After 8 years of yoga practice, I have not stopped feeling like crap from time to time nor looking for ways to stop feeling like crap when I do. What has happened is I can now distinguish my feelings from my thinking. In other words, I can differentiate what I feel - resistance, sadness or fear - from what I think.
For example, when I was in labor I felt unprecedented physical pain and I noticed thoughts that were not helpful. Thoughts like, "am I dying? Is something wrong? Will she ever get born?" I trusted my midwife when she said, "no, there is nothing wrong and you are not dying right now. You are giving birth." Choosing not to give attention to unhelpful thoughts made the physical experience much easier for me. Because I was choosing, I was present and empowered.
We are our own midwives, giving birth to ourselves over and over. Our best selves are dynamic, changing from moment to moment. We need to keep listening to what we think when we feel uncomfortable. Your thinking may not be as dramatic as "I think I'm dying." But, your thinking could be a subtle variation like: "I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life," "I suck," "nobody cares about me," "I am two steps from being institutionalized" or "I'm fundamentally flawed." Notice the thoughts in your head when you feel crappy and label those thoughts "thinking." You could even write them down.
Labeling thinking as thinking reconnects me with my best self, which is my true self, the one that doesn't judge me or others, that doesn't preoccupy itself with lamenting the past or anticipating the future. My best self is present and consciously choosing what to think. Seeing this choice - which thoughts to water and which thoughts to leave alone - seems most challenging when I am feeling sad, angry, scared or confused. And this is precisely when making conscious choices about what to think makes the most difference!
The next time you feel some variety of discomfort, you could practice noticing:
- where do you feel that feeling? where does the feeling begin and end in your body?
- does the feeling have a color?
- what texture does the feeling have?
- when did the feeling start?
- when was the last time you felt like that?
- what's your earliest memory of feeling like that?
- what are you thinking?
- when you believe your thinking, how does the feeling change?
- when you change your thinking, how does the feeling change?
Noticing this is not intended to fix or change anything. I don't need fixing or changing. Neither do you. What we need is what Krishnamurti calls the greatest expression of human intelligence - the ability to see yourself without judgement. See the feelings, see the thinking, see the reactions, see the patterns, see the choices, see it all. And when you notice you are judging yourself - for judging yourself, for not noticing unconscious thinking earlier, for not understanding what the heck is going on, for not knowing what is what - see that. That's all. Really. I'm telling you, it's amazing just to see this mental rodeo and not get roped into it!
With that in mind, I am sharing a teaching from Pema Chodron to remind you that everything is coming together in perfect timing:
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