Tag: self-responsibility

Kudos to my kid

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I had been dreading the yearly school skiing trip ever since I checked the weather forecast and saw it was going to rain a couple of days before the trip and then the temperature was going to drop below zero degrees centigrades. This meant icy conditions. This surely meant me being on my bum (or worse) quite often.

Every year, in February, before the Winter break, we take our middle school students on a skiing trip. Every year, we go to the same place, and students get two options: downhill or cross country. I am in the cross-country group. It is usually a very pleasant trip except for the last two kilometers which are only downhill. During the 23 years I’ve been living in Norway, I have been trying to improve my skiing skills, and I am much better than when I started, but I still dread steep downhills, especially when it is icy.

I KNEW it was going to be icy this year, and I had two fears: 1) to fall and hurt myself or break a bone 2) to be so afraid of my own downhill that I was going to be unable to help the students who aren’t very experienced in skiing. Every year, we have students who either have never skied before, or ski only on the yearly Ski Day. In that order. I know, I should be ashamed of myself, but that’s how it is.

A couple of days before the trip, I made an agreement with myself, to go with the flow. Stop dreading how it was going to be, and solve the possible challenges once there, in front of the steep downhill. Worst case scenario, I could take my skis off and walk the last two kilometers.

Usually, we get to the last part of the trip quite fast and give students two options, to go downhill and meet the rest of the school at the Alpine skiing center, or go for an extra loop with some of the teachers. I like skiing so much that I usually join the extra loop. Oftentimes, all students choose to go back to their peers together with a couple of teachers, so some teachers end up in a solo trip for about an hour or so.

This year, one of my colleagues suggested she and I do the extra loop and then just take our skis off and walk the hill down. I was so grateful for her suggestion, but when we got back to the crossing where we had to go downhill, she changed her mind and suggested that we try skiing down through the forest (!!!). She must have seen the surprise in my face because she smiled and said it is often better when it is so icy on the tracks. She seemed so confident, and I know she does this quite a lot with her family, that I decided to give it a try. It wasn’t easy, but boy it was fun! It wasn’t that hard either. We used more time than we thought, but we got back on time to help the other teachers organise the students to get the bus back to school.

Being such a cautious person usually (to not say a wuss), I was so excited when we finally got back. Thanks to my colleague, who by the way, I think is super cool, I got myself out of my comfort zone, and experienced something new. At some points, we did have to take the skis off because there were patches of bare forest, or because there were too many trees. We also fell – me more than my colleague, but that was fine too.

I kept thinking. on the bus ride back something that I have been thinking about lately. Why is it that I always want things to go “smoothly”? Why do I always dread challenges? Isn’t life more fun when we get to learn something new? When we use our problem-solving skills? I am trying to change my mindset in this regard, and I am also trying to apply this in my parenting as my kids grow older. I am trying to transfer this to them.

Today, our youngest daughter (13) took the train alone for the first time. All the way from Trondheim to a place called Porsgrunn in the south of Norway. The whole trip takes nine hours. She had to change trains in Oslo. Instead of hoping for the trip to go problem-free, I hoped she would encounter challenges with a problem-solving attitude- which by the way I know she usually has. Of course, I prayed for safe travels, but I hoped more for her to be able to tap into her own strength. And guess what? Challenges did come. Her train to Oslo was delayed and she lost her train to Porsgrunn, but she managed to find the ticket office and was directed to the next train. She called me a bit stressed but happy from the train track and texted me from the train. I think this is a very good experience for her because she realized she can do this.

In the last year and a half, she has been challenged. She has experienced challenging friendships, her best friend of years made new friends, and she changed schools. Past the immediate distress and sadness, I have seen her grow, and I see her become more confident. I believe that partly unconsciously, she knows she can deal with challenges.

I am being more aware of what I say to her when she experiences a challenge now. I always tell her, you can do this. You have the skills, and you know we support you.

Closing 2022

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It’s been a long time since I had taken the time to sit and write here. I do write in my journal a bit more often, and I realize that my reflections tend to go in circles. It is as if I had at least two inner voices. One is the limited one that keeps falling back into old patterns of behavior that only bring stress and distress, and the other one is the one that “knows better” but unfortunately isn’t always heard by the first one until it is too late.

