Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Attachments, part 1 September 13, 2011

Filed under: reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 2:38 pm
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For our homework this month, we were instructed to make a list of our likes and dislikes, attachments and aversions. The purpose of this exercise isn’t to see if we like ice cream or whatever – we’re intended to look critically at ourselves, at the attachments and aversions that hold us back in our spiritual practice. Attachment and aversion are actually two of the kleshas, or obstacles to achieving enlightenment; when one is focused on enjoying pleasant experiences or avoiding unpleasant ones, then that person won’t be focused on meditation. Pleasant things come and go, and so do unpleasant things, but the true Self remains unchanging and unaffected by momentary events. Plus, even if you’re not worried about spirituality, it’s a good idea to examine your attachments and aversions: what’s really so great about this? what bothers me so much about that? The answers could be surprising!

Here’s my list of attachments, with some commentary about each one.

Chocolate

I’m not sure if this falls under the category of “attachment” or “addiction”, but it seemed right to list it here. I used to have a much bigger issue with sweets – I could eat a whole bag of mini candy bars or an entire package of cookies (or, heck, raw cookie dough) in one sitting, just while watching TV or studying. I’ve worked hard to become more conscious of this and control it better. I purposely choose dark chocolates and try to avoid more processed sweets; I cut back on the sugar when I bake; I don’t keep many sweets in the house or at my desk at work; I’ll pack just four chocolates in my lunch and then space them out over the whole afternoon. Still, I find myself needing those little chocolates to get through the day, and when I don’t pack any I’ll sometimes have to make a candy run just to get by.

My husband, F

This is probably my biggest attachment. When we were first dating, F and I spent two years long distance, and I was constantly afraid that something would happen to keep us apart; now we’ve lived together for almost three years, but I still sometimes get that feeling, that our life together is somehow too good to be true and can’t last. Losing him is my worst fear.

Comfortable Lifestyle

When I was in grad school I was broke. I worked three jobs and my parents put money into my bank account every month. I had a roommate and an affordable apartment, and I lived cheaply, keeping careful track of every penny, but I still couldn’t afford many things. I would patch my jeans repeatedly because I couldn’t afford new pants, and a hot date out was a milkshake from Burger King. Now that I’m older, I have a lot more expenses (mortgage, house bills, car payments), but I also make a lot more money than I ever did before, and so I have a lot more financial freedom to buy clothes, shoes, organic food at the grocery store, and nice dinners out. I know it shouldn’t matter but I feel really averse to losing these things. I remember how it felt when I couldn’t buy pants – pants! Kind of necessary! And I don’t want to go back to that. I’m definitely more loose in my spending than I could be, but part of me feels like the reward of getting to where I am should be that I don’t have to count my pennies anymore. On the other hand, although I do give to charity, and pretty generously, I always feel like I should be doing more, that I’m selfish with my money. The other issue with this attachment to a comfortable lifestyle is that it means I need to stay in my current job – for financial reasons, I don’t feel I can leave my job unless I find another job that will pay me comparably. But more on worklife when we get to aversions.

Next time: Two other things I feel overly attached to! And then, some aversions!

 

Yoga in the News: Yoga, Annoying? Surely Not! September 10, 2011

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 2:25 pm
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Just spotted this article: Annoying? Yoga? Surely Not! I feel like I ought to be offended but instead I think it’s hilarious. Because we yoga people do all of this stuff. We hug too much and use yoga vocabulary that sounds silly and talk about how the universe has plans for us. Definitely keep your flip flops handy, but keep coming back too.

(Tagging this post with my “yoga for beginners” tag, because this is stuff that beginners should know in addition to the useful things I posted about before!)

 

Revelation # 56: Yogis are not missionaries September 8, 2011

Filed under: reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 4:46 pm
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At last month’s yoga teacher training weekend, one concept really struck me and has stuck with me. It’s the idea that yogis aren’t missionaries. Now, nobody ever said that they were, but I was raised Catholic – my childhood religion classes were filled with stories of missionaries, going out into the wild to educate and spread the good news of Jesus. Such people were held up as heroes for us to emulate. Coming from this background, the concept of spreading the word and converting others to your faith is very familiar to me.

Which is why it blew my mind when I realized that yogis aren’t missionaries. It’s a concept that just doesn’t fit in with the yoga worldview. Sure, if you seek out a yogi based on a sincere desire to learn, the yogi will teach you, but he’s not going out looking for students. That’s not his job.

