Chapter Three
Living clearly starts and ends with how you relate to your world. Yup—it’s really that simple. Your happiness, health, and vibrancy are born from how you interface with the people in your life, how you deal with the inevitable challenges that come your way, and, most essentially, how kind you are to yourself in the process. Years of wiping the fog off my own windshield, and witnessing my students do the same, has shown me that genuine clarity—and the mental, emotional, and physical vibrancy that comes with it—is totally and completely dependent on the way we relate to everything that comes our way, internally and externally.
But what is “relating”? It is the action component of relationship; it’s the fire, the juice, the chemical combustion that happens when two separate entities face off. In your own life, these entities could be you and your current love interest, you and your boss, or you and a luscious piece of chocolate cake. When it comes to relating, the other entity doesn’t have to be a living, breathing human being. It can be a thing, a concept, a belief structure, or a situation. You relate just as much to the reflection you see in the mirror each morning or the traffic you’re stuck in, the job you’re stuck in, or the relationship you’re stuck in as you do to your kids or your friends. And relating also applies to our habits. How do you relate to tobacco, alcohol, TV, sex, chocolate? Are you in a healthy relationship with the things that tempt you and pull you away from what you know is really good for you?
Most of the relating we do is unconscious. We sleepwalk through our days, allowing ourselves to get dragged around by our desires and emotions like a puppy on a leash. Our reactions are automatic and habitual: We see the chocolate cake, and we reach for it. Stuck in the traffic jam, we steam, pout, or fret. Our spouse yells at us, and we yell back. We’re like a Ping-Pong ball being swatted from one side of the table to the other, again and again, over the same net. It’s easy to forget that we don’t have to do things the same way, that we don’t have to remain a prisoner of reactivity. There is always a new path or better choice we can make.
It’s so exciting to realize that in every moment of every day we have the option to shift how we relate to whatever is showing up for us right here, right now. If the coffee you ordered arrives lukewarm or your love connection loses its spark or you get fired, insulted, or shoved—you decide how you’re going to relate to the situation. Whether you’re running late for a ridiculously important meeting, struggling to relocate your butt from the couch to your spin class, or frantically excavating your closet in hopes of nailing an outfit for a promising date, you choose how you’re going to deal with the situation. And while most of the relating we do is centered around daily conflicts or challenges, in the course of a lifetime, we’ll also be asked to relate to circumstances with much higher stakes, such as mourning the loss of a loved one, managing a difficult diagnosis, or facing depression, addiction, or anxiety. The ways in which we relate to something or someone are massive and tiny; they rock the foundation of who we are, and they bounce off the surface leaving barely a dent.
I could fill this book with examples of how human beings are asked to relate to heartbreak, frustrations, conflict, and disappointments. The examples are endless and universal; nobody escapes the hard stuff. In fact, you’ve likely experienced many of the situations I’ve listed above, probably this week or today, and it’s 100 percent guaranteed that you’ll experience zillions more, in predictable and totally surprising manifestations. And as they’ve done in the past, these challenging situations will stir up some pretty real feelings: anger (maybe even rage), hopelessness, despair, confusion. Maybe you see that the way you relate to your world is being influenced by laziness, addiction, or some other bad habit—powerful forces that can be difficult to fight. Thankfully, you can begin to point yourself in a new direction—to break a pattern and liberate yourself from the sticky web of reactivity—by simply creating enough space to choose a softer, kinder, more honest approach to whatever or whomever you’re facing.
Create space. That sounds great. But how do regular people with regular responsibilities, regular insecurities, and the usual temptations go about creating some metaphorical space that will change how they relate to a moody spouse or tantrum-prone toddler or the 10 pounds they want to lose? The answer is deceptively simple: Connect the mind and body to gain clarity. I have used yoga to really drive myself toward this goal. The stretching, strengthening, and balancing that you do in the average yoga class is a single aspect of a complex philosophical system that’s really, really old and carries some timeless wisdom. Physical postures, or asanas, are one of the eight limbs or paths that makes up the wider yogic universe. If you were to study yoga in its entirety, you’d come across intricate and esoteric texts about achieving a calm mind and a peaceful heart, hundreds of techniques and practices for preparing the body to quiet the mind through meditation, lots of hard-to-pronounce Sanskrit words (the ancient language of the practice), and countless photos of bendy men and women twisted into impossibly pretzel-like poses. It can all be a bit intimidating, especially to the new practitioner.
What I have felt on my own yoga mat and have witnessed as a teacher to thousands of New York yogis, of all shapes and sizes, of all ages and fitness levels, is that yoga is an incredibly generous system for health and well-being. The philosophical teachings of yoga are open to interpretation and adaptation. Like the yoga master who easily wraps his legs around his head, they can be bent to fit your own life.
The Five Principles of Living Clearly were born from the understanding that we each come in with a deep knowing that naturally guides us to a strong and healthy body, calm mind, and happy heart, but through life’s challenges and traumas, we lose that understanding, slipping further and further away from the true essence of who we are.
Each principle starts and ends with attention, intention, and conscious action. You must first see what is holding you back (attention), acknowledge that you want to change it (intention), and then take a teeny tiny step toward that change (action). This is far from easy, but that one small step sends a signal to your mind that you’re serious about doing something better for yourself. Then the next step becomes a little easier, and the one after that even easier. Before you know it, bam! You’ve activated a new way of being.
