Week 5:  3/1/2021

Journey Into Power is a book filled with insight about how people can reach their full potential, but one of the aspects Yoga Teacher Training focused on this week was Baron Baptiste’s 8 Principles for “Stepping up to the Edge.”  Stepping up to the Edge is about growth; constantly hanging out on the Edge will allow people to grow in all kinds of new ways.  I can define it from the book here, and you’ll understand it just fine.  The problem in society as it relates to this concept is that the Edge is way too dangerous, way too scary for most of us.  Athletes seem to think that it’s acceptable to hang out near the Edge physically.  Many children live near the Edge naively as they are stumbling through natural learning processes of life. So perhaps in certain contexts, it is acceptable in our society. But for the most part, as an average practice, most humans don’t come anywhere close to discomfort!

“The edge is where we come right up against ourselves and what we can do and be.  It is the boundary between where we are and where we grow, the place of comfortable discomfort, where all growing and healing happens.

The edge is the point in every pose when you are still within your capacities but are challenging yourself to go just a little bit farther. Stepping up to this edge and daring to leap is how you break through and thus break with old ways of being.”

Well it’s a good thing yoga is becoming more mainstream because the mat may be the only place some of the populace withstands discomfort. We comply when a teacher commands it. Otherwise, we seem to be running from it emotionally.  At the nearest sight of any sort of emotional discomfort, it’s easy to grab our phone, a snack, a drink, anything to distract us from those uncomfortable feelings.  We do it innately without even realizing we do, and we certainly don’t analyze why we grab for a distraction.

Until recently, I was moving along in a sort of negative autopilot repeating the same patterns each day, not even realizing how I had created quite a rigid little comfort zone.  I realized I had become rather controlling and stern, disgruntled at the slightest added chore upon my heavy “to do” list, always a little tense and pressed for time.  People picked up on it too, always apologizing for interrupting me or taking my time.  

Warrior One Yoga believes “there is an urgent problem in the world where people are stuck in being resigned, cynical, numb, and living in ways that promote chronic disease.”  One of these ways is sitting around in our comfort zones eating and drinking.  A lifetime of gluttony and lethargy watching Netflix or the latest binge, results in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. The other thing I am learning about more recently is the constant mini emotional outbursts, or reactions, people have when circumstances don’t work in their favor actually cause great damage to the health of the body.  Sending the body into little bursts of fight or flight kinds of reactions brings down the quality of our internal system, “down regulating the genes,” as I learned from Dr. Joe Dispenza.  People get disgruntled at all sorts of little things.  I just heard a man complaining that someone wrote the date wrong, how that person is to blame for his feelings of aggravation.  I can only imagine his anger at the drive through team who forgot his request to add cheese to his sandwich or something.  I feel blessed to know gratitude is a way to improve the internal system.  I’ll try to work my way toward feelings of gratitude instead of feeling aggravated by the circumstances of life..

If I, as a yogi, can bring humans closer to the edge, “where all growing and healing happens,” that is amazing!  It’s only for the strong; it’s only for those who are ready; it’s only a percentage of your students.  Many will do the poses physically, but not transform emotionally.  The teacher doesn’t choose.  The yogi accepts the perfectly imperfect humans before them, delivers “truth bombs” that attempt to pierce the common numbness in society and moves along to the next present moment with the highest of intentions of transforming humans.

Again, so grateful the words of a yogi worked to transform me.  Since my shift, I have found the courage to create a website and blog, even though it seemed there was no extra time or know-how.  I show my camera to my students and fellow yogis as a way of connecting, even when it’s uncomfortable.  I avoid entangling with angry outbursts of others, even though I have been doing so in an attempt to stop them for decades.  As Warrior One Yoga likes to say, “I have been showing up to shine out” in all the little ways that feel uncomfortable to me, knowing that I will get closer to my edge and grow beyond it if I do.  So grateful to Warrior One!