Yogis don’t preach or proselytize because they believe that each person has the responsibility for his or her own spiritual development. In the Yoga Sutras and in the Bhagavad Gita, it’s made clear that your responsibility is to yourself first; you should take action primarily to preserve your own calm mind. Consider the parakarmas: this wisdom, straight from Yoga Sutra I.33, is intended to help you in your relationships with others – to help you treat others better, yes, but mostly to help you live in the world and still keep your serenity. According to the scriptures, your job is to take care of yourself and your own spiritual development. It’s not your job to worry about anyone else’s. The yogi knows that he’s on a good path, but he also knows that there are other paths that people can follow, and that’s up to them. The yogi isn’t responsible for saving the world; instead, he leads by example, practicing kindness and service, demonstrating the goodness he wants to see in the world.

Understanding this has been a big realization for me. I feel that I’ve found a good spiritual path for myself in yoga, but I don’t have to go out and shout about it. There’s no onus on me to try to convince anyone else that this is a good spiritual path. My path may not be for everyone. What’s more, as J has said all along, my spiritual practice is private; it’s my own and not anyone else’s business. This too is different from how I grew up: in Catholicism, demonstrating your faith in community is important. For me as a yogini, community is still important – the community of yoga classes that I attend and the classes I will someday teach, as well as the community I find in my local Unitarian Universalist church – but ultimately my spiritual practice is personal.

I want to be a yoga teacher, which means sharing my yoga and my spirit with my students. But being a teacher doesn’t mean being a missionary. I believe yoga has the power to heal both bodies and minds, but I don’t have to go out and advertise that or force that belief on anyone – as long as I work hard and put myself out there as a teacher, people who need yoga will find their way to me.

 

Dealing with ups and downs August 30, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:59 pm
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I’ve been trying for a while to wrap my head around a concept mentioned in Eknath Easwaran’s book Passage Meditation, and I think I’ve finally figured it out. Mr. Easwaran  talks about excitement and emotional ups and downs, and how a true yogi will work to eliminate these. Of course we all want to get rid of the lows we experience in our moods, but getting rid of the highs too will help us to be more balanced, calm, and peaceful. Mr. Easwaran explains it as follows:

You will find excitement played up everywhere today… and everywhere today you will find depressed people. Hardly anyone sees a connection. Hardly anyone realizes that the old truth “What goes up must come down” applies to the mind too…. In other words, excitement makes us vulnerable to depression. When I say this, you may think that I am trying to wrap a wet blanket around you. But actually, when we reduce the pendulum swings of the mind, we enter a calm state of awareness that allows us to enjoy the present moment most fully…. Learn to prevent low moods altogether by repeating your mantram when you first feel yourself becoming excited…. bring yourself back to the present moment so you can avoid disappointment if future events take an unexpected turn…. free yourself from the tyranny of strong likes and dislikes – all those preferences, aversions, fixed opinions, and habits that make us soar when things go our way and crash when they do not.” (86-87)

That was a long quote, condensed down from a much longer passage, but I thought Mr. Easwaran explains his point well. Also, thinking about strong attachments and aversions is part of our assignment this month, so this passage is interesting in that light as well. I read this passage probably two months ago now, but set it aside at the time because we were busy moving. It’s been in the back of my mind since then.

I tend to get excited easily, about big things and silly things both. I just like things. Getting excited about stuff seems like a part of who I am. Do I need to give that up to make spiritual progress? I can see Mr. Easwaran’s point about the high highs making us vulnerable to the low lows – I definitely have my low lows, probably more than a more stoic person might have. For example, my husband is much more even keeled than I am – he plugs along pretty contentedly while I bounce around, up and down. That’s not to say he doesn’t have low moments like anyone else, but it takes a lot to shake him up, whereas I can go from the heights of joy to the depths of self-loathing in the space of ten minutes. I’ve worked really hard to get a semblance of control over that, but maybe if I work on controlling my up times too, I’ll be more balanced overall. But when I think about this, something in me gets upset – I like liking things, and I like who I am. Swami Satchidananda would say that “who I am” is just a construct built by my ego and I should let go of it anyway, but still, I wasn’t sure how to feel about this or what to do.

