Change Brings New Light

Sometimes change hits us in the heart like a windstorm. We are struck by the unexpected, the abrupt, the weight of the words as we utter them, turning toward a new path.

I sold the house.

I'm closing the store.

I'm leaving, and I won't be back.

How do we survive? How do we move on?

In yoga, there are postures that make us feel as though we're ready to pass out, puke, die. Often in the standing balancing series, toward the end of a long pose, we want to come out. To give up.

We make a choice: do I surrender, or do I breathe right through it? One more breath, one more moment. And then, the posture is over.

At the beginning of class, during deep breathing, a new flow of oxygenated blood to our brains may make us feel lightheaded, dizzy, even euphoric. This signals that we are experiencing a change -- a movement into a new state, a shift into meditation, a conscious and deliberate decision to rest in the present moment. During the breathing, we feel ourselves fully within the room and within our own bodies. Centered, whole, ready.

We become the breath.

We become the change, without panic, fear or hesitation.

In yoga, it is the breath that carries us through.

In his book The Wisdom of Yoga, Stephen Cope describes the transformational inner process which yoga guides us through. He highlights a passage from the Yoga Sutras to explain the changes that take place:

Being absorbed in the play of the mind's luminosity yields insight about the subtle, hidden, and distant.

Focusing with perfect discipline on the sun yields insight about the universe.

Focusing with perfect discipline on the moon yields insight about the stars' positions. 

(3.26-28)

Yoga brings the mind into focus by using the body, by placing it in space. When we can contextualize ourselves in a physical universe, we can then begin to explore the inner world of our mind, leading to greater self-understanding. Our understanding is likened to light, and has been described by various religions as "the light within" or "the divine light." Cope goes on to describe it beautifully:

"The compelling luminosity of 'deep mind' draws the seeker's awareness increasingly inward. In the yoga tradition, this increasing interiority is seen as a developmental imperative. All adult development moves from the external to the internal. That is to say, our experience of each stage of our 'waking up' process is inevitably one of deepening interiority...Introversion draws us into an exploration of the compelling inner structures of the mind."

Change can be hard. Change can hurt or heal, it can confuse us, it can leave us gasping for breath.

But at the moment when we become fearful, bewildered, distraught -- at our greatest moment of weakness -- we must remember that this change also brings new light.