Hello Beautiful Community,
I wrote this almost a year ago as a newsletter. Rereading it, I realize how much of this still is true. There is still so much uncertainty, so much need for vairagya (non-attachment) and giving ourselves a break/adjusting expectations. We’ve been living through a worldwide pandemic for a year.
During this uncertain time, with things changing day to day and so many unknowns, many of our previously normal habits and routines have gotten thrown out the window. This is causing us to draw on our creativity and deep resources to be flexible and adapt our routines. Our routines help ground and anchor us, so essential to help us manage our anxiety during this uncertainty. Yoga offers us some insightful tools to help us adapt our routines. We can utilize the balancing effects of abhyasa and vairagya (persevering practice and non-atttachment) to help us adapt our current samskaras (habits or patterns) and create new ones.
For example, perhaps you no longer have to wake up at the same time you used to. You might find yourself sleeping in and staying up later, creating a new, but perhaps, not helpful samskara. Applying abhyasa (persevering practice or dedication) you might create techniques to help you get up at a set time every day (alarms for the same time each day, moving your alarm or phone farther from reach to avoid the urge to hit snooze, etc.). You also need vairagya (non-attachment, flexibility, letting go) to realize that with the ever-changing and stressful situation, you may have trouble falling asleep. So perhaps you give yourself some flexibility and now set your alarm a little later than you used to. This may also mean letting go of checking the news in the evening as it may be too activating (and use abhyasa to create a new, dedicated, restorative evening samskara).
Another important area to apply these concepts is to the idea of "productivity". We now may have trouble focusing and concentrating, and beat ourselves up for "not being productive enough" or "not as productive as we were before" (and this could apply to work, household chores, childcare, education, etc.). Life is very different than it was a month ago and we need to use vairagya to let go of our previous expectations and create new ones that are simpler and flexible (and use abhyasa to help us stick to them). Perhaps it's letting go of our productivity-based to-do list and instead focus on our basic needs for security and safety. Perhaps it's letting go of something we think we "should" do and instead take time daily for deeply nourishing and essential self-care and self-reflection (cry, journal, meditate, go for a run, connect with another person, take an online yoga class).
I hope these concepts can be help for you during this difficult time. I would love to hear from you how you've adapted your samskaras. Stay tuned next week for more on routine, especially the importance of simple, daily routines.