However, I think that, from Mr. Easwaran’s perspective, he would acknowledge a difference between “excitement” and “enthusiasm”. Excitement gets you all juiced up for something that could never come close to what you’ve built it up to be, so you feel let down afterwards. Then you go seeking more and bigger things to get excited about, but none of them ever truly fulfill you. Enthusiasm, I think, is different. When you’re enthusiastic about something, you know what it is and what you’ll get from it, so you can feel happy and pumped up about it without feeling let down afterwards. I think that what I am is (for the most part, anyway) enthusiastic, not excitable.

Here’s a classic example. I love using my EZ Pass to go through toll plazas on the highway. I’ve had my EZ Pass for at least five years, yet I still yell “Go EZ Pass!” as I coast past the toll booth. It never fails to delight me. And that’s not the sort of excitement Mr. Easwaran is talking about, that’s taking genuine joy in my world. I get excited when I go out for a nice dinner with my husband, but afterwards I don’t feel sad that it’s over; instead I spend the train ride home talking about what a nice time we had and how good the food was and how happy I am. I dance to the theme song for Doctor Who every time the credits roll (every. single. time.) because I always love that show no matter what happens. If we go out for a walk in the park, I get all excited like a puppy and start chanting “The park the park the park!” but I’m still happy the whole way home afterwards. I even get excited when it rains because it means I get to wear my yellow raincoat.

These are all things I feel genuinely enthusiastic and happy about. They’re not going to disappoint me later; they are experiences that I find satisfying in my everyday life. I could certainly do a better job of controlling mood swings, and doing so would help not just me but my husband and family. But I don’t think I need to change my core, my enthusiastic personality. Part of the point of yoga is being fully present in the moment, and if I’m doing the Doctor Who dance or singing about my EZ Pass, I can pretty much guarantee that I’m right there in the present moment.

 

Nine Obstacles to Mental Clarity August 24, 2011

Filed under: yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:25 pm
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Today we’ll talk about the nine obstacles to mental clarity. These are also obstacles to practicing yoga or to succeeding in anything else that requires hard work and practice. The nine obstacles are:

  1. Lack of effort
  2. Fatigue or disease
  3. Dullness, inertia (tamas)
  4. Doubt
  5. Carelessness
  6. Laziness
  7. Inability to turn the mind inward
  8. Distorted thinking
  9. Lack of perseverance

The first and last obstacles are of particular interest. Lack of effort is in many ways the most powerful obstacle and the key to all of them: if you don’t put any effort into your practice, you can’t possibly make progress. In addition, a lack of effort opens the door for the other obstacles to come in: if you’re working hard, you’ll be focused on your work, but if you’re not putting in any effort, you’re more likely to become lazy and careless. If you can avoid experiencing a lack of effort – if you strive to put your best effort into all you do – it will be easier to avoid the other obstacles as well.

The last obstacle, lack of perseverance, is also important. J defined “perseverance” as “practicing for an extended period of time without break”. While this concept can be applied to an individual practice or yoga class (powering through a full hour instead of copping out after 20 minutes), it shouldn’t be understood to mean practicing for hours and hours on end, day after day, which wouldn’t be healthy. Instead think about perseverance as the willpower to go do the work regularly, to do it without break, every day if you can. Practicing yoga once a month at random won’t help you very much, but if you practice every Tuesday or twice a week or every morning, you’ll see yourself making progress. Lack of perseverance goes hand in hand with lack of effort: to get anything accomplished you need to show up and try!

Another of the obstacles I want to talk about is laziness. In our lecture J gave us a definition for laziness that’s stuck with me: “laziness” is “the inability to take action even though there’s a longing for action in the mind”. Most of us have experienced this. You know you should go clean the bathroom but you think you’ll just sit down for a minute, and oh, Pawn Stars is on and you haven’t seen this one. Or it’s some movie, like Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, that you’ve seen a dozen times and don’t really care about seeing again, but you get sucked in and you stay on the couch even through the commercials and there goes your whole Saturday afternoon. You know you don’t really care about the movie, and that if you did care you could rent it or get it on Netflix with no commercials, but you sit there anyway. In class, we asked J, how do you fight laziness? And he said, um, get up. So even the big sage guy doesn’t have a magical answer. You know you need to get up, so turn off the TV, let Ferris go about his crazy day, and get back to your own life.

