Author: asianjasmineyoga

“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life” – Rumi

It was 2010, the year I had to spent my first winter in Cambridge. I had spent winters in other countries before, but only for a short period of time, and never exceeding three months. It was somewhat a shock to the system to find out what it really means to live through an entire winter. See, where I come from, every day the sun rises at nearly the same time and also sets at the same time. Every day, there are only two possibilities of how the weather might turn out – rain or no rain. Even if it rains, the temperature will not go down below 26 degrees. And the sun will always come out, every day, regardless.

So, coming across seasonal changes, observing how days can stretch endlessly in summer and how compressed they can feel in winter, was a big change for my perceptual world. I have nothing against long summer days, although I found it very hard to go to sleep when it was still light outside – it seems that in the presence of sunlight my body still wanted to be active. It was the same in winter –  as soon as it would start getting dark, my body would immediately feel incredibly lethargic. I found it very difficult to find motivation and energy, and hey, it is coming from someone whose battery had never previously run out. At times, when it was particularly overcast, I found even getting out of bed hard work. I was easily irritated, mostly with myself. And more often than not, I felt no desire to do anything. I felt drained, a feeling which I had never experienced before.

That winter, I went to see my GP. Being asthmatic, I had to see a specialist and in addition have my regular flu jabs. Then I talked to the nurse about my lack of energy and difficulties getting up. She then told me about SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) – and suddenly things started making sense. The lack of light especially affects people with darker skin like mine, as well as those used to living with a lot of sun. I realised there was so much more I had to learn.

That winter, I learned to count my stars to overcome the tiredness on those days when I couldn’t get out of bed. Find one reason to get out of the house, even to just go for a walk, but more often the journey took me to a yoga class. The first step is always the hardest, but I always came back feeling better, no matter how cold or dark it was outside. Every time I went out, I knew I was getting better as it would take me less and less time to follow through with my  intention.

Now, during a transitional time like this, I know the demon I am facing. I know it will be hard for me to get out of bed on a particularly grey day, and I know the first step is always the most difficult. When such a moment comes, I will stop finding 1001 reasons to complain about, and instead focus on a single task for the day, then get up and start doing it while counting my stars; feeling the subtle movements in my toes, fingers, eyes, nostrils or finding some silly thing just to take my mind off complaining. Before I know it, usually, the day has gone by without me even coming close to the feeling I first experienced in 2010.

I have made a habit of writing down tasks I need to accomplish on a daily basis, thus cementing my intention in the morning. Today’s intention is to share these thoughts with you. My battle with SAD, I am still fighting…

“I will write peace in your wings, and fly you all over the world” – Sadako Sasaki

Over a decade ago, stepping out of an airplane at Kansai Airport, Osaka, I felt like I’d stepped into a different world. Little did I know that those few months would change the way I perceive the world.

In Japan, the present time of technology intertwines with the history of magnificent culture, where the red round pillars in shrines and pagodas adorned with kitsune (magical fox) and buddhas; the beautiful ochre-red autumn flows into the flaky whiteness of winter (my first ever winter and my first snow)… The Shinto rituals are practiced, however often without much acknowledgement. Shinto – originated and written using two Kanji characters: Shen and Dao, is often associated with the Buddhist Dao/Tao philosophy, although much earlier in history they existed as separate concepts.

As someone who loves understanding the ways in which societies express their belief and culture systems through the medium of language and the arts, I was completely absorbed in this intriguing phenomenon. I was astonished by the way the Japanese seemed to embrace polar opposites, using them to enrich their culture rather than abandoning them in conflict. The intricate layers of understanding co-exist harmoniously to accentuate each other. The understanding that to be in the light, we have to experience the dark, to be in high spirits we have to experience feeling down, in order to see the white we have to find our way through the black. The yin and yang, the harmonious balance. The understanding that absolute beauty is not the destination but rather the journey, i.e. the effort we put into the process of finding balance.

Sometimes in life, we reach a junction which becomes one of the major turning points, shaping our personality. Mine was the time I spent in Osaka. For the first time, I learned to follow my heart. The price I paid for it was to turn my world upside down and throw away  EVERYTHING I knew previously. Then I realized I knew nothing, I had no-one except myself. The advantage of being ‘upside down’ was knowing that the only way out of it was up. Nothing will get worse, I just needed patience and perseverance. In Dao “pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” So after I finished grieving over my pain, I chose not to suffer any more. On my birthday that year, I wrote a quote from Sadako Sasaki in my diary, made a promise to myself, and took flight:

“I will write peace in your wings, and fly you all over the world.”

