YogaRine

I wore my Wolverine t-shirt to work today, knowing in all likelihood I’d also be wearing it to yoga class. There are some people who think that’s strange. Wolverine and yoga? Uncontrollable berserker rage and om?

When I was in class tonight, I was reminded (as I always am) that you cannot control the actions and words of other people – you can only control your own reactions to those things. The first time I remember reading that cogently was in Joseph Goldstein’s One Dharma. It was like a lightning bolt, as overly clichéd as that may seem, but had an electrifying effect on how I looked at the world for that first week.

That initial shock wore off, but the lesson remains – of the very few things under our actual control are our perception paradigms. Reframing them is the single best thing we can do to evaluate where we are and where we want to go, not necessarily an easy process.

What does this have to do with Wolverine? I think he’s a character that so many people identify with precisely because of the berserker rage. We’ve all felt out of control or wanted to behave out of control, to ride the feelings into reaction rather than letting them ride us. Unfortunately there’s always aftermath of those actions. Wolverine is also the flip-side of berserker – studied in martial arts which are all about control and focus. We’re all in some percentage that exact combination. Berserker wannabes and people with job and familial obligations.

So wait. Yoga? What?

Yoga is, for me, the easiest way to bring these two things in line and put them into perspective. Yogas chitta vritti nirodha. Yoga is an exercise to still the mind. Getting to a point in class where I can pay attention to what I’m doing/what the instruction is while simultaneously blocking out the other things – people in the room, clumsy instruction, my own internal natter and distraction. Bringing the focus into my body – breath, muscle and balance – is the challenge that keeps me coming back to practice each time.

Yoga is the thing that keeps my Wolverine in check and I can tell when I’ve gotten away from it for too long. When I’m irritable over small things, when I’m getting worked up about things over which I have limited or no influence – it’s then I have to remember my Buddhist/Yogic/MarvelComics teachings and just bring it in. Dial it down. Take a breath, accept my limited influence and free myself from the internal conflict that doesn’t belong to me.

It was a good class tonight.