Our Year of Believing

“As is your will, so is your thought; as is your thought, so is your deed; as is your deed, so is your life”
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad ​

Moving into a new year, I always find myself surrounded by resolutions sneakily swaddled in the same deficit-driven language.
 
Make a new you in the new year!
You failed last year, but no more excuses. This is the year to finally _____!!
 
I’m not saying there is anything innately wrong with setting goals or becoming healthier or happier. What worries me is how easily the negative self-talk of “not good enough” and “start over” leads the charge of change. Within that container sits the supposition that the new year you is broken; you have no strengths to carry with you moving forward. But without a foundation of respectful recognition of past gains, what will you lean on when things get grueling?
 
We can’t diminish or dull the spirit by minimizing or negating all the beautiful things we have cultivated as human beings up to this moment. We are resilient creatures; we are not incomplete consumers.
 
This comes up a lot in the yoga practice. We blame the body for not achieving a particular asana or for distracting us early on in seated meditation.  We rush to judgment. We rush to negative assumptions about our ability to be enough. These false perceptions of the mind, or viparyaya-vritti, permeate through our nervous system, denigrating us physically and emotionally.
 
Given the space to do so, the yoga practice pulls to our immediate awareness the internal sensations & feelings which have been dormant. Facilitated by the breath (the rising up and out of prana and the downward rooting of apana), we are brought to the present experience. And through this process, varying levels of insight can arise. These insights rarely equate to aha! moments.
Insight is appreciation of my willingness to just try my best.
It is acknowledgment that I am exploring, not achieving.
It is a brief (fascinating/freaky) cognizance that I don’t know how to digest my own food or grow my own hair. But my body does. The mystery runs deeper than humanity can fathom, so I will not sacrifice any more time not believing in all of myself.
 
So let’s think about making this a year of enhancing. Of refining. Of believing.
A year of naming the roots holding our resilient spirits above ground and unapologetically deepening them.  
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