Our climate is changing. We’ve been told this repeatedly for years, and we can feel it around us - in the early spring flowers, and a new unpredictability to the seasons.
While life has always had its challenges and uncertainties, ups and downs, sorrows and joys, the rhythm of the changing seasons has, in the past, been something reliable. Now we can feel that shifting.
I think this produces a deep sense of instability and disorientation, which we all feel to some degree, as a kind of undercurrent in our nervous systems. We are part of the natural world: we depend on it for our basic needs; we draw inspiration from it in poetry and prayer, art and music - when it is disturbed, we notice this in some profound way, even if it remains unarticulated. Something that used to support us is slipping.
How can our yoga practices help us to find inner stability and some sense of solid ground, amid this unprecedented uncertainty?
Eastern traditions recognise change and impermanence as a fundamental aspect of existence. They draw a distinction between this world of change and fluctuation - the world of birth and death - and the luminous, unchanging and transcendent part of us, that belongs to something bigger. Meditation teacher Tara Brach uses the symbol of an ocean to describe this: like waves, we cannot be separated from the ocean, we are part of its vastness.
Here are some other starting points which help us both to cultivate personal stability, and perhaps even to spread joy, in difficult times:
1. Grounding: The force of gravity is reliable and constant. It connect us to our own bodily weight, and to the support of the chair/floor/earth beneath us. To connect with the solid ground below gives us feeling of steadiness and support in any moment.
2. Connecting with the breath: The breath brings us into the present moment, and into immediate connection with something greater: the energy of life itself, unfolding moment by moment. Our relationship with the the breath can help us move beyond our own sense of smallness and separateness, to a profound and intimate relationship with all of life.
3.Making a practice of love: The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, was a great advocate of practices that engage us with life in a proactive way. Rather than waiting passively for peace to come, for love to land in our laps, or to spontaneously feel the joy of being alive, these are things we have to practise. Love is a verb, and practising love reminds us of our interconnectedness. Even a simple smile can be infectious.
4.The lunar cycle: while the seasons feel less predictable, the monthly rhythm of the moon continues, regardless of the weather, human activity, and seasonal change. I find this cyclical rhythm an enormously helpful guide and, paradoxically, a reminder of the constancy within change.
When the reality we are living with feels destabilising, we need to find ways to help ourselves and each other. These practices are simple but profound and universally available. They can also remind us that, despite our differences, in the most fundamental of ways, we are all living through these difficult and unsettling times together.
These changes are much more apparent when you have lived for a long time, remembering the seasons as they were in my childhood, young adulthood and now, thank you for reminding me of the ever constant moon.
Ooooh nice…… I love how and what you write Frankie. It’s treasure!