A chain reaction of kindness

It’s that time of year, where we turn to rest, spend quality time with friends and family, reflect on the year just passed and seek to deliver kindness to our community; through gifts, through the connections we make, through resolutions for a new year. It’s a time for compassion and a time of reflection. Classic Christmas tales abound where characters learn lessons about who they are and who they love, take a chance on second chances and step into the kindest version of themselves, finding peace and joy, and contentment in the moment. 

It’s the perfect time to be writing about the yogic principle of Ahimsa, which translates roughly as compassion, or non-violence. It is the very first of Patanjali’s ‘yamas’ - a set of ethical guidelines offered to help us conduct ourselves in the world around us. Remembering that yoga is not just the physical practice; it’s the philosophy and lifestyle elements that surround and support our practice: when we think of Ahimsa, we can look at how we are being compassionate with ourselves and those we connect with as well as in our practice. Ahimsa invites us to live and let live - to be tolerant of others and respectful of each person’s unique view on the world. 

Ahimsa is a conscious choice. We can choose kindness or we can choose to respond in another way. Sometimes if we are having a bad day - or are tired or hungry, finding our energy low - when we meet the frustrations in our lives, we can meet them with anger or irritation. It is an easy and reactive trap to fall into and we are all understandably going to have days when this is how we show up. Life is tricky and can provide us with really tough obstacles to deal with. I’m sure we can all think of times when we’ve not been the best version of ourselves in a time of personal conflict. Where Ahimsa can help guide us is to remind us that we are in control of our own responses and reactions. If we are having a bad day and our frustrations show up to affect someone else’s day, we may well be negatively impacting someone else. If we choose to put compassion first, no matter what we are going through, we can start a chain reaction of kindness. If ever there was a time to make such a thing happen, surely Christmas is the perfect point to try.

How does Ahimsa show up in our yoga practice?

Yoga helps us to tap into our bodies on a deeper level. When we are truly listening to our bodies and are in tune with our breath, our minds, our movements; our yoga practice can be a moving meditation in tune with what we need as we show up on our mats. This is the ideal, and this is ahimsa in practice. But so often when we arrive at our mats we are letting something else guide us; the ego. Thinking about an asana we are trying to perfect, or perhaps focusing on progress we made in a previous class and wanting to build on that. When the ego is part of our practice we can push our bodies in a non-compassionate way; perhaps not listening to tired aches and pains, or maybe allowing our minds to be angry if our bodies aren’t moving in the way that we desire in our ego.

Sometimes we need to accept that what the body needs, what the mind needs and possibly what the spirit needs is something intuitive, something kinder than our fast paced society expects of us. I’ve taught yoga classes where students try to do the very hardest version of every pose every time because otherwise they feel as if they are not pushing themselves enough. Yet yoga doesn’t ask us to push ourselves - this is something we create in our own minds. Who cares if the person next to you can hold a pose for longer or can bind in a shape that you can’t? Your yoga practice is yours and yours alone  - and when you view it through the lens of compassion for yourself and treating your body as a good friend who should practice for what they need, then you can relax into it and truly allow ahimsa in.

Loving kindness

In my classes in the past couple of weeks I have been closing them by offering the metta meditation, also known as the loving kindness meditation. It is drawn from the Buddhist tradition and I think it provides the perfect blueprint for how we can approach compassion.

The metta meditation offers a series of compassionate statements and as it builds it offers these statements out to a wider and wider circle of people.

It begins, as love should begin, with the statements directed at yourself. As we often find with tenets of goodwill; before we can give out to others we first must ensure we ourselves have enough reserves to be able to do so. The saying ‘you can’t give from an empty cup’ applies here and before we can broadcast compassion outwardly, we first need to have given loving kindness to ourselves. We stay here, for a while, allowing the loving kindness messages to sink into our being and be absorbed, and then we build outwards.

Next layer is to offer loving kindness to someone or a group of people you hold dear. Taking that warmth and love and offering it in your mind to those who are most special to you; nearest family, best friends, partners, lovers, maybe even pets! This might be the group you feel most drawn to begin with, tempted to skip  yourself in the process, but remember that this group will benefit most from receiving loving kindness from someone who has bountiful resources to give; you, having ensured you have taken the time for self love first.

We can offer a layer of metta meditation to those we may not often think of but who are within our sphere. Perhaps the postie who you smile at when they drop the letter through your door but may not think of otherwise, or a friendly shop clerk who made you laugh with their chat at the till. Expanding our thought of who is in our community, who we can spread our loving kindness to only invites it to go further. 

Finally, and the one I find most challenging. We offer our loving kindness to someone we may be in conflict with or someone we struggle to see in a favourable light. If we are arguing with someone or share a different point of view, it can cause tension and disagreement. This is when our loving kindness is both hardest to conjure up and yet most needed. By bringing these people to mind when we are meditating we begin to train ourselves for meeting them with compassion in the real world. For those times when we are struggling and might react with anger, the metta meditation can help us to visualise what it feels like to offer these people loving kindness, and perhaps help to create it in the world we live in.

You will see as the meditation goes on why I see this as a blueprint for compassion. It builds the way we need to exercise our compassion muscle - how easy it is to shower loving kindness on those we hold dearest. How much of a struggle it is to give such a precious resource to those we are in conflict with. But to go through the metta meditation, to live a life of boundless compassion, to try to put our best foot forward, even when we have our backs against the wall, is how we can step into the chain reaction of kindness.

With festive wishes and love for the season of joy.

Xx

• This month I’m reading… ‘When the body says no’, by Gabor Mate. A fascinating read on the impact of stress on our bodies.

• This month I’m listening to… Christmas carols on repeat. I’m particularly taken with Il Divo’s beautiful version of ‘O Holy Night’.