Any event, good or bad, causes a stress response if we are unprepared for the situation at hand. Our stress responses exist to ensure safety in our world, for our dependents and ourselves; its function is to respond to danger, not Life itself.
What is Life? Life, in a yogic context, is summed up as those things in day to day existence that bring us peace, joy, contentment and open, loving awareness. It is our basic nature to be peaceful, loving and open – not mistrustful, closed and afraid.
What is Stress? Well, virtually everything else - mostly non-life threatening and largely self-inflicted by placing monumental importance on incidental things. Stress is summed up in the things that cause us to act against our basic human nature.
Let’s take a moment and look at our range of day-to-day stress: we have job stress, family/relationship stress, health stress, money stress…and an overpowering amount of media that encourages stress, keeping us on the lookout for the quick fix, hungry for possessions and terrified about the state of the world today. We drink stress like coffee, consuming several cups of the stuff per day. As such we are habituated to stress, so accustomed to being in a heightened state that our natural stress responses become dulled by overuse. Our natural state of calm awareness is affected too, dulled from lack of use.
The truth is that most of our stress comes from perceived threats to our ego and identity - not our lives. Unfortunately, there are places in the world where day-to-day living is synonymous with real stress, but for most of us, it is not.
How does this relate to yoga practice? Living in a heightened state of alert, we tend to create stress for ourselves, in order to maintain the status quo. We bring stress to our yoga practice in the form of perceived ego threats: performance anxiety, comparison to others and personal criticism. We all know what happens when we experience stress, breathing becomes shallow and ragged and the mind becomes confused. So the solution is simple - come home to the breath; regain focus on your practice, your life, or the situation at hand. This transaction applies universally, to any situation and is the most efficient, effective way to combat stress and anxiety – simply breathe.
So now I’ve identified a concern, is this something to stress about? No, but as part of being mindful and practicing Ahimsa (non-violence), it benefits us all, instructors and students alike, to be aware of how stress plays out in life, in the body and in our fundamental regulating mechanism, the breath. A dozen deep breaths will remind you that Everything is already Ok.
In yoga,
Jenn
What is Life? Life, in a yogic context, is summed up as those things in day to day existence that bring us peace, joy, contentment and open, loving awareness. It is our basic nature to be peaceful, loving and open – not mistrustful, closed and afraid.
What is Stress? Well, virtually everything else - mostly non-life threatening and largely self-inflicted by placing monumental importance on incidental things. Stress is summed up in the things that cause us to act against our basic human nature.
Let’s take a moment and look at our range of day-to-day stress: we have job stress, family/relationship stress, health stress, money stress…and an overpowering amount of media that encourages stress, keeping us on the lookout for the quick fix, hungry for possessions and terrified about the state of the world today. We drink stress like coffee, consuming several cups of the stuff per day. As such we are habituated to stress, so accustomed to being in a heightened state that our natural stress responses become dulled by overuse. Our natural state of calm awareness is affected too, dulled from lack of use.
The truth is that most of our stress comes from perceived threats to our ego and identity - not our lives. Unfortunately, there are places in the world where day-to-day living is synonymous with real stress, but for most of us, it is not.
How does this relate to yoga practice? Living in a heightened state of alert, we tend to create stress for ourselves, in order to maintain the status quo. We bring stress to our yoga practice in the form of perceived ego threats: performance anxiety, comparison to others and personal criticism. We all know what happens when we experience stress, breathing becomes shallow and ragged and the mind becomes confused. So the solution is simple - come home to the breath; regain focus on your practice, your life, or the situation at hand. This transaction applies universally, to any situation and is the most efficient, effective way to combat stress and anxiety – simply breathe.
So now I’ve identified a concern, is this something to stress about? No, but as part of being mindful and practicing Ahimsa (non-violence), it benefits us all, instructors and students alike, to be aware of how stress plays out in life, in the body and in our fundamental regulating mechanism, the breath. A dozen deep breaths will remind you that Everything is already Ok.
In yoga,
Jenn
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Canada
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Re: Life or Stress?
Wed, March 28, 2007 - 5:39 PMHi there - thanks for the interesting post. A few questions though:
1) Are you saying that danger and life are fundamentally different, i.e., that danger is never a part *of* life? ("its [stress's] function is to respond to danger, not Life itself)
2) Are you saying that stress itself is something separate & completely different from life ["Life, in a yogic context, is summed up as those things in day to day existence that bring us peace, joy, contentment and open, loving awareness."] , i.e., not an aspect *of* life?
If yes to the above two, then you saying that danger and stress, as fundamentally different from life, are simply things encountered by life. But does the concept of life not incorporate that which is experienced in it (it seems your definition says that it is)
And why is it that "It is our basic nature to be peaceful, loving and open – not mistrustful, closed and afraid. " Surely, if you just look around, you will see that the opposite is more likely (+if it is the case that we've evolved from animals, then we need a demonstration of how your claims about life apply to the rather cutthroat world of the animal kingdom - and even if it is claimed that we didn't evolve from other animals, you definition of Life must be referring to them too, so still needs justification). In fact, at certain points you exclude everything non-human from having life. Odd
--> This all seems a bit weak and wishful thinking... Wouldn't yoga rather be a set of techniques that enable us to transcend our animal natures (i.e., bare Life), and break those patterns that make us so terrible towards ourselves, each other and our environments?