I was learning to follow my heart, to consciously choose not to suffer despite any pain coming my way. Accepting events lightly and patiently. Telling myself that any pain will eventually subside as long as I choose not to get attached to the suffering. Taking responsibility for creating my own happiness. Those were (and are) the greatest and hardest lessons I have ever learnt, and I am still learning them. Writing the words of peace and happiness over and over again in my heart and in my wings. The practise requires a lot of strength, perseverance, and integrity. Simply because “happiness is a choice, not a result. It lies in our own hands, we create it. It is not given by others”.

“In order to be myself, first I had to destroy what I was telling myself I had to become.” 

There are always at least four corners to a room, two sides of a story, three dimensional perspectives, but from where we are standing, we can only see part of it. It takes courage, an open mind and an open heart to receive the possibilities, that maybe – just maybe, other stories, sides, or perspectives exist. Maybe, if we have a little courage to twist ourselves, our view, there will be another way of seeing. From where we are standing, with our limited vision, there is always something hidden, whether we realise it or not. Hence it is necessary that once in a while, we reset our perspective. Turn around and look towards our blind spot. Whether it is ‘in line’ with whatever side, story, or perspective we currently hold, is another matter.

We are often so fixated on clinging to our story, side or perspective as the only one there is. The righteous one. By doing so, not only we miss the oportunity to broaden our horizons, but we also compress our heart into a small compact space enclosed by walls. The beauty of being human is our ability to use imagination and to enjoy a free will. So why don’t we let ourselves imagine beyond our imagination? Once we stop using our imagination, stop questioning, stop looking beyond the horizon – we stop growing.

At one point in my life I thought there was only one way to believe, the way my ancestors believed. No questions needed asking, no questions were even allowed to be asked. I thought that was the only way, and that everyone lived like that. One good friend once asked me some probing questions which I hadn’t dared formulate, let alone ask myself. But her questions echoed in my mind for a long time, bouncing back with more and more questions. Then I started seeing different points of view, and the wall I so studiously built around my life expereiences started coming apart. In the end it completely collapsed. My friend’s questions made me question myself – was my way really the only way, the only possibility? The denials I had gone through soon after, the anger of partying with something I had held so dear for so long, and which evidently no longer served me… Knowledge is akin to sand – it is impossible to hold on to. I remember my bitterness, looking out from beyond my crumbling walls, distorted corners. A new exciting possibility to explore, which had been there all along, but blinded as I was by the wall of my own making I could not see it before. So I stepped out, I searched, I investigated. Since then, I have not stopped; since then I am always coming out my comfort zone, constructing new perspectives, knowing that one day I might deconstruct them and reconstruct something else altogether.

There is so much we still don’t know, and sometimes we may not want to, but by expanding our ability to see in a different way, we might find something new, something which may not necessarily be in line with our current thinking. This new perspective will scare us, threaten our previous beliefs, shake our very foundation, make us indignant, uncomfortable, angry, offended… But don’t be in a rush to reject it. Explore the possibilities. See it in different way. Wring out your mind. Open your heart. Listen carefully, see beyond the obvious, let it rest in your heart, let the echo bounce back. Does anything resonate with you? If the answer is yes, even in the slightest degree, isn’t the idea worth investigating further before we get fixated again on one option?  There is nothing certain in life, except birth and death, so why do we assign certainty to something that plainly isn’t so?

Once we can see beyond our fixated view and realise that a new outlook might demolish our current beliefs, don’t give up on questioning it, investigating it.

The learning curve has just begun. Keep exploring the possibilities, the extremities. You might experience confusion, anger, agitation, disbelief – but the journey of our human knowledge always goes through phases which might be described as ‘thesis – antithesis – synthesis’, in other words chaos and order. So stay with it, keep moving forward and keep your mind and heart open – there is no other way to keep learning than by deconstructing and reconstructions our knowledge. As life should be, a constant learning curve. After all, that is what has made us able to progress this far in this Earth, the constant of constructing – deconstructing – reconstructing. To find a new truth, first we have to be ready to question the old truth.

The theme of this month will be twisting, observing and questioning our perspective and ability to see in different way. Hopefully, we will then be able to reconstruct our views.