Turn Up The Volume

​In the recent past, I had an extremely difficult supervisor.  I couldn't concentrate at work due to the on-going conflict with my supervisor. My stomach stayed in knots.  No amount of asana (yoga poses) or pranayama (yogic breathing techniques) ever relieved the stress.  My self-worth and confidence suffered. 

So I Turned Up The Volume Of My Meditation Practice

Through meditation, I was able to think more clearly, and be less reactive or impulsive when dealing with him. In other words, I didn't quit my job due to my emotions and make myself and my family homeless. I was able to use reason instead of just my gut response.

Meditation enabled me to keep these aspects of my Self in sync-my head and my heart.  It empowered me to think clearly, in a non-reactive (meaning destructive) manner, and it motivated me to find a new job by decreasing my negativity and increasing the innate confidence I already had in my abilities.

Obviously, looking for a new job was a reactive response to the on-going situation with my supervisor.  However, it is a healthy and productive reactive response as opposed to just quitting my job.  The on-going conflict increased my passion (my heart, my gut) to create a strategy (my head) necessary to illicit change in my employment and in my life.   

By cultivating a balance between the head and the heart, I was able to develop a healthy response to a life situation.  

What Is This Balance Called? Equanimity

There are many definitions of Equanimity. They usually say something like "mental calmness", "composure", or "even temper in difficult situations."  I personally define is as "not loses my shit."

With equanimity, we are able to engage with the world around us and see the changing  patterns. Equanimity enables us to recognize that difficult thoughts, worries and feelings will change and pass. 

Think about the world around us in this past year-COVID, the presidential election, George Floyd,  and list goes on. The news cycle was contained with events, people and actions that caused many of us anxiety, worry, fear, and anger.  Cultivating equanimity is a resource that can help us navigate all this unpredictability of the world without losing our balance.

​How Can We Cultivate Equanimity?

Meditation!!  Bring our heart and head in sync with each other.  Create a synergy between the rational and the emotional selfs. Meditation lets us dive deeper. It lets us explore how all the parts of our SELF are intertwined.  It reduces those fluctuations of mind chatter (yogas chitta vritti nirodha).  It reduces attachments to unhelpful emotions...so that you can have an even temper in difficult situations. Meditation gives us the tools to develop stillness...quieting the ruminations, the what ifs, the could have beens, the attachments to identity or self-worth and the attachment to things, people and outcomes  you can't change. ​​

​An Equanimity Practice

• Lay down on your yoga mat or bed.  Get comfy!
• Take a few moments to notice your breath.  Let the inhales and exhales anchor you in the present moment. Let your body feel grounded and cradled by the Earth.
• Visualize a mountain-the whole mountain.  Its base, its peak, how it tapers down the sides and how it rises up from the Earth.
• Now with our breath as your anchor, visualize yourself as the mountain-a solid base rising up from the Earth to a magnificent peak. Like a mountain through each day, through each season, through each year, you are steady through it all. 
• Visualize the weather (sun, rain, snow) moving over the mountain. Just like weather, your thoughts, sensations, and emotions will come and go.  The outside world will change just as rapidly.  But you remain steady, like a mountain.

​Take a few moments and when you are ready journal about your experience and throughout the day bring some awareness to meeting everything (good and bad) anchored and balanced like a mountain.