To me, the thing that seems so insidious about the nine obstacles is the way they feed on each other. Say you’re feeling lazy, so you shorten your yoga practice or do it carelessly, maybe you skip it entirely – there’s lack of effort and lack of perseverance. Let it go and a pattern develops: the longer you sit around, the easier it is to keep sitting around, and inertia sets in. Soon you begin to doubt your purpose, whether there’s any point to this yoga stuff, even though you know you feel better and stronger when you do yoga. And without your regular practice you lose the ability you’d been building to focus and turn the mind inward, becoming even more distracted by what’s on TV. The nine obstacles draw you in, drag you down, and keep you there.

That’s an overblown worst-case scenario, but we all deal with these obstacles every day, not just in yoga but in our jobs and other work, and over time they can keep us from achieving our goals. However, by identifying the obstacles and knowing their tricks, we can fight against them. The next time I’m tempted to watch just one more episode of Pawn Stars, I’ll remember: this is laziness! I don’t want to be lazy! And I’ll turn off the TV.

So what do the nine obstacles look like in your life? Which one is hardest for you, and what do you do to fight it?

 

Yoga in the News: It’s good for fibromyalgia and orthopedic problems! August 11, 2011

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:49 pm
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Here’s some good news: Yoga Beneficial for Fibromyalgia. Women with fibromyalgia have lower-than-average cortisol levels, which contribute to pain, fatigue and stress sensitivity, but after doing hatha yoga twice a week for eight weeks, the women participating in the study had higher levels of cortisol. They reported that they suffered less from pain and other symptoms after practicing yoga, and further, they experienced psychological benefits: feeling stronger, more accepting, and less overwhelmed by their condition.

And more good news: Yoga Therapy May Help Prevent and Treat Orthopedic Problems. From the article, “Dr. Fishman, a lifelong devotee of yoga who studied it for three years in India before going to medical school, uses various yoga positions to help prevent, treat, and he says, halt and often reverse conditions like shoulder injuries, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and scoliosis.” The article goes on to describe how a modified yoga headstand can be used to treat painful rotator cuff injuries without expensive surgery or lengthy physical therapy and without recurrence of pain. Dr. Fishman also did a study on yoga for bone disease and found that the patients with osteoporosis who practiced yoga daily for two years had increased bone density.

 

Four Paths: Karma Yoga August 5, 2011

Filed under: bhagavad gita,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:25 pm
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In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the four paths of yoga:

Each of these paths has the potential to lead a yogi to enlightenment, so you choose your path based on your temperament and personality. Choosing the wrong path will make it much more difficult to make progress, because essentially you’re fighting your nature. This month, my assignment is to consider the four paths and decide which one appeals to me the most.

Karma yoga, the path of action, is the path that called out to me right away during our class discussion at the last teacher training session. The nice thing about Karma yoga is that it’s all about action – you don’t have to give up your life in the world or retreat into secluded study or meditation. You still have to read and study and meditate, of course, but your main focus is your secular life. The difference between a Karma yogi and some regular guy, however, is that the Karma yogi seeks to perform the actions of her life with an attitude of selfless service, with no attachment to the results of her actions.

In Karma yoga, you perform your actions because it’s your duty, because it’s the right thing to do – no more and no less. You don’t get caught up in expecting a reward for your efforts. If you receive a reward, that’s nice, but the point is to do the action for its own sake. It’s not that the Karma yogi doesn’t care about what happens: to the contrary, she cares very much and works hard at her work, but she recognizes that she has no control over the results of her actions, so she just does her best and then lets go. She takes an attitude of service, making each action an offering to the Divine. This way, doing the work actually becomes your spiritual practice. (Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita discusses Karma yoga in more detail.)

There are four steps to Karma yoga:

  1. Know your duty, know your life’s purpose (your dharma), and accept it fully
  2. Concentrate and be fully present as you perform your duty
  3. Do the work with excellence, as best you can
  4. Give up any attachment to the results of your actions

For me, this path is very, very appealing. I have always felt like I wanted to do more, to serve more, that there was something I owed to the world in gratitude for the wonderful life that I have. For years I secretly wanted to join the Peace Corps but was too afraid to take the risk. I can’t even talk about the Peace Corps; I get teary. I’m teary just typing about it. The concept of Karma yoga fulfills that need to serve by making everything a form of service. I don’t need to go far away to make my life meaningful or helpful or useful. I can do that right here.

