New Year, Old Me
I love the feeling of the new year like I love the feeling of starting a brand new journal. It feels like I can start all over, forgetting who I was or what I had written in the previous year or previous journal.
But soon enough, I notice that not much has changed because I notice my old patterns are still there. There’s a word in Yoga that means exactly this, which is samskara ~ the subtle impressions of our past actions.
The more we repeat these samskaras , the more they become ingrained in our body and mind, making it harder to go against the grain. It takes a HUGE dose of introspection, conscious effort, and time…. lots of time…. maybe never-ending.
When I practice Yin Yoga, I can often feel the dissolving of the physical samskaras in my body. Because of the common postural habit/pattern of sitting a lot and accumulating tension in my back, when I hold myself in Shoelace pose targeting my gluteal area and thoracolumbar fascia, I can feel the pattern in my body slowly change. This is very rewarding because I can actually feel the change within the five minutes I’m holding the pose and the feeling of more fluid and free movements once I come out of the pose and this motivates me to repeat the pattern of practicing Yin Yoga.
But then, there’s the samskaras in my body and mind that seem like they’re a few lifetimes deep that they don’t want to budge at all. Especially the kind of patterns that took me a long time to even discover that it was there.
I discovered a little while ago that I have a breathing pattern where I limit my inhale by tensing the left side of my abdominal area, which has a ripple effect through my body that causes major tension in my left shoulder, neck, and jaw. I don’t know where and how I learned this breathing pattern but I can tell it makes me feel anxious and rushed. When I try to consciously take a complete inhale as I relax the left side of my abdominal area, it feels so challenging, so foreign, almost slightly painful. As of now, if I don’t consciously try to breathe in this unfamiliar way, my body will go back to the old pattern of breathing right away. But I can tell even a slight shift in this newer fuller breathing pattern makes me feel a new sense of deep ease and this reward makes me want to stay persistent with this practice.
As I start this new year, I can still feel my old pattern of not being happy with who I am. That feeling like I always want to start a new year or new journal because the old me is not good enough. But when I take a very VERY generous, loving, close look at who I am and how I am after consciously making tiny efforts to shift my mind pattern in the direction I want to be for years and years, I see the reward. The reward seems tiny. That tiny reward is hard to put into words so I won’t even try but it’s enough for me to say, “good job Yvee! Keep practicing!”
So, this year, with my new year’s resolution set and all, I’ll let this new year be a continuation of 2020 and the old me rather than feeling like I want to start brand new.
Sep 2008 me and my Rita