I recently heard a yoga teacher make the assertion that a habit is a limited choice, and a habit is also the best option you have in any given moment.   This statement challenges the idea that habits are negative, merely limitations.  I began to think of habits in positive terms.  My habits are a reflection of what is available, what is familiar and what I know.  If I knew differently, I would choose differently, right?  As I always say, I don’t know until I know. 

This statement reminds me to accept my experiences and actions as they are in the moment. At the same time, I believe we need to experience more parts of ourselves, find more parts of ourselves, find new options and develop new habits.  So, if habits develop because of limited choices then how do we begin to expand our options and make different choices?  How do we create new habits, find new possibilities and experience new things?  We must accept ourselves as we are AND we must engage in investigating, reflecting, learning, remembering, paying attention, feeling, observing… experiencing more.

Our habits are intimately connected to how our nervous system is patterned and wired.   This notion of habits being wired in our nervous system is not anything new.  More and more research is being done about the complexity of the nervous system and our understanding is changing all of the time.  I am not an expert or professional in this area, but I am a researcher.  I have studied and reflected upon my own experiences, as well as observed other people’s experiences over the past 20 years.  I have learned and observed that the nervous system is a recording system, a well grooved path of wiring, and yet it does have the potential to change.  Introducing new movement to the nervous system is one way in which we can begin to expand our habitual patterns.  When I move in new and unfamiliar ways the movement is introduced to my nervous system.  Introducing new movement to my nervous system gradually gives me more options to choose from.  This is the only way to begin to form new habits.

Here is an example that I hope many of you can relate to…You come to a Somatic Yoga class and the teacher asks you to wake up to an area of your body that you have never thought about before, like the very end of your spine, the tailbone, coccyx bone.  You start to investigate that you have a tailbone, while in table top or in your downward facing dog.  You begin to poke around and touch your tail, wiggle it around and explore moving from the very end of your spine.  And as you investigate, there are moments of confusion.   Perhaps you don’t feel anything happening and your tail might feel like it doesn’t exist.  And gradually over time, the end of your spine becomes a part of your growing movement vocabulary and the tailbone begins to participate in pushing, reaching and leading, and perhaps even wiggling.  Your tailbone, coccyx, now knows that it exists and it can feel sensations and initiate movement and has created a neural pathway in which it can make choices of engagement or not.  Your tailbone is now no longer something unknown, but known. Your tailbone is no longer a limited choice but now an option that you did not have before you started this process of rewiring and re-patterning your neural pathways.  You may not have been able to perceive the change as it is happening but change has occurred because you now have feelings, sensations and movement possibility that you did not have before.  

Bonnie wrote in her book, Basic Neurocellular Patterns, “ To initiate movement from any specific area, one needs to have awareness in the tissues of that area.  If there is diminished sensation being received from an area, there will be diminished movement initiated in that area.  If there is diminished movement being initiated in an area, there will be diminished sensation arising from that area.”  

A habit is a limited choice and a habit is also the best option you have in any given moment.  If our nervous system is a recording system and if our body only knows one way of moving and there is no new information being introduced then we keep repeating that same way of moving.   When we introduce a new way of moving or moving from something that didn’t know that it existed then the nervous system picks up that new movement and creates a new neural pathway and connection.  Our nervous system has learned a new pathway and as a result, we have more choices to move from.  Instead of one way of moving, you now have two ways of moving.  The habit gradually begins to shift and your nervous system begins to have more options to choose from.  Little by little your body re-patterns itself and as a result the tissues become more resilient , responsive and adaptable as they become more aware of their own existence.  Our habits are not bad or good, just the best option you have in any given moment.  

Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand. 

– Chinese proverb

I have always heard that being part of a community is an important thing, and, yet, I  always had trouble finding a community that fit me like a glove.  I concluded that there was not a community for me, that there was not a community that fit the specifics of my interests enough for me to call that community home.  I have recently had an experience that has changed the way I interact with a group and this experience has helped me find a different way to establish and experience community.  I now realize that my previous expectations for community were the wrong expectations.      

For the past three years, I have been studying, learning and exploring in a Body Mind Centering® program called the Foundations in Embodied Anatomy and Yoga, taught by Lisa Clark and Amy Matthews.   Twenty people committed to the program and met every 3-4 months spending all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday together.  I initially signed up for the program because I respect and admire the teachers and I wanted to continue learning anything and everything that had to do with Body Mind Centering.  I enrolled in the program because I wanted to deepen my own experiences and understandings of myself in relationship to this approach. Another way to describe my motivation three years ago was that I was taking this course for me.  I wanted to play, experience, explore and spend time in my own body.  I teach and engage with others all day long, and I had the idea that I wanted to make this program a time for me.  However, when the program began, I noticed immediately that there was a lot of group sharing, “circle time” as Lisa and Amy called it.  I thought, “Oh, shit, this is not what I need, this is not what I want”.

