Mental Yoga: Thathaasthu

by Nina

So she came down from the tree.... by Marc Chagall*

I’m stressed out this morning because early this morning a whole bunch of people from the city were outside my house arguing about our street tree. It’s a huge, beautiful old camphor tree with enormous roots that have for the third time ruined the sidewalk, wrecked our sewers, and are destroying our walkway as they inch their way toward the foundation of our house. The city took out the sidewalk on Monday, so now everyone was looking at the tree roots trying to figure out what to do. The city department and the contractor repairing the sidewalk think the tree is very dangerous and should be taken down—that’s a bit scary. The city’s arborists think the tree is worth preserving at any cost—I get that—but this means shaving down the trees roots and removing some of them in order to put a level sidewalk on top of them, and they claim there are no risks to be concerned about (though shaving the roots will result in some dead branches). And unfortunately we ourselves have no say whatsoever in the matter, even though the city is charging us to repair the damage that the tree did to the sidewalk—yes, really. My long time next-door neighbors are having the same problems with their street tree, and in their case the roots are destroying their water line, which needs to be replaced before the sidewalk can be repaired. 

It looks like what is going to happen is they are going to try shaving the roots of our tree and then re-evaluate after that. Weirdly the thing that really upset me is something that didn’t happen. The contractor told me that one plan the arborists had was to move the sidewalk onto our property to make more room for the street tree, while destroying part of our beautiful front garden. Are they even allowed to do that?  Whoa, even though they decided not to go for that plan, it’s making me angry that they were even thinking about it and talking about it behind my back! 

After that great start to my day, I came back to sit at my desk and work on the blog, not having any idea of what I was going to write about. Meanwhile, they’re now attacking my neighbor’s tree and making a lot of noise—and, oh, now the doorbell is ringing again! You know what it is time for? A little mental yoga. So—hahaha—I actually started reading some of my old posts to remind myself of how just pausing to notice your own thoughts can be helpful in quieting your mind.

I’ve written about samskaras, or patterns of reactivity, several times, including Meditation and Brain Strength, A Pathway in the Mind, and Changing the Brain’s Stressful Habits.  So first, I’ll take a moment to notice how upset I am at not having control over a decision that affects my life and my pocketbook as well as my confusion about being told completely contradictory things by various experts. I’ve registered my concerns, the decision has been made by the powers that be, and there is nothing more I can do. Yoga teacher and therapist Stephen Cope believes that with tapas, which he defines as “the energy of restraint,” we can start to avoid some of our harmful patterns of reactivity or samskaras. So for now, I’m going to try to just let it all go. Furthermore, can I just laugh about how upset I got over something that DIDN’T EVEN HAPPEN? 

But now the noise! It’s especially irritating hearing it when I’m already stressed out and I’m supposed to be writing a post this morning and don’t even have a topic yet! But I am quickly reminded of Ram’s post Achieving Stillness in Turbulent Times, in which he wrote about how his grandfather taught him to meditate in a train station. He concluded by saying:

"The goal of meditation is to be at ease, relaxed and at peace with our surroundings. It is important to not resist the disturbing/distracting influence that comes in the way of your meditation practice (in your case traffic or the cold environment). So do not try to ignore the influence or to block it out, for if you try, you will only meet with stiffer resistance, ending in frustration. Instead, simply let it be (“thathaasthu” in Sanskrit) and continue with your meditation. Everything is a part of meditation, all the influences including the noise, the thoughts, the emotions, and the resistance from the mind. Treat everything that arises in meditation the same way—let it be and just be there!"

Well, if Ram can meditate in train station, I can write a blog post with people arguing outside and making the kind of invasive noise that only large machines are capable of (thank you, Ram, for teaching me so much). And since my neighbors have no water, I’ll bring them a pitcher of drinking water and offer them the use of my bathroom for the day. 

Thathaasthu.

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What is Healthy Aging, Anyway?

by Nina

Dahlia by Melina Meza

It has only struck me recently that while we’ve written about what aging is and the many ways yoga can help foster healthy aging, we’ve never really addressed what “healthy aging” is. So I thought I’d take a moment to give an overview of the thoughts that Baxter and I currently have on this topic. At this point—we’re still just discussing these ideas—we consider healthy aging to have three important aspects:

• Compressed Morbidity
• Independence
• Equanimity

And the reason why we’re such proponents of yoga for healthy aging is that we believe yoga can help with all three of these aspects of healthy aging. For now, I’ll just give you a brief overview of how.

Compressed Morbidity. Last week I wrote a post Longevity vs. Morbidity comparing the difference between longevity and morbidity. The medical term “morbidity” refers to the period of time you spend in ill health before you die. Obviously we all would like—both for ourselves and for our loved ones—to keep this period of ill health as short (that is, compressed) as possible. A well-rounded yoga practice, especially one that includes stress management, can help by preventing some of the diseases, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes that plague people during their older years.

Independence. Another goal I think we all share for ourselves and our loved ones is that we can continue to live independently and care for ourselves as long as possible. From our point of view living independently includes both the basic daily self care activities, such as dressing, going to the toilet, getting up and down from a chair, doing light housework, and so on as well as the ability to continue to do the activities we love (which I wrote about in my post Being Able to Do What You Love) for as long as possible. A regular asana practice—even one that is modified over time—will help keep us able bodied, rather than sliding into the stiffness and weakness that results from a sedentary lifestyle.

Equanimity. For me, maintaining emotional stability as we age is the most important aspect of healthy aging. For even if we can “compress” morbidity, we will certainly have to go through poor health at some point. And even if we can prolong our independence into old age, we may eventually have to face the loss of that, however briefly. In addition, even if we are ourselves blessed with long and healthy lives, we’ll all have to deal with losing people we love. So being able to handle the challenges ahead with balance and grace is crucial. But I also believe that this is where yoga has its greatest strength. Stress management practices help reduce stress, anxiety and depression. And meditation and yoga philosophy can help us keep grounded and strong. At least that is my fervent hope.

Baxter and I will be writing more on these topics in the weeks to come, but we’d also love to hear your thoughts, ideas and personal stories.

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