“If
you don’t go within, you go without.”
From
‘Conversations With God’ by Neale Donald Walsch
“God
is in every breath.”
It’s remarkable how I can completely
miss the obvious. I astound myself
sometimes, I really do. I’d bypass the
point even if my life depended on it.
Take breathing, for instance...
The first thing I learned in yoga
was how to breathe properly. And the
first thing I forgot was how to breathe properly. Phenomenal, isn’t it, what an autistic mind
can misplace when left to its own devices?
And that, unfortunately, is what I was left to – to try to learn yoga by
myself, with only the aid of a book for me to work through and attempt to
understand, and no-one to keep reminding me of the salient points: like the
need to focus on the breath.
So of course, once I’d read the
section on breathing, I promptly forgot most of it in my excitement and
impatience to move on to what I viewed as the REALLY important bits – the
asanas (that’s postures or poses to you non-yogis). Plus, I probably knew that trying to rein in my
mind to pay attention to what I was doing was going to be a bugger, so I
conveniently consigned that part to the ‘inconsequential’ pile, possibly to be
attempted at a later date – when I was able to focus better. Yes, I imagined that simply doing yoga
postures, without specifically practicing concentrating on the breath or on
what my body was doing, would somehow miraculously teach me how to focus -
whilst I continued to let my mind wander wherever it wanted. This is what I call the autistic version of
multi-tasking: I appear to be able to do two things simultaneously, but one of
them is suffering badly from a lack of attention – and it isn’t the thinking.
At this point in the proceedings
(just over nine years ago) I hadn’t yet discovered that I was autistic, or had
ADHD to explain the decided lack of anything resembling an attention span. But when I did find out, I came to the
erroneous conclusion that this explained why I hadn’t been able to attain any
measure of control over my mind (thereby completely circumventing the fact that
I actually hadn’t tried very hard either, it being excruciating, like trying to
keep a jack in a box when the lid’s broken); and that the book was written for
non-autistics, so this definitely meant that I was not going to be able to do
it at all, thus letting me off the hook.
I thought.
The funny thing is that once I
started to progress in my yoga practice, I found myself wanting to be able to
attain what was promised in my books, which drove me to make time to include
the practice of breathing and meditation techniques. And, remarkably enough, they started to
work. I actually found myself able to
sit still and do nothing, other than breathe and try to focus, for longer than
thirty seconds. Okay, so my mind was
still rampantly running amok, but it was no longer dictating what my body
should do – a bit like sitting still in the middle of a war-zone, with people
yelling at me that I should move out of the way. Not a lot of peace, but I wasn’t going to
shift until I decided it was time.
And then I discovered that, even
though I still couldn’t seem to control my mind, which insisted on attaching
itself to every thought that came my way (the opposite to what you’re supposed
to do, which is to let the thoughts flow in and out – totally not autistic!), I
felt calmer, and my mind was quieter: it was like someone had finally managed
to find the volume control and turn the noise down. I wasn’t reacting to every thought that
entered my head, trying to analyse and talk myself out of having them. It had finally clicked that the moment I
engaged in any way with my thinking, was the moment when my mind had won the
battle to get my attention, thereby diverting it away from what I was supposed
to be doing, what was really important – focusing on the breath, and being in
the present.
The irony is that my best friend has
been telling me this for years, with regard to the rest of my life. It’s one of a number of phrases she has to
keep repeating to me, parrot-fashion, until I get the meaning. “Stop analysing, stick to the plan, focus on
what you’re supposed to be DOING, and ignore what you’re THINKING and it’ll go
away.” Unfortunately, I was always too
busy listening to what my mind had to say about it all, and analysing what
she’d said, to actually follow her advice.
And I basically did the same when it
came to reading my yoga book which, coincidentally (or not), contained almost
the exact same advice: “Just enjoy what you are doing, give it your full attention,
stay present in what you are working on, and keep focusing on the breath ...”;
and: “The mind loves to wander to the past or the future; try and stay in the
present moment when you practice. Keep
the mind on the breath, observing what it’s doing and how it feels. By doing this the mind stays in the now.”;
and one more time, just in case you missed the point (which I did, repeatedly):
“Thoughts will begin to slow down and you will find yourself simply observing
their flow, without grasping at them or becoming attached to any of them.”
So, what is it that is so special
about the breath? Well, in yoga they
consider it to be the essence of existence, so that when you inhale you not
only take in oxygen, but the energy of life, out of which everything in the
universe (including us) is made. Another
name for it is God, which I personally prefer: it’s a lot less of an abstract
concept to have to deal with, especially when it comes to the question of
talking to It. “Good morning, energy,
please help me stick to my plan today,” would make me feel rather as if I were
talking to nothing in particular,just a lot of air – or myself. Whereas the word God denotes that I am
talking to a friend.
I also find it amazingly symbolic
that in the Bible it tells of how when God created man, He breathed life into
him. Yep, breathing is probably the most
effective way of connecting with God (or your spirit, soul, or higher Self,
whatever you want to call it), and it doesn’t cost a thing. You just have to learn to slow down in order
to be able to listen, not just talk, otherwise it’s like asking someone for
directions to somewhere, and then walking off before they get the chance to
tell them to you; which is the kind of relationship I have frequently had with
Him. Fortunately She’s never taken the
hump and walked off when I’ve returned to talk at Her.
When you breathe deeply, into your
tummy, you slow down the breath, and when it slows down the mind slows down
too. And if you practice enough you can
actually shut it up completely (for a while, anyway): it’s almost as if it gets
bored when it’s not being listened to.
But you have to practice A LOT – this thing, this mind with its plethora
of thoughts, is persistent, patient, and has had a great deal of practice at
running the show: and it requires the exact same attributes in order to take
back control. Attributes with which an
obsessive/compulsive autistic, with ADHD, is not exactly naturally
endowed. I can spell them, and I know
how to use them in a sentence, but the Three Ps have left me frequently
perplexed when it comes to applying them in my life.
Which is why it’s only taken me just
over nine years to work out that I’ve been missing a bit in my yoga practice. That it just happens to be the essential bit
is par for the course for me. And the
final irony is that the word ‘yoga’ actually means ‘to unite, combine, yoke’,
which translates to meaning that the body, mind, and soul all end up working in
unison through the practice of yoga.
Mine have all been doing what they always do, going their separate ways,
whilst I have questioned whether yoga is really as effective as I’ve read that
it is supposed to be. After all, it’s
only been going for about three thousand years!