I had not had a lot of experience sharing with a group of 20 people.  I have had many opportunities through the years to share in a group but I have always found it to be uncomfortable and  anxiety-producing.  I would always choose to listen and support others when they shared their experiences as my way of contributing to the group.  I have always thought that I don’t particularly like to share in groups, but that this was just who I was and what I preferred.  During the last few months of the program, I began to observe a gradual and surprising shift that helped me realize the ways in which I struggle with sharing intimately within a group.  I noticed I was talking more and I wasn’t as nervous to open my mouth.  Sharing just happened without me doing anything to force or make myself talk. 

So, what was different about this group?  

When attending a BMC class or workshop or sharing in circle time, there is an emphasis on each person being responsible for practicing personal self care.  Each individual takes care of their own self and takes care of their own needs AND, at the same time, is respectful of everyone doing what they need to do when learning and experiencing a wide range of material and information.  

An example of self care in this context would be that someone might take a nap during the class, even while the teacher is offering instruction.  Another example would be if someone needed to move a lot during a practice that is prescribed as a still practice.  Examples of the type of respect that this format requires would be not judging or criticizing the person that needs to nap or needs to wiggle about during a still practice.  Regardless of what self care looks like for each person, the group holds everyone’s experiences by expecting that everyone’s experience be unique and different, and by truly accepting this range of experience.  And, in turn, everyone in the group is more inclined to be more aware of their own needs because of the space for individuality and the beautiful feeling of acceptance.  Each person is allowed to be as they are and each person is accepted as they are.  This is especially the case during circle time; everyone spoke from their own experience and did not, as a rule, comment or challenge or interrupt when someone was sharing, which contributed greatly to the feeling of acceptance and support.  And, surprising to me, no one abused this unspoken etiquette of respect and support throughout the program.   And, also surprising to me, this led to me sharing in a way that I had never done before.  And, sharing and being witness to others sharing, intimately and over time, led to a sense of community that I had never experienced before.

The FEAY program, with the model of self care and acceptance, opened me up to new experiences, led me to trust the group, and allowed my words to be listened to while the group held my experience.  With my new sense of and value for community, I realized that a community holds the experiences of everyone in it, regardless of how they participate.  It comes naturally for me to listened and hold space for others, but this practice opened me up to receive and allow others to hold space for me.  It was so amazing to receive support form a group.  I did not know that I wasn’t allowing a part of me to relate to others.  And when I did, my relationship within the group changed.  I related to the community differently and I experienced myself differently within the community.  I became a part of the community, a part of the whole, while maintaining my sense of self.  

It is one thing to practice yielding into earth, receiving support from the earth, trusting the earth to hold you, and it is an entirely different practice to yield into a group of people, receive support from the community and begin to trust that a group of people can hold you.  The community expressed itself like our bodies…the whole body mattered, not one part of the community was more important than any other part. We all individually and collectively evolved together over time, holding space for each other while each of us discovered our own potentials and how to be with ourselves and in community at the same time.   

Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand. 

– Chinese proverb

According to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the founder of the somatic approach known as Body Mind Centering®, to yield is an active state of engagement between you and whatever you are in contact with.

Simply put, yielding means to actively meet something.  And actively meeting something means your relationship to that something will change. 

I appreciate Bonnie’s definition of yield because I had previously associated the word to mean surrender or give up.  However, Bonnie’s definition asks me to question how I am personally participating and engaging with whatever I am in contact with, whether it be the chair beneath me, the conversation that I am having or the hand that I am holding.  How I interact with my environment, directly relates to how I am actively meeting a given moment. When I attend to the places of contact with my body and my environment, I have the option to meet it or not.  And when I choose to actively interact with whatever I am meeting, I have an opportunity to make choices about how I want to interact and respond in the moment as opposed to respond habitually.  When I remember to yield, I begin to learn how to relate on a deep level and recognize how I am communicating with whomever and whatever I am in relationship with in the moment.  

One of the most foundational and primal relationships we have is our relationship with gravity.  When we are born, we are no longer the aquatic creatures that we were when we were in the womb.  We become land dwellers and have to renegotiate and learn how to feel supported, safe and held by earth, as opposed to the familiar 3 dimensionally surrounding and supportive water that we freely floated in for 9 months.  This big change in environment, asks us to learn how to trust and feel safe in the arms of our caregiver and begin to bond with the earth and gravity in a completely new and different way.

As we grow, our relationship to earth, gravity and with the caregivers in our life, changes and is effected by many circumstances, events and happenings.  Over the years, we naturally forget to yield, trust and remember to feel supported by earth at all times. 