All in all, however, I think I have managed to more or less keep my peace of mind for most of the Fall semester. There have been some small challenges and some bigger ones, and one thing that always helps is to tell myself that worrying on its own will never bring solutions. So, I do what I can, and let go of the worry. It requires work, but I am getting there.

I am grateful for the people that surround me. My husband, my kids, my colleagues, and my friends. I have allowed myself to experience new things this Fall, mingle with new people, and it has brought lightness and moments of fun to my everyday life. I have decided I need to dance more, but since I am not super keen to go to nightclubs at this stage in life, I have found alternative arenas to do so, and every time I spend some hours dancing, I feel lighter in my head, and my body feels relaxed. I join from time to time something called The 5rythms, such a cool way to let the body move! I believe dancing is a very nice way to express ourselves. I think I can compare dancing with the asana practice. When I do my asana practice, I go into a flow of movement and breath and that makes me feel safe and light. It is the same when I dance.

I still need to work on being assertive at the right time. I tend to put aside what I need or want because I am afraid to make the other person feel bad, or because I don’t want to be seen as ‘difficult’. The problem is that when I don’t clearly express my needs, small frustrations keep accumulating, and I end up coming to a point where I lose my patience and all the accumulated frustration comes out in a rather hurtful way.

In my defense, I have been trying to figure out what are “reasonable” expectations towards the few close people I have in my life. I have thus come to the conclusion that no expectation that causes distress can be a reasonable expectation. My internal needs are nobody’s responsibility but mine. I need to work on them. We all go around with our own luggage and the more I experience, the more I realize that I just have to let people be and do as they best can and rather focus on what I do and say. I think I will bring two keywords to 2023 with me: compassion and understanding. Both towards my own limitations and towards others.

There is another side to this reflection, and that is to stop seeking what is not to be found in certain people. Sometimes this means turning around and walking away from a relationship, other times it means releasing that relationship from wanting the person to do something he/she isn’t able to do.

Lastly, I really need to work on using the tools I have learned through my Yoga studies. Use my breath to be present, let go of my tangling thoughts, and keep redirecting my attention inwards.

I hope, that in 2023, I will finally come closer to setting my mind free from the limitations I have been struggling with all these years and start focusing on what is really important.

On wishes and desires

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Most of us experience if not often, at least at some point in life wanting something that is difficult to get or even that we cannot have. I remember when we were trying to have our first child. It took us a while, and at some point, we were told we probably wouldn’t be able to without ‘help’ from specialists. I remember the feeling of desperation and helplessness. Of feeling that it wasn’t fair. Why us, why me? We talked a lot about it and decided we didn’t want to go through the process of trying with in vitro. I tried to understand why I had such a strong need to become a mother.

Thinking back, I think I was still relatively immature, but I was able to understand that I had a need to nurture someone, to give love to someone. I said this to my husband, and we decided that it didn’t matter if the baby was born from us or not. We contacted adoption agencies to start the process of adoption.

It turns out that the Universe had other plans for us, and I got pregnant some months after we received the papers with the information, and not only did we have one child but three! Almost one after the other.

I have had other periods in my life where I have felt a similar lack like the one when we were struggling to conceive. I have wanted to have something that I don’t have. Maybe the need to become a mum wasn’t the first need I felt in my life that was difficult to fulfill, and it certainly wasn’t the only one.

Yoga came to my life in one of these periods of lack. It has taken me years to understand where it comes from, accept it and direct my attention to what I have and can create. Yoga has given me the tools to go a bit deeper, to turn my gaze inwards. Of course, on the surface, there is always something out there that I might desire but looking closer and reflecting I realise that the lack was all a product of my perspective. Maybe the feeling of lack of validation comes from a deeper need to see my worth that is independent of what I do or don’t do. My lack of connection with someone might be a lack of connection with myself which then makes it difficult to connect with others. My lack of love might be my inability to see that I have love inside me. And so on.

The challenge when we seek to fulfill our needs with a very specific wish is that 1) we risk not seeing what we do have 2) we don’t realize that what we seek, is deeper than the material thing, and thus we can give to ourself and others.

I thought to write this post partly because I have teenagers in the house. They all want things, and of course, I think that this is partly positive since that is what drives us to keep going in the world. But sometimes, they can get so obsessed with what they “lack”, that they don’t see what they do have. I know, this is a typical phase in life, and there is maybe a scientific explanation to it, the problem is when we become adults, some of us might never realize what I describe above. We might spend a lot of energy and time chasing that single thing that we think will make everything be better.

