The mat-effect

Friday is my Yoga Day. I plan my week around it and only ever make appointments for Friday mornings if they can’t be avoided. It’s both, discipline and pleasure. If I don’t put time aside for something that’s good for me, it often just won’t happen.

Yoga has definitely helped me staying fit and healthy over the years. I can’t prove it, but I'm convinced I would not have had my two children without it. But there is even more to this routine, which I think is a useful metaphor for True North and our inner guidance system. I mainly go for the mat-effect. I try to get there early to grab my favourite spot – front row, far left – with a mirror at the front and a mirror at my side. What happens here has intrigued me for a while, so I will try to put it into words.

I set myself up and then go blank. Completely still. Not the kind of ‘forced still’ that I experience every time I try to meditate. I’m on the mat and I go blank, switched off, no matter what’s been going on in my life. Now, I’m not as bendy or strong as I used to be, and my postures are very likely not front row material. But I genuinely don’t care. I’m here for me. This is my time to check in with myself: my breathing, where my hips are, what angle my knees take, if my arms are in one line, my breathing, hips, knees, shoulders, arms. It’s very limited and extremely focussed attention, with no room for anything else.

Everything that pops into my head is instantly put on hold. I don’t even check. I’m not comparing myself with others or with what I used to be able to do. I don’t ask questions like, why my arms or shoulders feel stiffer than I would like them to. I notice, I correct, breathe into tension, move on to the next. Now, this is 75 minutes a week and in no way representative for my general level of awareness, but it highlights something powerful. Paying attention to my breathing, sending breath to areas in my body that feel tight or sore, helps melting tension away. I’m sure you’ve experienced that one way or another. This is a practice I benefit from for the rest of the week. It gives me the confidence that breathing and micro aligning can have a massive effect in the long run. Every time I do, I manage to go deeper, stretch further, hold balance longer.

Navigating life looks very similar to me these days. I learned something extremely powerful. In our wellbeing, that state of True North, which I’m zooming into with this newsletter, you and I have natural capacities that help us deal with anything: We have clarity, focus, safety, balance, creativity, out of the box thinking and a strong connection with other people. So, every time I don’t feel those, in fact I feel tension, or judgement, or stress, or urgency, or overwhelm – I now know that my mind is moving away from True North. For me today, this is the same as looking into those mirrors during my yoga class, where I simply remember to breathe and to gently re-align my posture. In everyday life, it looks like this: I feel these tense feelings, and I remember to pause and check in with myself. Where and why have I attributed my inner calm and security to things outside of me, in this moment? I literally asked myself: “Hold on, what is going on right now?”

I know, there is no deadline that has the power to make me feel stressed, unless I make the delivery on deadline into a thing about me. You may say, yeah but there are other people setting deadlines and expectations. True, but the deadline still has no power, apart from the one I give it, the consequences I attribute to not meeting it. There is no other person that can make me upset or feel small, unless I make their opinion or behaviour a truth about me. There is no to-do list, that has the power to overwhelm me, unless I believe that my worth is attached to my output. And I know that 100% of what I’m feeling is a product of my own system. No exception. So, the biggest point of leverage is my relationship to any of the things that seem to dictate how I feel.

Knowing this does not prevent me from falling for it, again and again. Hence the pause. It almost always looks like the world out there has me in its grip. But every time I remember to breathe and align my postures in yoga, they get better, not perfect but a lot more controlled, with agency and grace. It is the same for ‘managing’ my mind.

A deadline approached from True North provides focus, not dread. A to-do list looked at from True North gives clarity, priorities and structure, not overwhelm. A person lashing out at you unfairly, looks like someone who might struggle with stress themselves, rather than the monster colleague or boss who always puts you down.

So, I am not talking big change and massive self-improvement. I’m talking micro-alignments that have the potential to lead you to entirely different worlds of resources to operate from. Does that sound cool? Tell me about your experience with this.