Finding Sanctuary in Practice and Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I would like to start this dialogue by paying tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We should all be grateful for her dedication and hard work. I found the news of her passing particularly troubling. It seems as if our political environment, our natural environment, and the world around us continues to spiral out of control. This latest news, and the possibility of more chaos to come, has pushed me to a breaking point. Thoughts were going through my head like “Okay, no more news!”…“I’m done paying attention to any of this!”… “I’m checking out.” I imagine I am not alone with these thoughts and feelings. Some of you may have already passed this point.

Luckily, my solution to this wave of worried thinking is my practice. After all, the great sage Patanjali defines yoga as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind stuff. Another way to say this is that yoga is a tool to help you manage mental anguish. Our yoga practice has the potential to provide us sanctuary from the storm—this storm or any other storm that rattles our inner selves. This is not about escapism; this is about managing our daily lives.

Here are a couple of examples. Imagine a batter in a baseball game. The pitcher is staring him down, giving him the eye, and making him wait. But a smart batter will know he has a choice in the matter. As long as the pitcher has not started to deliver his pitch, he can ask for a timeout, step out of the batter’s box, and set his own pace. Now the pitcher has to wait for him! The batter did not leave the game, he did not check out. What did he do? He took time to compose himself and prepare for the pitch that will come his way, whether or not he likes the results. Similar, one can imagine a pinball game. Most of us think about playing pinball two ways. Either the ball is rattling around scoring us points or it’s going down the gutter. But every now and then there is a third option. You can sometimes catch the ball with the flipper and hold it there. The result is the same as the batter stepping out of the batter’s box. This holding of the pinball with the flipper does not end the game. We can’t stay there forever but we can take some time and collect ourselves.

Most of us throughout our daily lives have these self-calming experiences but we fail to give them a second thought. We simply consume those quiet moments as they occur. I have never heard a sports announcer exclaim “Did you see the calm in that batter when he stepped out of the box?” It’s a shame in the sense of how valuable these moments are—this idea of calm. But this is what yoga has to give us. First it provides us the pause, the quiet time, the respite between pitches. But as I said earlier we have these calming experiences all the time, but we merely consume them without self-awareness. But a skilled practitioner does something quite fabulous. Not only does she experience these moments, but she recognizes them for what they are. She appreciates them, savors them, and by doing so, she preserves them for later. It is like putting money in the bank, and not just any type of account, but one that earns interest. In other words our yoga practice opens an interest bearing account in our name.

With consistent and dedicated practice, we have the potential to weather the most severe storms. And consistent and dedicated does not have to be hours every day. Perhaps for some of us it is a little every day...15 minutes here or 15 minutes there and pretty soon we will have a fat bank account of calm.

Importantly we have to keep in mind that we can’t stop the train and get off. We still must play our role. Another definition of yoga is skill in action. Doing the right thing at the right time. Knowing what to do and when to do it. Personally, I plan on helping out however I can. I am not going to check out. I will volunteer for the elections, or help someone else get to the polls, or whatever else the situation requires. A strong word of caution is that we cannot be attached to the outcome. We have no authorship over the results. We only have a right to play our part.

As I write this I would like to encourage you all to think about how you will incorporate practice into your daily life. I would also like to encourage you to think about how you might get involved in, as John Lewis expressed it, “good trouble.” If you would like to share with the rest of us, send us an email and I will add it to the blog post. You could tell us about your practice, your plans to make this a better world, or what Ruth Bader Ginsberg meant to you. I look forward to hearing from you and hope to see you on your mat soon. And if you are looking to get involved, HERE is a fun event that one member of our community has already signed up for.

Randy

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg