The Calm in the Storm

I absolutely hate yoga.

I’m sure my ancestors would be rolling in their graves at the statement (after all, India is the ancient birthplace of yoga), but the allure of the practice has always escaped me. I never understood why anyone would willingly choose to contort themselves into the oddest of positions known to mankind. Sorry, hard pass.

So, naturally, I got roped into attending an early-morning yoga class for three days straight by the only person on the planet who can make me do anything against my own free will — my mom.

I’ll be honest — I didn’t particularly enjoy those three days. I was sore and cranky after each session. But I walked away with an interesting piece of advice — nay, a perspective — that I won’t ever forget.

It was in the middle of a particularly gnarly set of exercises. The instructor could see that the whole class was struggling, and motioned for us to all relax.

Then, he posed two simple questions to the class:

“Why, exactly, do you practice yoga? What’s the point of it all?”

(I wanted to mention that I’d been brought here against my own volition, but the timing seemed less-than-ideal.)

People gave different answers — to increase flexibility, improve one’s health, etc. He nodded politely through all of them, but it seemed like no one really hit the nail on the head. Finally, he spoke again:

“When you practice yoga, you are putting your body under stress. A lot of it. It can be painful and uncomfortable. But the longer you do yoga, the quicker you learn to get used to it, and get through it gracefully. Therein lies the point of it all — in life, you need to breathe, balance — and then find the calm in the storm. That is what yoga teaches.”

That explanation really struck a chord.

Too often, I’ve found common stress relief solutions to be a bit contrived.

Coloring books, drinking tea, putting on noise-cancelling headphones, taking a walk… all of those so-called ‘solutions’ involve somehow numbing the side effects of whatever it is that is making one uncomfortable. They help cover up the symptoms of stress, maybe, but they don’t actually address the problem itself.

Those solutions never seemed to work for me because they always seemed a lot like running away from the problem. That’s not to say I’m not guilty of trying to run away from my problems — I simply make do through other means.

See, I’m an escapist by nature. For better or for worse, I live mostly inside my own head.

That allows me to tune out a lot of what’s going on around me, but it also means that if I’m stressed about something, I’m gonna mull over it forever. Alternatively, I may choose to simply ignore it entirely, worsening the problem. Worst of all, no one is going to be able to snap me out of it, no matter how rationally they approach the situation.

With his explanation, though, it suddenly struck me — life is not about avoiding or running away from the pain. It’s about learning how to face it, head-on. How to deal with it.

Mostly, though, it requires accepting that pain is a temporary but necessary state of nature for growth. Nothing extraordinary comes out of staying firmly within one’s comfort zone, after all.

That’s advice I’ve always had an easy time doling out, but currently am having a hard time practicing at this point in my life. How could I? So many things suddenly seem uncertain.

It’s only now that I’m (slowly) understanding that there’s beauty in uncertainty, too. Peace, I realized, doesn’t mean having no noise, trouble, or hard work.

Sometimes, it’s enough to just keep breathing, trust yourself — and find the calm in the storm.