I also like how neatly Karma yoga fits together as a system for running your life. If every action is service, is an offering to the Divine, then you’re pretty much going to stop being a jerk to people, aren’t you? The yamas and niyamas become even more practical guidelines for living. You start wanting to eliminate negativity and nastiness from every action you put out into the world; there’s an inherent kindness to it. I often feel that I am not very kind, and I’d like to be. As a system, it also puts emphasis on personal excellence – doing your best, striving to perform your work in the best possible way – and that resonates with me too because I’ve tried to live my life that way.

The hardest thing for me to imagine is acting without attachment to the results of my actions. And obviously that’s kind of a biggie. But that’s something I feel I need in my life, too. How comforting it would be to stop worrying over things that are beyond my control! To be able to let go of that suffering, and just reside in the fact that I did the best I could do. I’ve been telling myself this for years. Of course, it’s still incredibly hard for me to just do that, but isn’t that the point? To work at it, and to make the work the offering?

I’m getting a little emotional here, but that’s clearly indicative of something. Yesterday, I was thinking about Bhakti yoga and thinking that maybe that might be a good option for me, but Karma yoga is something I really feel passionately about, and something I’ve been trying to practice without even knowing I was doing it. There are many aspects of the other paths that do appeal to me, and there’s no reason I can’t take those things and use them on my journey, but my main path is going to be Karma yoga.

 

Four Paths: Bhakti Yoga August 4, 2011

Filed under: bhagavad gita,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:20 pm
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In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the four paths of yoga:

  • Karma Yoga: the path of action
  • Raja Yoga: the path of meditation
  • Jnana Yoga: the path of wisdom/knowledge
  • Bhakti Yoga: the path of love/devotion

Each of these paths has the potential to lead a yogi to enlightenment, so you choose your path based on your temperament and personality. Choosing the wrong path will make it much more difficult to make progress, because essentially you’re fighting your nature. This month, my assignment is to consider the four paths and decide which one appeals to me the most.

Today I’ll talk about Bhakti Yoga, the path of love and devotion. This is the most emotional path, for yogis who tend to think with their hearts; the Bhakti path encourages yogis to channel those emotions toward the Divine. Unlike Jnana yogis, the Bhakti yogi is happiest worshipping the Divine in a manifested form, such as Jesus, Mary, or Krishna, because it feels like a more personal connection.

Bhakti yogis are assisted in their spiritual practice by a variety of techniques:

  • chanting (such as kirtan music, or the many call-and-response chants in the Catholic liturgy, or even a rosary)
  • imagining or meditating on attributes of the Divine (the holes in Jesus’s hands and feet; Mary’s blue robes; the face of Krishna)
  • rituals (like lighting candles)
  • kneeling or prostration before the image of the Divine (Christians keep those big crosses around for a reason!)

These sorts of actions create a sacred atmosphere that a Bhakti yogi appreciates – they bring the participant into a meditative state where she can feel close to the Divine. The Bhakti yogi is always cultivating that longing to be with the Divine, striving to make her life an offering to her deity. You can read more about Bhakti yoga in chapters 9 and 12 of the Bhagavad Gita.

I was raised Catholic, and the rituals of the church do hold some appeal for me. I love to sing: I sang in church choirs growing up, and raising my voice in song does make me feel closer to my spirit. Sometimes I even feel moved to sing while I’m practicing yoga (it’s really fun, actually), or after my meditation (I learned a great song at my Unitarian church about breathing in peace and breathing out love, it’s perfect). I like having my little shelf set up at home with my little Buddhas all lined up; that’s where I meditate, and I feel like having them around is like having a tiny little support group cheering me on. I can relate to the feeling in Bhakti yoga that the Divine is a personal friend who loves you back. The more I think about this path, the more I think it’s an option for me. However, it’s not the path that called out to me right away (and if you’re keeping track, you’ll have it figured out by now). Next time, I’ll do some reflecting on karma yoga and see how I feel about it.

 

Veg Adventures: A Weekend With Meg August 3, 2011

Filed under: yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 2:35 pm
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I haven’t written anything in a while about my adventures in vegetarianism, mostly because it’s going really smoothly. I’m eating food, I haven’t had any major problems, things are good. But I do have a few little stories to share.

