For most of my life, I’ve wanted to be a force for positive change. Instilled in me by my grandfather, he would often remind us how important it was to speak our minds and to question. He taught me to be respectful, thoughtful and to give back and never ever take privilege for granted. Everything can change in a heartbeat.
Last night, when I was sharing with a fellow type 1 friend about my upcoming online yoga challenge, she said: “this challenge is so needed in the world!” It was a sweet compliment but it made me think.
I’ve always seen yoga and yoga practices as life changing, transformative and something that anyone can benefit from. In fact, I can remember when I started teaching teachers I had this goal of training enough people so that everybody in the whole world would do yoga. Nearly 17 years later just about everyone in the world does do yoga.
Well almost.
So besides all the hype, how can yoga make a difference? Why is it so needed? Because whether we live with a chronic disease or not. We are all suffering from stress and burnout. Everywhere we turn we are bombarded. Bombarded with must do’s and have’s. Sometimes trying to decide where to put my energy, money and time is enough to make me want to sit down, cover my ears and scream, “Enough!”
In my personal experience if yoga can offer one thing it’s simplification
When I keep things simple and eliminate the complications it gives me breathing space. Instead of long drawn out yoga postures which include bending into pretzel shapes. I do the same easy routine every day. It’s nice to add in a more complex move every now and then but I’ve learned it’s not necessary. Some forward bends before dinner and a few moments of quiet reflection prepare me for a good night’s sleep.
Living with diabetes means it’s even more important to stay calm and balanced.
As a yogi and yoga teacher, I’ve learned that understanding how the mind works is key in handling stress and achieving balance. When I first started practicing I learned to meditate and observe my thoughts. Later I learned that watching my thoughts (mindfulness) is just the beginning.
Even more powerful is knowing who is having the thoughts. Knowing the thinker. No matter how big the thought, the thinker has to be there. Without the thinker what thought?
When life gets overwhelming reminding myself that I am the thinker of the thoughts, puts everything in perspective.
We spend our whole lives obsessed with our thoughts, trying to banish them or tame them. And when we can’t resolve the thoughts our mental health suffers. I can sometimes spend way too long obsessing about my thoughts about diabetes. The quicker I catch myself going off the rails the better. I like to think of it as fishing for thoughts. If a thought starts to swim away I catch it and hold it close. When you try to hang on to a thought it quickly dissipates. Thoughts are ephemeral like that. But when you try not to think about something all you do is think about it more.
Yoga is so powerful in meeting the mind head on. Instead of trying to squash thoughts we can focus on something like the breath, or a sound, or a posture or even work with hand gestures. There are so many ways to bring the mind into a one pointed focus. And the cool thing is that these practices are for everybody.
When I tell people that I teach yoga I can get a variety of responses but the most common one is Yoga? I’m not good at that. I love sharing that yoga is so much more than the physical practice.
In general, the physical practice is designed to:
- detoxify and purify the physical body bringing it back to its natural state.
- help the mind to slow down
On a deeper level, yoga practice suspends for a moment all the ideas, thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves. That’s why we feel so good when we finish the practice. All the thoughts we’ve been getting lost in seem to disappear and we feel calm and peaceful.
Once the nervous system gets the hint that we don’t always need to be in the stress response (fight or flight) we spend more time in the relaxed part of our nervous system. This means our tendency to habitually react to stressful thoughts, events and experiences also relaxes. This is so helpful when we live with diabetes. The more I can look at the numbers on my meter and stay calm. The less I react to my feelings about diabetes and the better I feel no matter what’s happening.
When I was putting together my upcoming yoga challenge, Better Diabetes Management in 7 steps with Yoga, I thought about what sorts of things I wanted to share. Rather than making each step about a physical postural practice I wanted to focus on the core of what yoga actually does, balance and calm the nervous system.
In the challenge I’ll be sharing:
About Ayurveda and how to discover your ayurvedic type
A short physical practice to improve circulation
Mudras (hand gestures) for balancing the emotions
How sound (mantra) works to heal the nervous system
A calming breathing practice that you can do anywhere anytime
How to give yourself a nurturing foot massage that promotes deep sleep
And a creative mandala (yantra) exercise to inspire gratitude and devotion
These are the practices I do every day to be a positive force for change in my own life with diabetes and I am so excited to share them with you too.
If you’d like to join the challenge its free and you can sign up here.
Animals are either ground grazers, tall leaf eaters or wild hunters (like leopards and lions) I’m talking rhinos battling it out in a nearly dry river bed, herds of elephants eating trees covered in thorns, giraffes crossing and re-crossing roads in search of the freshest and tastiest leaves. And not only do they eat, but they fight for the right to eat. We watched giraffes weaving their necks together, elephants pushing and shoving each other and kudus locking horns. My partner mentioned that it was all about survival of the fittest. If you win the battle you get your pick of the best. It made me think about living with diabetes and how we work twice as hard as someone with a functioning pancreas to stay fit and still we deal with that feeling that it’s never enough!
Unlike our complex needs for exotic combinations on our dinner plates, animals keep it simple. Their primary directive is survival. If I can’t get it on the ground and I can reach it in a bush, I’ll eat that. Basically, like animals all a human body needs is nutrients to survive. I can get caught up in personal taste, be fussy about presentation, but if I was on a desert island? I’d probably behave like any wild animal and eat whatever!
Besides watching all the munching and crunching there was a lot of digesting and sleeping going on too. We came across twenty crocodiles asleep in the sand along the banks of a watering hole, lions stretched out in a riverbed and a leopard straddling a high branch completely dead to the world.
I never thought watching animals would be so soothing, fascinating and timeless. We spent over 6 hours in our car at one time and literally had to drag ourselves back to camp for a refresher before we jumped back in the car for more. Before the trip I worried that I’d get frustrated by sitting in the car all day. It’s completely against the rules to get out even for a pee (apparently a lion or some such other wild creature can come out of the bush at any moment and eat you up) But surprise, surprise it was easy. When you place your focus outside yourself time falls away and you forget all the little niggley things including the fact that your blood sugars might not be behaving.
As the days went by I felt lighter and lighter and as a bonus my blood sugars levelled out. Maybe all any of us really need is a week away in the wild.
But what exactly does that mean?
It’s easier to drop what you have than what you are. Try dropping your awareness? I dare you. Try to be unconscious right now! Unless you hit yourself over the head with a hammer it’s impossible.
Love is already gained; like a drop in the vast ocean of water. No matter how much the drop thinks it’s a drop it can only ever be water. No matter how separate you feel from love the truth is, love is all there is.