"The truth is that most of our stress comes from perceived threats to our ego and identity - not our lives." --> so our identity and ego is not a part of our lives?
"So the solution is simple - come home to the breath; regain focus on your practice, your life, or the situation at hand. This transaction applies universally, to any situation and is the most efficient, effective way to combat stress and anxiety – simply breathe. "
---> couldn't agree more on that point.
"So now I’ve identified a concern, is this something to stress about? No, but as part of being mindful and practicing Ahimsa (non-violence), it benefits us all, instructors and students alike, to be aware of how stress plays out in life, in the body and in our fundamental regulating mechanism, the breath. A dozen deep breaths will remind you that Everything is already Ok. "
---> So if someone breaks into a house and starts stabbing a father in front of his children, you suggest that the kids just sit down and breathe? And remind themselves that "Everything is already Ok"? Personally, if I were in the middle of being attacked, I'd rather hope that any witnesses would either help me or run for assistance...
Making statements that have not been thought through (i.e., repeating what others tell you, uncritically) is an externalization of one's susceptibility to fascism. Fascism, most simply put, is the desire to be led... Beware! Beware!
As opposed to making everything ok, breathing teaches one to be centered enough to deal with any situation at hand without panicking, without reacting to stress chemicals that course through the bloodstream - it is the basis of self-control, of confidence, heightened capacity for awareness, etc., not a safety net that makes everything ok.
Beware! Beware! -
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Re: Life or Stress?
Wed, April 18, 2007 - 12:39 AMYou do actually illustrate my point precisely with your comments. My post was not intended to extend any naive view that life will not include stress or danger. Nor am I suggesting that human nature is above that of animals - look at animals co-existing in their natural environment, responding as they do to their basic nature (be they predator or prey, I am not preaching some kind of fuzzy universal morality here - there is no exact right and wrong anywhere in the universe); furthermore, animals tend to have a less dramatic on their environments that human beings do - that is an indisputable fact....so truly - who is more 'civilized'? Nor am I for a moment suggesting that anything non-human is devoid of life - that is simply a ridiculous assumption that I believe you create to support your arguement ...let me be more precise about my point with this article...
Life CONTAINS danger and stress, it is NOT IN AND OF ITSELF a constant state of stress. Stress is unavoidable, as is danger - what I am suggesting is that we, as human beings, with our overactive brains and egos, create mountains out of molehills on a regular basis. Our egos are definitely a part of our lives - but we often let our egos do most of the thinking and evaluating for us, thus ignoring the facts and the truths of most situations - the ego has its own agenda to put forward.
It is an appropriate use of your stress response to run in the opposite direction when someone is stalking you down a dark alley - it is not appropriate to blow up at a cashier in a grocery store because she is slow doing your price check or to get upset because your bus is 3 minutes late..and this sort of thing happens more often in our lives than being stalked down a dark alley. I exxagerate here considerably, but I think my point may be a little clearer.
Perhaps you, as the commentator, do not realize how many people walk around this world in a state of real mistrust and fear, of themselves, their lives, the impermanence of Life (in a Buddhist perspective) - how things change and we should strive to remain fluid in the waves of change, rather than resisting all and tightening up.
What I am saying is that the stress response, in Western culture especially, is often used to express an entirely ego-centric sense of entitlement to happiness. I am not suggesting that yoga, as a practice, will wrap you up in a ball of fairy floss and carry you away to a land of crystalline harmony - I am saying that the practices of yoga will give you the opportunity to slow down and apply a more reasonable set of expectations to yourself and your life.
My post was not intended to solve all the problems of the universe in one pat philosophical article - nor was I speaking in absolutes. May I suggest that you go to my website, www.yogayak.com to read my further writings - my approach may be clearer to you. But I do thank you very much for your comments, they are certainly worthy of consideration.
In closing - I will comment on this final paragraph of your post:
As opposed to making everything ok, breathing teaches one to be centered enough to deal with any situation at hand without panicking, without reacting to stress chemicals that course through the bloodstream - it is the basis of self-control, of confidence, heightened capacity for awareness, etc., not a safety net that makes everything ok.
I did not suggest for a moment that one requires a safety net - quite the opposite - I suggest merely that there is no need to believe that danger lurks around every corner and under every pencil. You agree entirely with my entire article in this paragraph, simply putting it in different words than I used....I am not suggesting that breathing MAKES everything ok - I posit that breathing creates a space whereby you realize that you are probably not in mortal danger - the world is not the African Savannah, you are probably not going to be eaten (literally or metaphorically) : It IS animal nature to respond to the world as if you are either predator or prey and each of these is a primal stress response. Yoga and pranayama are designed to do precisely what you suggest - transcend the animal nature and just be, without hunting or being hunted, or perceiving either.
THAT is the purpose of examing the stress response, and its appropriate use - through yoga and breathing.
Namaste
Jenn
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