down, and rise up out of that. Connect to your breath, and take a few moments to create that ocean sound. On an inhale, reach your arms up, with the palms facing each other. Even though you’re extending the arms, relax the shoulders.
When you exhale, fold forward. You can bend your knees as much as you like to make your hamstrings and lower back comfortable. Draw the navel in to support your lower back (this should happen naturally as you exhale). Let your head hang and your spine release.
With your next inhale, come halfway up so you have a flat back. You can have your knees bent if you need to, and you can also have your hands on your shins. The collarbones are in the shape of a smile. Try to broaden the smile by lifting the heads of the shoulders, so you feel expansion across the chest.
When you exhale, fold forward again. Release your head and relax your neck.
With your next inhale, lengthen your spine so you have a flat back, and inhale all the way to standing, reaching the arms overhead.
When you exhale, bring the hands to prayer position at your heart. Repeat these half sun salutes three times and see how you feel.