Right before I sat down to write this, I saw a short video from a Yoga teacher I follow on Instagram (@yaeleshy1), and I was surprised to see that she was talking exactly about the same thing I’ve been reflecting on these days. She put it beautifully: when you feel you lack something, sit with that desire, feel it, and try to see if you can define what the deeper desire is. Is it love, is it safety, is it happiness? If yes, how can you create it for yourself and others? There is nothing wrong with wanting as long as we manage to understand where this want comes from and evaluate whether we want to spend all our lives chasing that specific form that we think this want or this need “has to” have, or if we can invest our energy and time in seeing what we have inside ourselves and thus what we are able to create around us.

The Truth

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My cousin recommended me some months ago to follow an account on Instagram called Yo Soy Fermentista (I am ‘fermenter” – someone who ferments) owned by a woman who calls herself Katita. I think she’s American but she mostly posts in Spanish. I don’t agree with everything she says and don’t find everything she does related to what I am interested in, but last week, she posted a video that caught my attention. She explained that she was low in energy and that she was eating raw chicken hearts to feel better. I didn’t really bother to watch the whole video. Still, I did hope that Mexicans following her were cautious with raw chicken meat since it can easily be contaminated with Salmonella.

Some days later, she posted another video saying that she had received a lot of criticism for the video about chicken hearts. One of the comments she got was that she was being irresponsible for encouraging people to do something that can put their lives in danger to which she responded that when she talks about what works for her, she expects people to do their research and make choices that are right for them.

I connected this to my studies in the Yoga Sutras this Summer. I have been thinking about the Yama Satya translated to Truthfulness. Its first meaning is connected to the truth that is based on facts, but it is also an encouragement to live our own truth. This is easier said than done and very important in order to cultivate a calmer state of mind. It requires that we spend some time reflecting on what is important to us and try to live a life in line with our chosen values and priorities. By choosing our core values, we avoid acting in ways that harm us and/or others, and by choosing our priorities, we avoid feeling that we are constantly missing out on something or that we are not doing the ‘right’ thing or even worse, that we are not doing ‘enough’. Thirdly, we choose a lifestyle based on these values, priorities and knowledge we gather about our body, mind and what helps them thrive. What to eat and how much, sleep higiene, exercise, rest and activities that feed us in a constructive way.

I think, however, that every once in a while we need to question and evaluate our truths as objectively as possible and adjust if necessary but avoid jumping from one idea to another without thorough reflection. We live in a world with an overload of information, thousands of ‘influencers’ and ‘experts’ willing to tell us how is a ‘better’ way to live our lives, but at the end of the day, we need to develop enough insight to know what makes sense for us.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the truths that we create in our minds, are not absolute truths. My truth is not necessarily your truth, so why not let people choose their own truths? According to Yoga, there is one Truth that can only be accessed once we manage to liberate our mind from its limitations, and the more in opposition we are with the world around us, the more ripples of distress, restlessness, and stress we create in our own minds moving thus further away from the Truth that we might want to reach.

Yamas and Niyamas

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During this Summer, I have been spending my mornings revising the notes we got for an online course I took in 2021 with my Yoga teacher, Prasad Rangnekar, about The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the Yoga Sutras since they were part of the syllabus during my YTT in 2015, but this time, we spent eight weeks going a bit deeper.

Ever since 2015, it has resonated with me that one of the best ways to reduce suffering is to get to know my mind better and thus work with the modalities Patanjali offers to gradually change the aspects of it that create stress and distress. The goal of Raja Yoga, as it is called, is “to bring the seeker from a restless state of mind to a completely regulated state of mind.” (Prasad Rangnekar, 2021) However, the Yoga Sutras seemed a bit dry to me back then, and shortly after, in 2016, I started studying the Bhagavad Gita through Prasad’s guidance. Back then, the teachings in the Gita felt more accessible and easier to grasp, and I focused all my attention on them. This said, out of the little I know about the Gita, the chapter that is closest to my heart and that oftentimes has taken me out of moments of distress is chapter 6 called Dhyana Yoga, which Jack Hawley translates as Taming the Mind and the Senses.

