Patience can be a trickster of a thing. We call it a lofty virtue as though it's something we can only ever aspire to. We know that it's something worth cultivating and yet we give it less attention or time than the things we and society convinces us we have to be doing all the time.
Conditioned as most of are to think our worth lies in all that we do, measuring that worth in the context of capitalism, ableism and consumerism, we put patience and pausing on the back-burner, telling ourselves we'll stop and give ourselves a break when things slow down.
This is the paradox at the heart of the practice. Of life, of Yoga, of meditation. We know it's true that less haste and more ease will bring the peace we crave, the freedom from mind pain and the cessation of physical tension. And yet we struggle to do the right thing, where right is not determined by those external agendas or demands of organisations, bosses or societal pressures. Rather, what we know and feel to be right for the sake of of being well in body, mind, heart, spirit and community.
Be, not do. Ease, not angst. Peace, not pain. Only these are not binary opposites, they are all complementary, interconnected forces whereby one wouldn't exist even as a possibility were it not for the other.
Can we learn to exist within this paradox? To find the centre ground rather than be dragged to either side of it? And when we do get pulled to either extreme, can we develop the inner wisdom and resources to bring us back to steady ground? Can we keep coming back to rest with the reality of life's edginess, as the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron describes it?
These are the lessons of Yoga as a holistic mind-body-spirit system that can help us learn how to Be. To find a way to make the right choice, to give ourselves time, to learn to feel into our hearts, to rest with our wild minds. How, you ask, can we cultivate this magic virtue of patience?
My advice would be to take it easy, start small, be kind to yourself, and accept that it won't be easy, that in fact you'll struggle and flounder and do battle with it, but the rewards will add up and the little pockets of ease, will balance out the edginess. And in time, you might even come to enjoy it so much that it becomes more of your practice than the rush of life.
And even when it's not so enjoyable, you'll be able to distance yourself from the edginess as opposed to be consumed by it, to more readily give yourself a break, even if for five minutes, to pause, breathe, be still and rest. And even when you do get dragged down, which will happen, because we're human, you'll have the patience and kindness to start over, to recommit, to try again - to "create the poetry of your life with toughness and determination", as one of my favourite writers, Deng Min-Dao says.
This is how I've come to feel about Yin Yoga. And savasana. And sitting meditation. Practices that I used to struggle so hard with - ironically, there's the paradox, battling with my resistance to be still. I still do sometimes. A lot. Only now, my attitude towards myself, and my commitment to the practice arises out of a felt sense of the benefits of feeling more, doing less, creating ease, resisting or at least allowing agitation without reaction.