Self Regulation, Vulnerability, and Radiance
I apologize for missing a week of letter writing. The war in the Ukraine stirred my DNA and made the words I’d drafted woefully irrelevant. I’m not one to shy away from difficult feelings but have been struggling to find verbal footing through yet another humanitarian crisis.
I’ve been thinking about what brings me back to the mat during these difficult moments and over and over I return to the relationship between self regulation and vulnerability.
The practice of yoga allows us to make a conscious connection to the parts of our nervous system that help us ease the fight or flight response. During the safety of yoga class, we learn how to settle, how to calm down, how to breathe through physical discomfort, and how to play the edge between sensation and pain.
Understanding who we are in our physical selves is the gateway to being able to settle and stay anchored to our executive function in highly stressful situations. Through compassionate effort we teach ourselves how to hold on to who we are even when our circumstances are pushing us into reactivity.
Yoga postures help us to become resilient, to restore our bodies from wear and tear, to neutralize pain and stress, and to prepare for creative thinking. When we experience these benefits, we become more dexterous in turbulent conditions. We are better thinkers and problem solvers, better creators and communicators, and better care givers.
Regulating our nervous system has the paradoxical effect of allowing us to remain open in times that are pushing us toward knee jerk responses. Facing difficulty with an open heart allows us to feel strength without shutting down.
The net result of living this way is inner freedom–not a freedom that would make us impenetrable to the kind of situation the citizens of the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, or Somalia have faced, but the kind of freedom that can help us hold ground for those in peril without cauterizing empathy. We can also be attentive to our contribution which in times of difficulty might simply be to defer to the needs at hand.
Most importantly, inner freedom allows us to separate our souls from our roles. It’s easy to forget that we are people–not refugees, not essential workers, not patients, not billionaires, not brands. We are all spirits under the same sun, and we all deserve basic respect and dignity.
When we are regulated we can bring our whole selves to the table: our talents, our strength, our intuition, our hearts and minds. When we are vulnerable, we are supple and open to creativity, community, and connection. None of this is a panacea, but it is something that we can do to increase our ability to be present: moving our mind’s eye from the millennial to the infinite, from fossil fuel to sunlight, from extraction to radiance.