Now, going back to the Sutras after several years of focusing mainly on the teachings of the Gita, I feel that I am getting more out of my studies, and I feel the motivation to approach the teachings in a more systematic way.

In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with commentary from Bhashya, it is explained where human suffering comes from, and a model called Ashtanga Yoga is given to calm the mind and thus stop the suffering. This model has eight components, and the two first ones are Yamas and Niyamas which can be seen as values and observances that the practitioner should follow at every moment in thought and in action. In the mentioned course, Prasad explained that by living an ethical life following the Yamas and Niyamas we refrain from doing actions that cause harm to others and simultaneously create mental disturbances in us that can generate suffering and keep us in the ignorance of Self. It is important to clarify here that the end goal of all Yoga traditions is to unite us with this Self with a capital ‘s’. This Self is pure, and independent from anything that happens in the mind and physical world. It is said, that once we get in contact with this Self, we will realize that we don’t need anything else. It is called Self-realization. This end goal seems a bit too high for me, so at this stage in my life, I am content with creating clarity, harmony, and peace of mind. Anyhow, back to the Yamas and Niyamas.

The Yamas are called ‘the great vows’ and they are Ahimsa or Non-harming, which is considered the most important value, Satya or Truthfulness, Asteya or Abstinence from Stealing, Brahmacarya or Continence/Moderation, and Aparigraha or Abstinence from Covetousness (for a more in-depth explanation of each of the Yamas and Niyamas, please consult one of the many translations and commentaries on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in book 2. I like especially, Swami Satchidananda’s, but there are also some resources online).

The Niyamas are often described as observances, and they are Sauca or Purity, Santosa or Contentment, Tapas or Zeal/Penance/Austerity, Svadhyaya or Study of the Sacred Scriptures for Self understanding, and Isvarapranidhanani or worship/faith in something bigger than us, often translated as God.

They seem simple, but, I believe they are difficult to follow at all times, so I have decided to be more systematic about how I try to apply them to my life. I started by writing in my journal how I will apply each Yama and Niyama in my life as I am right now, and I will revise them regularly to remind myself and also to decide if I need to be more precise or if I have to change them.

I wanted also to find a way to be reminded as I go about in my everyday life. First, I thought about getting a tattoo, but that seemed a bit too drastic and expensive, I then checked online if there are bracelets that have some sort of image that symbolises the Yamas and Niyamas, but I landed on making my own bracelets. One with the word ahimsa, one with ASABA (Yamas) and one with SSTSI (Niyamas).

The first day wearing the bracelets, we went for a hike in the forest. We have three teenagers in the house, and our oldest and youngest aren’t very keen anymore to join us on our hikes. However, 1) they spend way too much time sitting in front of screens during the Summer break 2) we like spending time with them. So, my husband and I decided to gently force them to join every other day we go for a hike this Summer. A way to motivate them this time was by planning a stop at a cabin to get a sweet treat during our hike. Halfway through it, however, we realized that we weren’t going to make it to the cabin before closing time. This didn’t help for motivation, and especially our youngest started showing very clearly her discontent. I noticed how this was affecting me. I was getting stressed by her discontent, and somehow it started creating a feeling of annoyance in me.

I decided to quietly stay in the back as we walked to observe my emotions and thoughts for a while. I started to feel guilty for pushing them on this hike, for not bringing an extra snack, I asked myself -should we make it shorter than planned? I then realised that I am often stressed when our three kids join us for a hike, or when they don’t because ‘maybe we should have pushed them to come instead of allowing them to stay in the whole day with their phones’. Either way, my mind creates stress for me. So, what am I going to do? While lost in my rumination, I got a glimpse of my left wrist, and I read ASABA, where the S stands for Satya, truthfulness. What do I believe in? I believe in my kids benefiting from being physically active, I believe in my kids being in contact with nature, and I believe in my kids spending time with us. They might not always like it, but this is being true to my beliefs as a mother, and thus, I should stick to it and get through their discontent without making a big fuss. It felt like removing a heavy weight from my shoulders. Unsurprisingly enough, after a few minutes, the frustration from our youngest was gone, and she and I had a very nice chat on our way back. I didn’t react to her discontent and even better, I noticed my unnecessary stress. I used one of the Yamas to help me accept my choice and the consequences it brought.

I am very curious what the next days of using my bracelets will bring. I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities daily. 😀