A simple question and one that at certain times can be bloody annoying. We all know what it’s like to have the adorable 4 year old niece/nephew come to stay and ask “why...why...but why????” As adults we get proper annoyed by it and make up some shit to brush them off after a while when we can no longer answer the questions. This kind of questioning is how Socrates made his name in Ancient Greece....by annoying the shit out of anyone close to him 🤪. The interesting thing is that if we aim that question at ourselves, often enough we can really begin to dig down through the weeds of our insecurities and start getting to the roots of some of the issues we may be facing.
Many philosophers have discussed that idea that our base emotions are that of fear and love/pleasure. The myriad of possible thoughts/feeling are born out of one of these two things. A place of love or a place of fear. I wanna look at this place of fear a bit more.
I was discussing with some students the other day about practicing yoga at home. Their response was, “well I can’t do it at home, there are to many distractions”. To which I replied, “me too, my dogs constantly come and join in and push me over and climb on me and bark, but I still do it, I just ignore it”. The question i put to them was WHY do you think you can’t do it? Do you even think that you can’t do it or are the noises/kids just an excuse to not? (We all know we can be lazy at times) Do you say that you want to do “in person” classes as an excuse to get away from the family/kids? To have some personal space, as it’s the only way you can get some quiet? Again my question is why? The world is a big, noisy place with so so so many distractions. Phones/tv/traffic/work/family’s etc, one of the main purposes of a yoga practice (to me) is to give us the tools to deal with this stuff, with the distractions, not just as an escape for 60 minutes. When you are flat out at work (as I used to be as an A&E nurse) you can’t just go find a quiet corner to relax in, to get away from the annoying people shouting at you...this is your practice, at this point you can again maybe ask that question of WHY??? WHY DID I NOT GET BETTER AT DOING THIS SHIT UNDER SOME KINDA PRESSURE!!!!! Ask your self why you didn’t use your yoga to adapt to your current stresses rather than run away!!!
It could Be that you feel that at the heart of it, maybe you’re not “good enough” yet (what ever the hell that even means) and that you actually like the in person direction?!? Is it a deep knowing that actually you’re just lazy and that you can use the distractions as a excuse to not do it? If so WHY? Is it the fact that actually the idea of just being in stillness on your own with out a group around you makes you feel uncomfortable?? Again if so WHY?? What is the fear that is arising?? So so often with this stuff we end up digging deeper and deeper and we have to be brutally honest with ourselves to truly answer these questions (again we would prefer to tell ourselves to fuck off like we do to our niece/nephew when they come to stay and start with the awkward questions...we all tell our 4 year old relatives to fuck off yeah 🤣🤣🤣)
So what is it you are avoiding? Who are you not confronting and standing up to? What boundaries are you not putting up and sticking to?? Ask your self WHY? Is it because the idea of confrontation scares you? This is so often the case (and definitely with me) but again WHY, why are we scared to actually say what we honestly believe? Especially if we can say it from a place of love, that place of wanting to be happy in ourselves and for the other person to be happy too and trying not to react to a situation and speak from a place of fear and that then turns to frustration/anger.
A personal experience of this was jen came down stairs the other day and said to me in a pretty gentle way, can I not put her clothes away anymore because she can’t ever find them...seems a pretty simple and easy request that shouldn’t get my hackles up. But because I was trying to be helpful and kinda saw it as her being ungrateful I got defensive and started blaming her weird way of putting her clothes away. She then obviously started saying that she wasn’t trying to be a dick but just wants to know where her skirt is when she wants to wear it. I then basically went, OK I WONT PUT THEM AWAY...and left with a tension in the air (fucking shit that you get wound up about sometimes ay haha) I then thought about my reaction and how that stemmed from a place of fear. Fear that I wasn’t able to help jen out more, fear that I wasn’t making her life easier but actually harder. With that I went back and apologised and cleared the air. Stupid minor things that you bicker about when your married etc but without an eye on WHY I was reacting like that, it would have hung about in the air for much longer.
WHY? 3 simple letters and perhaps the most important and probing question you can ever ask yourself. Next time you are allowing your thoughts/emotions/reactions to a situation take the lead begin to ask yourself WHY, it might just be the start of a beautiful journey in towards your truest self