Choosing the moderate path
Sore but happy - this is a picture of me after my first run in two months. I love running and it has always been a regular part of my life, but in the past two months I’ve had joint pain that has made running uncomfortable to the point of needing to step back and take a break from it. One of the lesser known symptoms of menopause is joint pain. Mine started in my left knee, and I could tell the joint was inflamed when I went for runs. I reduced the number of runs I was doing (at that time, back in 2020, around 3 a week) and soon found that with HRT and this more moderate approach, I was able to maintain my running at a lesser frequency. But the joy of the menopause hormone rollercoaster is that things can flare back up. This year I found not just my knee pain flaring but I was also being woken in the middle of the night with a throbbing toe joint from the wear and tear of going about my day.
Then a month ago the pain moved up to my hip and I realised that I needed to take stock of my physical condition and reset what my moderate approach was. Thankfully I was able to continue my yoga practice as the low impact of it didn’t trigger my symptoms, in fact my yin practice worked to relieve them. But I knew that had I continued running, when I was now in pain not just during my run but for a couple of days afterwards, I would have ended up doing long term damage to my body. Taking a temporary break from running and investigating how to manage my symptoms felt like the right course of action, even though I was desperately missing that buzz and freedom I would get from my run.
Why am I talking about running in a yoga blog?! Well, if you’ve been following my blog series on Patanjali’s Yamas and Niyamas - yogic principles that offer us a blueprint by which to lead our lives - you’ll know that for me, yoga goes beyond the mat and into the lifestyle lessons we can learn when we have a dedicated practice.
I’ve covered three of Patanjali’s yamas in my blog series so far -
And this blog is exploring the fourth of Patanjali’s five yamas - Brahmacharya.
“Brahmacharya- pratishthanam virya-labneh
Strength and vitality comes to those who use their energy for the greatest good”
This is my preferred translation of the fourth of Patanjali’s yamas - Brahmacharya. When just translating the yama it roughly translates to non-excess or abstinence, but when translated in the full sutra from Patanjali’s work, we can see that in context, the ‘why’ behind this is about using our energy in the right way. For me this encompasses more than just being abstinent in bad habits, it’s also about putting energy into the good habits to reap the rewards. In my last blog I talked about the importance of balance in a world of busyness - the mission statement of Flow with Fi yoga. It feels fitting that the next yama I explore is Brahmacharya, which serves as a tool to help us enact this balance in our lives.
With my running, it was important for me to use my energy in the right way in order to recover my joints to future proof this habit. I know running benefits me; I love feeling the heat course through my body and my lungs opening to the fresh air to help push me up a hill. I love the beat of my feet on the ground and the feeling of freedom when it’s just my body and nature, creating energy. I also know it’s important for my mental and physical wellbeing to keep active and do regular exercise. My menopause diagnosis brought with it a diagnosis of Osteopenia, and so impact exercise that helps me build bone density is crucial.
As someone who has an active lifestyle and teaches a physical practice for a job, it felt really hard for me to step away from running for the time it would take to recover, which was actually longer than I anticipated. But ultimately, I wanted strength and vitality, and I knew my energy would be used in this way only through the path of moderate action. To push myself despite my pain would lead to long term injury. To go the other route and assume that I would need to give up running because my joints hurt would lead me to a more sedentary lifestyle that would ultimately cost me my vitality. The moderate middle route of stopping and taking stock, although a challenge for me, was the right one. I had to ignore my fitness levels dipping, and find other ways to move my body whilst I set about fixing the root cause.
Running is the example I’ve chosen to use as it’s personal to me and seemed timely and relevant as today was my first run back. But the lessons of seeking the path of moderation chime across many areas. For me, it works two fold. Number one is using energy in the right way, which I would equate to building good habits. Number two is reducing activities that use our energy in the wrong way, which I would equate to limiting bad habits. When we take these two approaches in balance, we allow ourselves to choose how we apply ourselves and to what, in order to use the talents and time we have in the best possible way.
Around seven years ago, I got hooked on bullet journalling. If this is something that is new to you, bullet journalling is a methodology that takes a daily journalling practice and overlays some efficiency tools to help to keep you on track with your big goals. First of all, you set up your goals for the year. By themselves they will seem enormous, so bullet journalling invites us to chunk them down. What does it look like month by month for me to achieve this goal? We then have our weekly planner, and within that we might have key milestones we need to hit that week to help us get to the goal. And then we set up a daily habit tracker - the things we will do every day to encourage good habits, and limit bad habits. Bullet journalling is essentially Brahmacharya in action. We take a step back and ask ourselves, where do we want to direct our energy this year?
I’ll share one of my examples, which is one I mentioned in a previous blog. I want to spend more time writing this year and direct my energy into that creative outlet. So one of my big goals for the year is a writing target. But a target alone won’t necessarily get me to my goal. I need to consider what else needs setting up. Each month I have a goal to write a yoga blog, something disciplined that acts as a deadline and also moves me towards my writing goal. I also write a monthly yoga newsletter. Both of these move me towards my writing goal. In my weekly planner the deadlines for these are set so I can discipline myself to sit down and write the blog and newsletter for a particular week. And then in my daily habits tracker, I can mark off every day when I sit at my desk and write. Sometimes it’s for my blog or newsletter, but sometimes I just allow myself to pop onto a blank page whatever may be in my mind to allow myself to create without boundaries.
Building good habits in this way allows us to focus on the incremental steps that will help us to succeed on the big picture stage. It’s that element of Brahmacharya of ‘using energy for the greatest good’. When we can reflect on habits that we may wish to limit that may be interrupting our goals, we are fluidly shifting our energy towards our core purpose and what we know we have the potential to achieve. It may not feel like it, but managing habits in this way is taking the moderate path of Brahmacharya.
If I know that watching TV or playing a game is a habit that is starting to take up time when I could be working towards my goal, and these habits are moving out of the moderate space and into dominant space, I would list their reduction in my daily habits tracker to monitor how frequently they interrupt me. Reflecting on this alongside the number of writing days I check off allows me to ensure I have the balance right between things that move me with purpose towards my goal, whilst still allowing time for relaxation and reward in my day to day. This tool of self reflection is a vital one - and it requires us to be completely honest with ourselves. When we discern patterns, cause and effect, we can start to build our route through the middle, the path of moderation, knowing which buttons to press to motivate us, and which barriers take our motivation away.
As we start to get deeper into the Yamas and Niyamas, we start to see overlaps, like a venn diagram of ethics that criss cross and support and reinforce each other. Although there are ten separate principles, they work together and in harmony, helping us to build a lifestyle that invites thoughtfulness and reflection, helping us move forwards in the world in an ethical manner.
In the next blog we’ll be exploring the last of Patanjali’s yamas, Aparigraha, before we move into the niyamas.
This month I’m reading… The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey - which fits perfectly with this blog on using habits to channel our energy in the moderate path.
