Flexible

That beautiful extension of a pose.  Folding over, reaching for the ground.  Lifting up, touching the sky.  Holding the pose in the truest expression.  Lofty goals for most.  We all have physical limitations that prevent us from going into that textbook form.

Perhaps the flexibility that is needed is not bodily.  Everyday, we are faced with challenges that confront our way of thinking, our way of being, pushing us out of our comfort zone.  Many initially falter but find the resolve to continue.  This could be something as simple as showing up for your favorite class only to discover the teacher is a sub.  Or not getting your favorite spot in the practice space.  Or finding that your yoga neighbor’s breath pattern annoys you.  How to you settle and go within?

Sometimes challenges are a bit grander in scale.  I was in Paris with my retreat co-teacher, waiting to board our train that would take us to Bordeaux and then Bergerac, where we would meet our attendees, gathering them into hired transport for the 30 minute drive to our retreat location when we noticed something on the platform reader board.

SNCF – France’s national train system went on strike that morning. 

As our train was canceled (as were most), we looked at flights.  Cost prohibitive.  Bus transport would be excruciatingly long.  The only option was to rent a car.  Change in mindset – the first instance of flexibility.  Our idea of reading on a train, doing work and needlepointing (thanks to Tricia Heaton Designs) showing up right before our attendees to greet them with open arms diverted to our faces pressed up against the window of Avis Car Rental trying to will the operating hours to open early.

Within an hour, we found ourselves in a small Peugeot, speeding on the freeway, for our 6+ hour excursion to Bergerac.  I became the driver, while my companion used her phone and mine to contact every attendee who was stranded in Bordeaux.  We assumed our retreat location host would help us contact the transportation company we hired to reroute the scheduled pickup of attendees since we were on a rocket run to her part of France.  When she told us she would not, we had to change our mindset again on our expectations.  Co-teacher dialed the transportation company number, put them on speaker, and witnessed me breakout my atrophied university French, begging them to go to the city of stranded yogis.

Stress levels were high.  People who like to be in control of every part of their day, do not fare well normally.  In this case, we had to dig deep, and just leave it up to the universe and our ingenuity to get it done.  We had no choice.

From a psychological view, it was an interesting impromptu case study on who can go with the flow and who cannot when all that is planned is tossed out the door, or more precisely off the train.  How do we flex and flow and morph into what we need to be in that moment?

Remember your breath.

Yoga does far more than keep us limber. It releases tensions from our bodies and minds, allowing us to drop more deeply into meditation, more deeply into the “now”. In yoga, "flexibility" is an attitude that invests and transforms the mind as well as the body. Yoga makes you feel calm and relaxed because we use breathing techniques, such as diaphragmatic breathing that helps to take us out of the sympathetic nervous system, and moves us into our parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is one half of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), responsible for triggering what’s commonly known as your fight or flight response to stress. The other half of the ANS is the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes healthy digestion and relaxation. Studies have shown deep and diaphragmatic breathing, like practiced in yoga, can be extremely effective in controlling this stress response.

Yoga can boost your body’s production of two hormones essential to cultivating happiness, health, and feelings of calmness. Oxytocin can make you feel closer to your loved ones, decrease your stress, and improve your overall wellness. Endorphins are another type of hormone that’s released when you practice yoga; similar to oxytocin, endorphins play an important role in managing physical pain and negative emotions.

When you attend class, remember that what you are doing at that time affects you in the moment but also changes future experiences.  You get that initial endorphin rush as you move your body in and out of poses.  Listen to your instructor when they ask you to pay attention to your breath.  Flow with that air, let it wash over you and take you deeper into your practice.  Notice over time, your reaction to life stressors, big and small, are more subdued, more thoughtful, more aware.  Taking it to the mat will ripple out into your daily life if you let it.

But let’s be honest.  Sometimes a little freak out has to occur before you can ground and do mindful breathing.  Ours consisted of a brief moment of paralysis (staring at each other hoping the other had a brilliant solution), dark moments (gripping the steering wheel shouting expletives in English and French), and insanity (falling into hysterical laughter that caused your companion to think she needed to pull over to make sure you were ok).  Each of us had to work through that, then root down and slow that inhale and exhale.

We also took the opportunity to not view this as a catastrophe, but an opportunity.  We saw the French countryside from a different perspective.  We experienced French rest stops (far superior to American), we had time to talk.  We looked at some of our processes and found lessons in this event that allows us to make positive change.  Breath.  Flexibility.  Growth.