 The new year is now well underway and many of us wrote down our new year’s resolutions. These goals are surprisingly similar from one American to another, as chronicled in numerous newspapers and magazines. The most common resolutions include weight loss and fitness, budget and debt reduction, giving up drinking and smoking, learning something new, reducing stress, increasing time spent with family and friends, travel, engaging in service and growing spiritually. Self-improvement, it seems, is alive and well in the United States.
But as exciting as it often is to make that list of resolutions, by the time February rolls around, many of us haven’t looked at it again. Our new exercise clothes may still be neatly folded, or worse, our new running shoes may still be in the box. Our gym membership that isn’t being used may be impacting our resolution to spend more wisely this year.
As a yoga teacher, I often see an influx of new students in January. Excited to begin something new, they come to class with fresh mats that smell like glue and have to be painstakingly unrolled. These students often stop me after class and ask for additional yoga resources. What books can they read? What DVDs can they buy? I get e-mails relating their mountaintop moments with this new practice, and then … silence. I don’t see them in class any more. I may get an initial e-mail explaining what craziness has erupted in their life; it usually ends with an estimated date of their return to class. Most often, the return date comes and goes without me seeing or hearing from them again. I know that this experience isn’t unique to me, as all my friends who teach yoga have story after story with the same exact ending. As with any other resolution—fitness or otherwise—the newness wears off a yoga practice and we go back to our comfortable ways of living.
Retreating When Faced by Obstacles
And that, I have come to believe, is the bane of behavioral change. For as much as we laud the American spirit of adventure and our willingness to take courage, break new ground, and do something difficult, most of us far prefer what is comfortable. We seek to avoid discomfort. In yogic terms, we encounter a klesha (obstacle) on the path and rather than confront it, we retreat. There are two kleshas that are most likely operative in the case of declining commitment to our new year’s resolutions. In Sanskrit, they are raga and dvesa, attachment and aversion. We are attached to our old ways of being, to what we know and what has come to define us, and we are averse to the discipline and challenge required for change. Many of our new year’s resolutions require both physical and emotional or psychological transformation. Four weeks into the new year, we may really be feeling the impact of the commitments we’ve made.
The Six Destroyers
In addition to recognizing the kleshas, yogic teachings also lay out what are known as the “six destroyers of yoga practices.” There are multiple translations of the destroyers, but generally they can be summarized as over-eating, over-exertion, talking too much, becoming too rule-bound, choosing unwise company and wavering in our dedication. It may be most useful to think of these destroyers as ways that our attachment to pleasure and aversion to discomfort manifest themselves.
Overeating and Over-Exertion
Over-eating is actually pleasurable to many of us at the time we are engaged in it. The unhealthy foods we eat in large quantities contain sugar, sodium and fats that produce a cascade of biochemical reactions—pleasurable in the short run, but unhealthy in the long run. Over-eating is not just binge eating or consuming unhealthy foods, but also eating too frequently or beyond the point of satiety. When we are too full for too much of the day, we find it difficult and physically uncomfortable to practice yoga or other forms of physical activity, and due to the chemical effects of this eating, we may lack motivation.
A second destroyer of yoga practices is over-exertion. Millions of Americans do not get appropriate quantity or quality of rest, including sleep. This lack of opportunity for our bodies and minds to cleanse and restore contributes to our inability to concentrate our energies toward positive change. Going from zero exercise to seven days a week at the gym may seem like success, but there is a physical cost to adopting this healthier way of being. To attempt to maintain such a fitness routine without providing additional rest will create further imbalance and most likely weaken physical and mental resolve.
Talking Too Much and Excess Rigidity
Every one of us has likely met someone who has successfully changed a health behavior and talks about it all the time. Within families, one member’s new behavior can become a source of conflict that is exacerbated by his/her continual reminder to others in the family of their perceived unhealthy behavior or need to change. This brings us to the third destroyer of yoga practices—talking too much. While it is tempting to share with others all of our excitement about what we are doing and where we see ourselves going on our life’s journey, yogic teachings remind us that talking about ourselves and our experiences all the time can become a distraction for us and a turn-off for others. It is far more important to be living our yoga than talking about it.
The fourth destroyer, becoming too rule-bound, is often coupled with talking too much because our talking about what we are doing is a way of keeping ourselves focused. Again, in adopting new habits, being focused is essential; however, rarely does every day go exactly as planned. If we become extremely rigid about how we will eat, exercise, spend money, and spend time (all typical resolutions in America), we set up unrealistic expectations for ourselves, and we WILL be disappointed in the future. It is essential to balance our resolve and commitment to our resolutions with flexibility and adaptability. The longer we practice any discipline, the more ably we achieve this balance because we’ve had experience accommodating life’s vagaries into our routine. Just know that it is tempting and exciting when beginning anything new to want to do it perfectly 100 percent of the time. Few of us will achieve that. Some who don’t will quit altogether.
Choosing the Wrong Company, Wavering in Commitment
The final two destroyers, choosing unwise company and wavering in our dedication, often feed off each other. On days when one’s dedication to eating and exercising healthfully is faltering, the wisest choice is to connect with those who can be both supportive of one’s state of mind and provide encouragement to continue positive change. However, when we are feeling the pull of old habits, many of us will go looking for the people and places that will affirm us and allow us to smoke a cigarette or eat a plate of fries smothered in chili and cheese without blinking an eye.
This is not to say that when we adopt new behaviors we must abandon all the people in our lives who’ve not made the same commitment, but rather that we must learn how to be with those we love without falling back into old habits. Sometimes, without even being conscious of it, our friends and family will want us to stay just as we have always been—because then they know how to be, too. If we stop being who we’ve always been, are we saying there is something wrong with that way of being? What does that say about them? The fear and uncertainty that this creates for those we care about is another reason to be careful about how much we talk about our new way of living.
As the year goes on and you find yourself faced with the inevitable ups and downs of life, don’t give up on your efforts to create positive change in yourself and in the world around you. Revisit your resolutions and take heed of the six destroyers of yoga (and other positive) practices. Create a revolution (or at least an evolution) by neither giving up nor burning yourself out.
Ashley Cleveland, MA, DC, is Provost and Professor at Cleveland Chiropractic College–Kansas City and teaches yoga in Kansas City. |
