Transformative Journey

How to find balance between the twin forces of growth: acceptance and adaptability

Last week, we reflected on our intentions for transformation and what we want to let go of through grounding poses and breathwork practices. To transform this knowledge into energy for change or to find peace with them, acceptance and adaptability will be your allies. These two qualities balance each other out and contribute to greater clarity on your growth journey because they combine the effects of awareness and action. Acceptance allows you to acknowledge habits that no longer serve you without the burden of judgment and negative self-talk. Adaptability, on the other hand, prevents acceptance from turning into complacence and empowers you with the knowledge that you can choose how you can react. Just like how yoga is about flexibility and strength, or how each asana is countered by lifting and pulling, positive growth is enabled by acceptance and adaptability.

As you are making changes in your life, big or small, uncomfortable feelings and sensations may arise, similar to experiencing muscle soreness when training for a marathon. This week, we will explore techniques for allowing these sensations to flow through you so that you can continue on your journey as quickly as possible and unburdened by your past. 

Mindfulness techniques for transformation and acceptance

Acceptance has the central quality of compassion which is essential to growth. Think about a time when you learned something new – it’s ok and normal to be bad at something you’re new at! And yet, it can be easy to criticize or judge when you aren’t meeting your standards from the get-go. However, it isn’t supportive or constructive to beat yourself up over every mistake. According to two techniques for dealing with difficult or strong feelings – EFT tapping and a mindfulness technique by Thich Nhat Hanh – the key to surviving these feelings and allowing them to pass is by first acknowledging them and secondly, by embracing them with compassion.

Considering the emotional freedom technique

EFT tapping or emotional freedom technique is a form of treatment for physical pain and emotional distress. It is based on the theory that a disrupted flow of energy causes all negative emotions and sensations. EFT works by utilizing the meridian points, which are areas that the body’s energy flows through according to traditional Chinese medicine. While acupuncture uses needles to access these points, EFT is non-invasive and uses fingertip tapping to stimulate the meridian points. In a brief encounter with this technique, I was taught to focus on the negative physical sensation or feeling and tap the “karate chop point” which is the fleshy edge of your palm on the pinky-finger side, while reciting this mantra: Even though I have this anger/guilt/pain/feeling/thought, I still love and accept myself. I found this sentence the most striking part of my experience and perhaps it will help you to bring more compassion to your journey of growth too. 

Embracing strong emotions with Thich Nhat Hanh

Another powerful technique for embracing feelings and blocks to release them is the renowned Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness technique which shows up repeatedly in his writings and recorded teachings. Essentially, Thich Nhat Hanh asks you to treat your emotions like a mother would a crying infant. He writes eloquently about how a mother coming to check a restless infant’s temperature with a cool palm to their forehead can be enough to soothe them. It is this loving attention – of a mother coming to hold their child when they start to cry – that brings peace and healing. In other words, shedding the light of awareness on your difficult feelings can help to transform them into something more beneficial. Thich Nhat Hanh also describes this as making a sort of energetic compost. Without waste and death there cannot be flowers. Without suffering there cannot be happiness. To practice this with your own emotions and thoughts, you can say to them in your head or out loud, “I see you [insert feeling or sensation] and I will take good care of you.” Once when I tried this, I noticed how this anger I was holding onto began to melt into sadness which eventually tired itself out with crying and dissolved away, leaving me with a greater sense of peace. 

The Everyday Practice of Gratitude

Finally, practicing gratitude is a great way to embrace experiences and to acknowledge how you’ve grown from them or what they’ve taught you. A good place to start is simply on your mat. For example, when arriving at yoga class, you can thank yourself for showing up. That itself is an accomplishment! At the end of class, you could thank your body for allowing you to move and sweat. You could also thank your teacher for making this class possible and whatever other forces allowed you to be there today – your job, your friend who brought you along, the construction workers who built the studio, the people who take care of Sui Yoga so that it is always peaceful and clean, the garment workers who made your yoga clothes… Perhaps with gratitude, you will find that at any point in your personal growth, you are arriving at a wonderful place.

Cultivating Compassion through Yoga

As we learned last month in our exploration of emotional freedom, the heart and anahata chakra are centers for accessing more forgiveness and compassion. One way of tuning into and balancing these regions are through heart-opening poses like camel pose or ustrasana, standing star pose utthita tadasana, or one of my favorites, fish pose, also known as matsyasana. Sui Sun Moon classes are a great opportunity to practice these poses and to find balance between action and acceptance. Next week, we will build upon these skills for transformation and discuss practices for building the strength and resilience needed to continue growing.

August is the perfect time to see the lotus flowers in bloom at the New York Botanical Garden or Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Photos of the NYBG by Zoe Chan.