Each of the Five Principles is a tool you can use to change the way you relate to your world: how angry you get, how much joy you feel. These tools are free and available to everyone at every moment, and the opportunities to use them are endless. I lean on them constantly to make quick choices about how to deal with situations and emotions: how to deal with overzealous paparazzi (befriend them), how to work through an argument with my husband (kiss him—yup, midfight), or how to juggle a sleepless toddler with a hungry infant (bring them all into bed with me).
Luckily, mastering the principles does not require studying hard-to-understand texts or sitting through lengthy lectures. The gateway to each principle is through a specific area of the physical body, and each one can be practiced by moving into simple yoga poses. Yoga postures give the body an opportunity to experience the felt sense of the Five Principles, which helps the mind integrate the teachings held within each.
For example, if you’re feeling anxious and it seems as if you’re floating off the ground with worry and concern, you could say to yourself: I want to be more grounded in this moment; I want to trust that everything is going to be okay. But if your body can’t recall what, exactly, it feels like to be grounded, your mind will spin around fuzzy mental constructs, grasping for something. The felt experience of the body helps to embed the sensation of each principle into your being.
Each of the yoga poses in this chapter is your path into the wisdom of the principle. When you move your body into a specific posture, one that has been assumed by millions of yogis before you, you are tapping into a system that actually enmeshes the way of the principle it represents into your being. Instead of filing the principles away in some dusty folder in the back of your mind, you begin to know them in your muscles, bones, and cells; they become part of you.
I chose yoga as a way into experiencing the theoretical content of the Five Principles because it is a system of movement and philosophy of well-being that I trust. It is often described as the union between body and mind, connected by the breath. Sometimes the aesthetic of a lean, toned yoga body is what draws a person to trying yoga, and he or she discovers mindfulness as a side effect. Other times, mindfulness—and the promise of stress relief and relaxation—is the allure and fitness is the side effect. In my method, both these things go hand in hand. Fitness and mindfulness are the double outcome of the practice; you practice mindfulness in every movement, and your movements get more effective and more transforming because of that connected state.
Take comfort in the fact that you already know how to do this. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been in a conversation with your body for your entire life. From the moment you were born, your body has been talking to you, telling you exactly what it needs, sometimes just taking what it wants. You stretch when you need to wake up and start the day, your stomach rumbles when it is hungry, and you clench your fists or your jaw and your breath shortens when you’re angry. Some of these actions are involuntary, but many can be controlled consciously. In fact, you are actually sitting at the control panel of the vessel that is your body. You have the power to decide how you want to feel by paying attention to what your body is telling you and choosing a different or better response (what would happen if you loosened your jaw and breathed deeply during a conflict with your spouse?). Practicing yoga postures and breathing techniques of the Five Principles is a way to train your body to create more space between anger and reactivity, between frustration and blaming, which leads to fewer angry and frustrated moments and more laughter and joy. And as you put the principles into practice in your life, they become reliable tools to assist you through any challenging moment. The more you use them, the stronger they will become. Each time you fall back on a principle, it’s like sharpening your knives. Soon, you will have a set of razor-sharp tools always at the ready.
Yoga’s benefits are diverse and far-reaching. It conditions every part of the body in incredibly efficient ways. It will strengthen some body parts while stretching others, sometimes in a single pose. This promotes balance in the body and a more harmonious and integrated state of mind. It promotes mobility by enhancing strength and flexibility and supporting healthy joint function. The result is that yoga powerfully counterbalances the soreness and stiffness that comes from sedentary modern lifestyles. It also makes any other activity you do—from gardening to golf—come easier and feel better.
By stimulating the internal organs and the meridians, the invisible pathways of energy that flow throughout a human being, yoga helps the body do its essential jobs of digesting, healing, and rebuilding and helps the brain to think more clearly. It stimulates your endocrine system to release feel-good chemicals like oxytocin, and a challenging practice might also release endorphins. By promoting better circulation, it helps your body release physical toxins; by calming the nervous system, it helps toxic thoughts dissolve, as well. Yoga slowly and safely softens the armor of tight, stressed muscles that almost all of us wear daily. As more space is created in the body, the consequence is almost always that we feel more space in our lives.
As you read each chapter, experiment with the individual poses and exercises scattered throughout as well as with the yoga sequences at the end of each principle. It’s best to wear comfortable clothes while moving through the poses (though my Instagram yoga-pose-of-the-day photos have proven you can do more than a few poses in stilettos, a cocktail dress, or winter parka). And though any flat surface will work, it’s nice to practice on a yoga mat so you don’t slide around. The most important thing is that you play with these movements—at home, at work, or while waiting on line at the bank. In Chapter Ten, you’ll read more about using yoga as part of your workout program. With repetition, you’ll find you don’t need to look at the book as closely and can get into the experience more deeply.
Yoga’s real gift is the way it challenges the mind to stay present and not wander and invites you to use every part of yourself to the best of your ability. I always encourage my students to give it their all, not by applying brute force but by applying full intention and effort—to hold a pose longer, to try a balance again and again, or to sink deeply into the floor in Savasana and truly let go. I want them to not shy away from sensation, and I encourage you to do the same with the poses and sequences throughout the book. By the end of a good yoga session, you should feel “used up” in a good way. From top to toe and inside and out, you should feel worked and awakened. The armor melts through the heat of breathing and movement and suddenly there is an opening. It is a contented exhaustion. Give each moment your all, and on the other side of it, you will feel a tremendous release.
