Practice Trusting You

The Practice of Trust, 07/25

July 24, 202514 min read

If I could narrow to one concept the gifts that the science and philosophies of Ayurveda and yoga have given me, it would be the language of compassion.

Having an understanding of the doshas and their subtle energies, the gunas and their interactions with our minds, and Sankhya philosophy’s tenet that we are here to experience allows me to shift judgement to compassion time and again. Instead of flying off the handle in reactivity when I feel slighted, decades of practice have enabled me to find that moment between an event and my reaction to it, and allow that space to grow. 

And boy howdy aren’t there a lot of reasons to feel slighted and sore these days? How many times a day do we need to practice this mindfulness stuff? Well, maybe every moment.

The times that we are in are tricky. I imagine that you are seeing similar things in your classes and your circles of contact as me – that people are in some really rough places. 

There is a man in my client base who beamed at me about 6 months ago to say “Allie, I am one of the 5% who has beaten pancreatic cancer!” Wow!!!!! When his wife told me through tears that they have found another mass entangled in his pancreatic artery, I felt like she had donkey-kicked me in the gut. I really like this man. He is a light in the world. I walked away feeling all of the feels and how my lesson plan could shift to meet her needs, only to be flagged down by another woman in the corner. “Allie I need to leave my phone on vibrate because my mum is in the hospital and we are really scared.”

This was my Restorative Thursday class which is always full with a waiting list. On this particular Thursday that waiting list was desperate enough to have sent me various emails pleading for space. All I could feel was how many people needed to create some space between events and reactions. They just needed space and I could not accommodate them. Honestly, I felt like I was walking through a carwash without a car. Stories slapping me in the face and hoses shooting at me. 

I believe our only job as yoga teachers is to create and hold space for our clients to be able to digest whatever is going on in their lives through asana and pranayama. I don’t believe that I am there to heal anyone. Healing is the job of the individual. However, I care deeply for my clients and their stories are what craft my lesson plans. I weave my plans while they tell me about their sore hips or their dying mums or husbands. 

My main element is water which means that I am a binder. I bring people together and together we move where we need to move. The water element is all about relationships, which is why we wear wedding bands on our water fingers – 4th. Without connection, aka relationship, I am lost.

The other part of me that matters in this story is my use of the spider archetype. Spiders apparently process and think while they are weaving their webs. I have no idea how scientists know this but I love it too much to question it. I form lesson plans by feeling the climate of the room and weaving the stories together. I think while I weave. I can do this because of decades of forming lesson plans that were far more thought out and structured. I pull from an archive of sequences. Now I am able to follow the strands and trust where they are taking us.

You likely know how much I love to explore fascia – a web of connective tissue in our body that holds our spidey senses ! I believe wholeheartedly that we are all connected by Indra’s web, a cosmic structure that looks a lot like fascia if the cosmos were a body. Without connection, I am lost.

When a group of people come into the studio and online (because I still do hybrid classes), I feel us gathering into a larger web with our individual webs. And in the gathering, we are attempting to bring harmony to that web. My job is to hold the web steady and weave connections between and within us. My clients’ job is to listen to the stories they have walked in holding and digest and harmonize wherever possible.  My joke-not-joke lately is that I would prefer just to walk into the studio and suggest people move however they want to while I assist them where I can. Who am I to say what you need?

The only way I know to lead a class now is as a co-leading experience, a co-creation. As much as it gives me energy and feels so right, it is also emotionally expensive. I came across the phrase emotionally expensive and it really rang true for me. I can’t do my job authentically without connection but connection means that I am going to hear hard things from people that I respect and care for, and have to process those things in my own way while also dealing with my own hard things!

Over the decades of teaching I have tried to hone the ability to be in connection while also trusting that no one needs me owning their stories or to interfere. There is a distance between my clients and me that didn’t used to be there. Sometimes I miss the intimacy of my early career with smaller classes and fewer boundaries, but I could not have kept that up, nor should I have done so. It wasn’t a healthy practice for me or my clients. Distance allows me to see more people, hold more space, and have energy for my inner circle and self. I am still warm and offer a lot, but I can feel the difference. One of the big differences is that I am healthier in body, mind, and spirit.

Distance comes from my trusting that my clients know how to navigate their lives. Instead of rescuing, I can mirror to them utter confidence in their ability to get through their storms.

Grant and his wife are going to be in a really hard place but my jumping in and swimming with them isn’t helpful. My best gift to them is to have the room ready when they need it and for me to have enough energy to guide them through some asana and pranayam. They are better off with me doing my right work, not meddling in theirs.

Why Sankhya Matters

If we are all born to know ourselves better, for Purusha to know himself better, then wouldn’t it be true that we are all as sacred as the next? Sankhya philosophy assures me that we are all where we are supposed to be, making the mayhem we are supposed to make. 

This understanding negates any reflex I may have to rescue the wife of a client who may be dying. I know that she is going to experience a really terrible time and I also know that she is equipped for it. Her soul knows what it is doing, and so does his. It doesn’t make it any less of a donkey-kick, but it takes away any responsibility I might try to take on. It is none of my business to interfere. My business is to support through creating a safe space.

We are all going to experience the death of many people with whom we share our lives. Our parents should die before us and yet the process is hard. I am of the age where the parents are ‘in the waiting room’ as my mum says. It is a strange limbo. And yet, it is in right order. Harder are the ones who go earlier than we think or age says they should.