The day we moved our furniture into our new house, we had some friends over to help, and we ordered the requisite pizza to feed them. One of my friends is sensitive to gluten, so we also ordered some chicken fingers and wings so she’d have something to eat too. Everything was out on the table like a big buffet, and we were all happily chowing down. The wings happened to be right in front of me, and they looked really good, so I reached over and grabbed one. My husband F had to had to say “They’re meat. They’re meat. THEY’RE MEAT!” before I realized and put it back. I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t even really like wings back when I ate meat, so maybe I just wasn’t making the wing = meat connection in my brain.

That was a few weeks ago. This past weekend, my sister-in-law Meg came to visit. Meg has been a vegetarian since she was maybe eight years old; she’s also a trained chef. Woman knows how to cook. I learned about freezing tofu: F and I already knew that it was good to freeze the tofu, but not why or what to do with it when you wanted to then defrost and cook it. (It’s good because it gets a lot of the excess water out of the tofu, and to defrost it you just stick it in the fridge the night before or put it out on the counter like you would with anything you were defrosting, and then you can just dump it in the stir fry and because it’s not watery it won’t hardly crumble at all!) Now I know. I also made the stir fry sauce from scratch, learned about what to do with the cornstarch to make the stir fry sauce thicker, and learned a better way to prepare couscous than what I had been doing. Bonus: we found a restaurant 2.5 miles from my new house that I am sure F doesn’t know about; I don’t know of any other restaurants in our area who make this sort of cuisine, which is a cuisine that F likes, and the food was damn good, so I’m really psyched to surprise F and take him there.

My other lesson from my weekend with Meg involves protein, and how you should, um, make sure to eat it. I had just been haphazardly planning my meals, figuring that I probably get enough protein and not worrying about it, but Meg sort of made the point that one ought to eat some protein with every meal. We’d be talking about what to eat for dinner, and she’d say what do we have, and I’d rattle off a bunch of items, and she’d say okay what will we have for our protein, and I just kind of looked at her. It just made me think in an obvious sort of way that I should plan for the protein thing and make sure to eat it regularly. And now that I understand about tofu a little better, I feel more confident about that. (We ate all the tofu that was in our freezer, so I got more at the store tonight and cut it up and froze it, although I’m realizing now that I forgot to press the water out of it first so I’m hoping that it’ll freeze okay. Clearly I still have plenty more to learn.)

 

The Four Duties of a Yogi August 1, 2011

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 8:23 am
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At our last teacher training session, we talked about the four duties of a yogi. These duties are not for renunciates or monks but for householder yogis, yogis in the world like us. Here they are, in order:

  1. Yourself.
  2. Family.
  3. Work.
  4. Community/society/nation.

What do you think about that order? Does it seem selfish to put yourself first? This is something that many people struggle with. “My family has to come first in everything,” someone might say. But really think about it. Putting others first is a concept that many of us, especially women, have taken to heart as our duty. We’re constantly giving everything we’ve got – driving kids to soccer practice, staying late at the office, making time to help your husband with a project or to visit your in-laws, but never making time for yourself. And when you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you can get burnt out or even sick. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time. It can be something as simple as making sure you get to yoga class once a week, getting up early for some private time in the morning, getting to bed early to get a good night’s sleep, or treating yourself to a pedicure or a bubble bath. It could be scheduling that long overdue doctor’s appointment, getting your teeth cleaned, going for a massage: taking care of your own health so you don’t get sick or hurt. Whatever it is for you, it will help you to relax, recharge, and stay healthy. And when you’re healthy and you have a lot of energy, you have so much more to give to your family, work, church or community. If you take care of yourself first, you’ll be able to serve others with more energy and joy.

Compare that to when you’re feeling burnt out – how long does it take you to get back on an even keel? We can rarely give up our duties entirely for a vacation (and even a vacation away from home involves making travel plans, caring for the kids, worrying over the budget, etc). Sometimes, when we keep on putting others before ourselves, we get so run down that we become sick, our bodies forcing us to take a break, and even then we’ll still keep pushing on, going to the office instead of getting the rest we need. And really, what’s so important at the office? Things at the office will go on without you just fine, or things will wait until you’re feeling better. There are few things so important that you need to attend to them while you’re sick. Give both your body and your ego a rest and take care of yourself.

By caring for ourselves first, we can stay healthier, avoiding getting sick and rundown in the first place. By taking care of ourselves, we have more energy, more balance, and are happier and fuller in ourselves, meaning we have more to give to the people we love. The ancient yogis realized that when you take care of yourself first, everybody wins.