2023 July

Can We Share Yoga with Those Who Resist It?

by Chandra/Jo Stagmmato

My discovery of Yoga and meditation when I was 18 and a college freshman began to change me from an angry and troubled teenager who hated phys ed to a balanced adult comfortable in my body. It took years, of course, for the practices to take hold. But I stayed with them, or, more accurately, returned to them in my 20s and 30s and 40s whenever I needed to be rescued from my negativity and destructive habits.

Then in my mid-40s, I stumbled into Integral Yoga. The Hatha Yoga classes were a revelation. I knew the basic poses but the more subtle practices of deep relaxation and pranayama were newer to me. Never had I felt so peaceful and free, so spacious in body and mind as I did floating out of Integral Yoga. I became a teacher and ended up working at Integral Yoga Institute of New York for more than 20 years where I studied the Sutras and the Gita, read the Golden Present on a daily basis and applied the teachings of Yoga to how I conducted my life, at least most of the time.

Sharing these practices and teachings with willing students is joyous and easy. More challenging is trying to convince some of the people in my life that the valuable lessons I learned about peaceful interactions and healthy lives might make their lives better–and mine easier if they would only become Yogis! I was certain if only my husband would do just a few poses (selected by me, of course!) each day, his back pain would subside, and if he would only adopt some Raja Yoga teachings, we would argue less. If one of my oldest friends would calm down and practice some pranayama (“I already breathe!” she angrily replied to my admittedly sometimes pushy suggestions), her hips and shoulders would feel better and she would stop being angry and resentful in her life.

Bottom line: nothing worked on either of these dear people. Furthermore, my equanimity was actually sometimes a source of friction between us. In advocating for peace and health and comfort and love, I was perceived as a bit superior and off-putting.

What can we do as Yoga teachers and enthusiastic, dedicated practitioners to address the desire to share, the frustration of resistance, and the courtesy of honoring people where they are?

Here’s what I do, with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the day. First, I go deeper into the practices of Integral Yoga that have literally transformed my own life. The daily practices. My body and mind depend on them and on the rare days that I miss, I am reminded why these are called “daily.”=

Second, I try to look at every situation through the lens of all of the teachings to explore how I feel, what my mind is bringing up, and how I can use the great tool of a deep breath before responding to anything. With this foundation, I try to be humble, not a model or icon, but simply an example of the value of these teachings. When people say to me, oh, you look good, or, oh, you seem happy and relaxed, I have finally learned to merely say, “That’s because I practice Yoga.” Following this sentence, I clamp my mouth shut to avoid saying, “You should try it.”

Though I can’t seem to get my folks to practice asana or breathe or meditate, I have had some success in improving our communication utilizing the skills of Yoga. It’s easier now for me not to retort to a sharp remark with another one, not to visibly wear my feelings on my face, and even not to silently think a harsh thought. It’s easier for me to listen and to carefully choose my words when trying to convey something that is important to me in the hopes that the clarity and precision we learn in Hatha practice can also apply to spoken thoughts. This almost always softens the other person because it takes two to fight.

Talking simply about stretching as a generic idea without using the word Yoga made some inroads with my husband. I notice he stretches more, not in any organized way, of course, but at least there’s a stretch now and then. As for my friend, I bought her a gift certificate for one session with a wellness practitioner who is also a Yoga Therapist, though again I did not use the word. She feels somewhat obligated to go. When she thanks me, I will say the best thanks would be for her to book a second (and third) session.

Questions for reflection:

Please share your own experiences in trying to share Yoga?
Why do we think people are so resistant to something we know is so good?
What can we do to accept people where they are rather than where we want them to be?

Chandra/Jo Sgammato is a certified beginning and intermediate level Integral Yoga instructor, who is also certified in Therapeutic Yoga with Cheri Clampett. She has served in many capacities at the Integral Yoga Institute of New York since 1999, including most recently as the Executive Director. Chandra currently serves on the Integral Yoga Global Network and the Integral Yoga Therapy Certification Governing Board. She is the founder of IYI’s Yoga At School™ program, whose mission is to bring the health-enhancing, peace-inducing practices of Integral Yoga into New York City public schools, and the director of the organization’s Yoga At Work® program. A former book publishing executive and bestselling author, she has done extensive research on the inspiring founding, history and worldwide reach of Integral Yoga. With her belief that Integral Yoga IS Yoga Therapy and Yoga Therapy IS Integral Yoga, Chandra is honored to help facilitate the certification of more Yoga Therapists through this program.

Teaching of the Month – Cultivating the Wholesome

by Prajna Lorin Piper

In Buddhism, the brahma viharas, or the four heavenly abodes, are the individual qualities of metta (kindness), compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity. These would be the four mind states, if you will, where enlightened beings dwell. They aren’t actually heavenly realms, up in the sky, they’re maybe what we call states of being, where the heavenly beings, figuratively at least, hang out. You can understand the idea that an awakened being doesn’t hang out in mind states of ill will or grasping or agitation or torpor or doubt. They would dwell in the wholesome, the lovely states.

The first one, metta, commonly translated as loving kindness or good will or benevolence or friendliness is the basis for them all, and equanimity, often considered to be the equivalent of nirvana, is referred to as the crown. I once heard someone ask a spiritual teacher how to practice equanimity and the teacher was actually kind of flummoxed. He said maybe, after a while, just by realizing how exhausting it is to be teeter-tottering back and forth between one mood and another, one would give it up and go for balance.

It was interesting to me because I’d often wondered the same thing. If equanimity is the equivalent of nirvana, enlightenment, well, you can’t really tell people precisely how to practice enlightenment. But we can also look at it another way. If metta is the basis for the other qualities, and we all know, without a doubt, what kindness feels like, when it’s present and when it’s not, then we can simply practice kindness. This is both humbling and immediately liberating. We can know what we’re about, in the same way as the Dalai Lama, when he said, “My religion is kindness.”

The other obvious situation for cultivating the brahma viharas is in sitting practice, in meditation. We learn to sit with the unpleasant – the unpleasant sensations, the feelings, the moods and the mental processes – and then we learn to sit with the pleasant sensations, feelings moods and mental processes. And we learn to sit with the neutral. We cultivate an attitude of kindness, of friendliness, and we get more skillful in how we respond to what arises, to meet the unpleasant with compassion and the pleasant with appreciation and to stay balanced with what arises, not to contract or reject or ignore or chase after it.

In Buddhist practice, this is aided by mindfulness and effort, two of the cultivations of the Buddha’s 8 fold path. Wise mindfulness minds and cares – it’s aware of what we’re doing and knows if it’s healthy or unhealthy, if it will lead to more suffering or not. Wise effort is our response to that – we make the effort to abandon the unwholesome and cultivate the wholesome, moment after moment.

In truth, the whole path works together. In my last retreat with Christina Feldman, one of the teachers I admire most, she asked us “Do you have confidence in the cultivation of the lovely qualities as a path to liberation or do you think something else has to happen first?” I know that early in my spiritual practice I definitely thought something else had to happen, and that that metta was just some sort of fluffy side offering to sweeten things up. But as I mature in my practice, I incline more and more to the cultivation of the brahma viharas as a direct path, beginning with kindness.

Prajna lives and practices at Integral Yoga Institute San Francisco.