Yoga On & Off the Mat

Try Yoga This Holiday Season

By Brooke Hewes, 12-01-07

The contrast is startling. First, it’s Thursday, a day for giving thanks — for relaxing with loved ones and filling plates with local harvest. Then it’s Friday, “Black Friday,” a day when shoppers rush against each other and the clock to fill their carts with marked-down merchandise and check off page-long wish lists.

In Missoula, on the Friday following Thanksgiving, 40 eager shoppers slept outside Best Buy and endured 0-degree C temperatures to cash in on early-bird specials. After one eager shopper missed out on a screaming deal — 60 Toshiba laptops were priced at $229 — he surmised that other, more successful shoppers would hop on eBay and resell the laptops for $1,000, thus robbing his kids “of a good education.”

Likewise, the spirit of Thanksgiving seems to have been robbed — in less than a day, we go from grace and gratitude to pushing and purchasing.

From light to “black,” we enter the holiday season.

Yikes.

Another Way
Of course, it don’t gotta be like that.

When holiday cheer erodes to holiday greed, Yoga offers ways out. The Yoga Sutra, for example, offers practitioners an eight-limbed path replete with 195 angas, or limbs consisting of one wise adage after another, to steer folks toward grace. And though these tenets are meant to guide a yogi through all 365 days of the year, they are especially helpful amid all the merrymaking.

Patanjali, the great Indian sage who scribed the Yoga Sutra, addressed greed most directly in the first and second limbs, the yamas and niyamas, which translate as “moral disciplines” and “personal restraints” respectively.

Five primary morals constitute the first limb: ahimsa (nonharming), satya (truthfulness), asteya (nonstealing), brahmacarya (chastity), and aparigraha (greedlessness). Nonharming refers to thought as well as action, and is what yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein calls the “root of all other moral norms” in his comprehensive book The Yoga Tradition. From a place of nonviolence, we act compassionately and with kindness toward ourselves and others. Likewise, living truthfully fosters a platform of peace upon which the bodymind rests.

Most of us probably know that it isn’t a good idea to steal from others (Apparently a Missoula man who stole Christmas ornaments from a nearby shop didn’t get wind of this maxim.) Nonstealing, though, doesn’t just refer to material stuff — it is equally important to refrain from stealing someone’s time, attention and trust. Besides, such actions sprout from the ego anyway, and in yoga, we shoot for a more grounded, connected-to-others existence.

Brahmacharya translates as celibacy but has everything to do with respect. Respectful thoughts, respectful actions, respect for one’s own and for others’ bodies.

Together, these five moral tenets infuse our actions with truth and compassion, eventually un-velcroing our ego from our sense of self. Life and the holidays that fill it, then, become less about you and more about the one love, one divine spirit that permeates us all. And once cultivated, this graciousness goes a long way to reducing tension within and between people. Collectively, practicing yoga undermines any scrooge momentum out there.

The Practice
Practicing yamas, however, isn’t easy anytime of the year, let alone during the season when consumption and desire seem to be lurking around every aisle. Nor is mastering the five self restraints named in the second limb of Patanjali’s classical yoga: shauca (purity), smtosha (contentment), tapas (austerity), svadhyaya (study) and ishvara-pranidhana (devotion to the Lord). Luckily, we have help getting from agitation and selfishness to poise and placation as the holidays (and the good and bad of family gatherings) approach.

First, make time for asana (postures). Wake up an hour earlier or roll out your mat during lunch break. However you do it, find time—spending just a half hour connecting with your breath and body will give you enough calm and courage to stand strong throughout your day.

The following sequence of yin postures (all restorative forward bends taken from Paul Grilley’s book Yin Yoga) are particularly calming.
• Sleeping Swan (a yin variation of pigeon pose that involve reclining forward over the bent leg)
• Square Pose
• Forward Bend
• Dragonfly
• Half Dragonfly
• Child’s Pose
Note that some of the poses depicted by Yoga Journal aren’t done in the yin style. Yin postures are held from 3-5 minutes with muscles and breath relaxed. Read more about Yin here.

If the holidays drain you, try invigorating backbends (bow pose, upward-facing bow) warrior poses (virabhadrasana I, II & III), and balancing poses (tree pose, extended hand-to-big-toe pose).

Second, practice dhyana (mediation). Mantra or guided mediation is an excellent way to stay grounded from Thanksgiving to the New Year. If you don’t regularly sit, you can buy or borrow a guided tape or CD. (I recommend Jon Kabat Zinn’s CDs.) Do five minutes before bed and five to ten minutes upon waking to set your intention for that day and next round of holiday activities. Thich Nhat Hanh’s books Peace is Every Step and Touching Peace offer simple mindfulness mantras that can be repeated throughout the day. And instead of the “doing the dishes meditation” that he offers, try synchronizing your inhale to the word “calm” and exhale to the word “peace” while stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the grocery store.

Working with asana and cultivating the focus required of dhyana are gateways to yama and niyama.  Sit by sit, triangle pose by triangle pose, we strengthen and soothe our physical selves. Meditation and asana circulate breath and blood throughout the body to foster a more-balanced inner landscape, and, ultimately, a more balanced place within the landscape around us. Both practices support letting go, and the more we loosen our grip around our ego and holiday expectations, the more present we become. And in the present, there is no room for anxiety over to-do lists or disappointment over deals gone by. In the present, there is only the present, which yoga tells us is nothing short of pure joy.

And nothing like “Black Friday.”

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