What we attend to changes our experience.  If we change where our attention is we can change how we relate to our environment.  I believe that part of what we are actively doing in our yoga practice is remembering this vital relationship with the earth beneath, remembering that mother earth exists, gradually beginning to cultivate the ability to rest into ourselves more fully and awaken again and again to the process of personal engagement and relationship.  

I have been actively practicing how to yield not only in my yoga practice but in all aspects of my life and what I have experienced is that the more my body feels supported, the more free my body is to move.  When I first started yielding, all I wanted to do was sleep.  I would lie on my studio floor and spread myself out onto the ground with as much contact as possible and almost immediately fall asleep. 

I heard Bonnie say in a workshop that, “sometimes your body needs to rest for a long time before it can feel the resiliency and responsiveness of the earth below, you might need to collapse until you discover the relationship that goes both ways.”  

I did not understand what she meant at the time, but after many years of remembering to yield over and over, her words have become my experience too.  For example, if I practice yielding in downward dog, my body begins to develop a conversation with the vitality of the earth that is both restful and rejuvenating, giving weight and receiving support simultaneously.  Each shape is a process, not a fixed position.  The process allows me to observe how I am relating to the earth and how the earth is relating to me.  

On a daily basis, I spend time yielding because my body craves the reciprocal and responsive feeling of being supported by the earth.  When I feel supported, I can receive support in my life.  The process of meeting the ground brings nourishment to all layers of my being.  When I can meet the earth fully and feel met by the earth, I can utilize this relationship with gravity that has always been there, and I can begin to move more freely and easily.

If you are curious about the practice and process of yielding here is an inquiry for you to explore:

A yielding practice:

1. Lye on the ground and pick a particular surface of your body either the back, front, or sides of your body and allow that surface to spread and actively meet the ground

2. Can you find and seek comfort? – Are you comfortable in whatever position you have chosen and if not, change the position so that you are comfortable.    

3.  Feel both you and the earth, earth and you

4.  What parts of your body are going down into the earth and what parts of your body are moving away from the earth?

5. Is there anything that you can let go of that you do not need? Is there anything you need to hold onto that you do need?

I believe that the ability or inability to yield is underneath every compensation or habit that we have.  If you are struggling or suffering in anyway, this approach of practicing and remembering how to yield into the support of the earth might give your body exactly what it needs so that it can feel nourished, resilient and responsive and the whole body can develop a sense of agency and freedom that brings a balance to both your feeling of stability and mobility.  

In the beginning of my yoga journey, I wanted to know everything about the body so that I could help people feel better and reduce their pain and suffering.  I wanted to know what poses would hurt someone or help someone.  I was curious about specific techniques, modifications, adjustments, approaches surrounding every possible scenario, from back pain to depression.  I sought out that information with such vigor, studying with so many amazing, skilled and knowledgeable teachers.  I loved the whole process of learning and it still continues today.  Although now, I do not seek as many answers, I seek more questions.  

How much of my initial seeking of information has truly helped me as a teacher?  Is it necessary to absorb piles of information?  These days it is very easy to find piles of information about any body part or any  approach to yoga.  It is very easy to find many answers, presented in the form of “facts”, about how to do something “right”.  

I have found that it is not the facts, or even the information necessarily, that have made me a better teacher.  Rather, it is the experience around the body part or the approach that has informed my relationship to the body.  It was absolutely necessary for me to have sought out information, but not because I received the answers, rather because I continued to explore the questions, the inquiry about an experience or a body part.  I have arrived at a place where the information doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did in terms of “facts”, but it does inform the never-ending string of questions.

This inquiry-based approach to yoga that I apply in my practice and my teaching, is very much influenced by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Amy Matthews and Lisa Clark. This approach invites the student to begin to educate, listen and spend time learning about their own body.  One still has to investigate and gather information, but what is most important to me is an attitude that encourages one to take it all in as questions rather than definitive answers.  

What I find most important is that a student in my class feels and notices what is happening as it is happening,  thus allowing the student to awaken to their own natural intelligence, trusting their own choices and participating more fully in relationship to their self.  

When a student begins to develop this approach, without layering ideas, thoughts, and expectations about what it is supposed to look like from the outside, then that students’ natural intelligence is brought forth and old patterns begin to shift.  

So what I am responsible for in a class is creating the environment for this possibility to arise.  It is my responsibility to allow for many possibilities to exist side by side, and to ask the students to attend and inquire about their own experience again and again.  I constantly ask each student to consider what is a posture asking them to learn in any given moment.  And, that I believe is my biggest responsibility as a yoga teacher, to be fully present throughout the process of a student as they come to trust themselves more and more. 

My intention as a teacher is to facilitate the possibility for the individual to actively participate in making themselves more comfortable.  I guide the student towards trusting themselves to make the choices that are appropriate to them in any given moment as opposed to me telling them what is appropriate or right, or what will reduce their suffering.