LIVING YOUR YOGA

Living your yoga assignments are given out in Aparna's classes each week.If you missed one you can also find them here.

JUNE 2019

Week I - This week remember that everything you really need to know is in your heart.

Week II - This week cultivate a sense of abundance & contentment.

Week III - This week laugh more.

Week IV - This week ask yourself, "What is the quality & intention of my relationships? Connection & mutuality with others? or power over others?"

Dearest yogi & yogini,

 
“The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.”
-Dag Hammarskjold



Recently TIME magazine ran an article on resilience. Resilience is essentially a set of skills - as opposed to a disposition or personality type - that makes it possible for people to not only get through hard times but to thrive during and after them. Just as rubber rebounds after being squeezed or squished, so do resilient people.

Neuroscientists  who have been studying why some people bounce back better than others now claim that they know why some people rebound so well from setbacks and how the rest of us can be more like them.Firstly, very few highly resilient people are strong in and by themselves. We all need support. And also, there is not any one single prescription that works for everyone. Each of us has to find out what works for us.

It doesn't take a predator to trigger a stress response in modern humans. Research shows that feelings of social pain- rejection and loneliness - zoom along the same neural pathways as fear activating the same circuits  in the brain as if you  just saw a wolf. The hot and cold boss, the traffic delays, the spat with the spouse, the monthly bills - these are all registered as stress in the brain. And even though we are no longer bumping into wolves, we’re constantly activating the same neural pathways of fear with everyday stressors - worrying about the future, fretting about the past. The more we use this kind of fear superhighway, the more efficient it grows, and this mode of thinking becomes our default.

But new research has shown that humans can train their brains to build and strengthen different neural connections that don’t reinforce the fear circuit. Over time if these new pathways are used enough number of times, they can become the new response to stress. Much of the evidence suggests that with a little practice anyone can develop resilience. A good way to gauge how close you are to resilience is to consider how you react when things don’t go your way.


Here’s a list of  tips  to get you started towards bouncing back faster and better  :

Develop a core set of beliefs that nothing can shake

Try to find meaning in whatever stressful or traumatic thing has happened

Try to maintain a consistent positive outlook

Take cues from someone who is especially resilient

Don’t run from things that scare you : face them.

Be quick to reach out for support when things go haywire
Don’t beat yourself up or dwell on the past

Learn to practice mindfulness, which has been found to help return heart rate & breathing rate to the baseline level and lower activation in parts of the brain associated with emotional reactions

Recognize what makes you strong - and own it

And remember, A diamond is a chunk of coal that made good under pressure.