Purusha and Prakriti create us so that they and we can experience all of this. We are given sense organs to smell the lilacs, see the sunset, and taste both the sweet and the sour. We are given hands with which to touch and also block. We are here as spiritual beings having a human experience. To be mortal is to set yourself up for a lot of experiences!

By walking with trust in this Divine plan, we conserve energy to be used when we really need it. 

The Gunas 

The Gunas give us a spectrum of humours with which to evolve and respond. When you first wake up in the morning, there will be that tamasic fog of ignorance. In that moment before you face your day, perhaps still in dreamland, there is a sweetness to the quiet. However, living in tamas is a rough road.

Someone high in Kapha (earth and water) might be in denial. They might suggest all is well when in truth they are deeply suffering without taking any remedial actions. Hoarders and very ill co-dependants all fall into this category. The experiences are nearly impossible to access because of the buffer zone around this individual.

If someone high in Pitta (water and fire) is living in tamas, they will be rage filled potentially to the point of violence. This person will blame others and incite or even commit violent acts from this dark place. Hmmm, anyone else feeling flashes of orange hair?

And finally if tamas is reigning for someone high in Vata (air and ether), that person will be in such a place of anxiety and hopelessness that they could self harm to the point of suicide. 

The majority of us reside in the more middle ground place of rajas. When that first hit of caffeine is in your blood and you get to work voraciously on your projects, you have hit rajas. It is a time of high movement and productivity but it can also be a place of deep conflict, drama, and chaos. Remembering that the gunas are on a spectrum, rajas can be rigorous or fairly calm depending on where you are landing.

Kapha folks will feel a resistance to change and might cling to others or to their past, stubbornly digging in their heels.

Pitta folks can swing between anger and passions, addictions and outbursts.

Vata peeps will feel the anxiety and ‘why am I in this room itis’. They might also have roaming pain.

Rajas can lead us to intense reactivity as we try to navigate the boat through the storm. Again, the storm will be less for those moving toward sattwa.

Sattwa is the place we feel when we are in between the event and the reactions. It might be felt in meditation or asana practice initially. I often feel it when in the grips of grief, especially anticipatory. You know that place where every moment is sacred because you know there are not many left?  Where laughter is more sincere for the sweetness of taking nothing for granted?

Sattwa occurs when we move from the far end of the teeter totter (tamas and then rajas) to the very middle, the fulcrum. With one foot at either side of the fulcrum, we can sway with life’s movements instead of being pulled under. It is not easy to find sattwa and even harder to maintain it. The peace is fleeting and yet, with practice, it grows as we let go and surrender to trust.

Why This Matters 

The pandemic took away any sense we had of immortality. To quote the oh-so-amazing Prince, a lot of us partied like it was 1999, until it kept going and the party got stale. We have not recovered from COVID. We have not re-stabilized because we are in a very large state of change and COVID was just one piece of the puzzle. The chaos that we are in is going to continue for many more decades and we have a choice as to whether we sing Prince anthems or find the fulcrum.

I see multiple  DUI convictions every day in our local online paper. I swear more people are smoking cigarettes again. We are witnessing actions that we never imagined would be okay in a civil society. Mental health issues are through the roof, as are physical diseases. People in power who shall remain nameless are reverting back to strategies that we know are outdated and wrong. Good clean coal instead of solar and wind for example? Now that’s a winning idea! Pop the champagne for the next round of partying!

We are in a deeply rajasic and tamasic state. We are up to our eyeballs in reactions and as sensitive folks, we are likely in a deep state of overwhelm. It is just too much to hold steady.

Or is it?

Is it not our job to stand at the fulcrum as an example of what is possible? Whether you are actively teaching or using these teachings in your daily life (or both), is it not upon us to harmonize the web within ourselves as a daily practice? 

Is it not up to us to understand how to navigate a life as a sensitive seeker who likely chooses a line of work that is emotionally expensive? I mean, could you have it any other way? I couldn’t.  

For me, the emotionally expensive work is also the only work that pays my soul. I feel a trust from my clients that I never take for granted. I’ve been to their births. One asked me if I would officiate her wedding (no), another asked me to do some yoga for her on her wedding day. She didn’t even get mad at me when she got vertigo within the first 3 moves and spent the rest of the day vomiting.

We will ride the highs and lows with our clients but we can ride it from the fulcrum. How? 

By cultivating sattwa and building ojas. 

Okay but how do we do that? 

  • Practice slowly in both movement and breath on a daily basis

  • Spend time in nature

  • Eat foods that are fresh and single ingredient without cayenne pepper (pungent like ginger root is good but chili might not be)

  • Invest in relationships with people that you really love and that truly love you

  • Rest

  • Work and worry less

  • Use oils on your skin and in your food 

These practices make you stronger by slowing down the storms of chaos. Oils on your skin build your derma layer – they thicken your skin! All of this builds ojas – your immune system, your resilience. All of this builds sattwa – your calm, your trust.

In the end, you are practicing the maintenance of trust. 

Trust the philosophies.

Trust that our souls know what they are doing when they put us in a jam.

Trust that everyone has trained for the moment that they are in.

All you need to do is reflect that trust in them back to them. Let them see that you believe they can do this.

I remember walking into my friend’s room while she was nearing the end of her life. I was there to do some energy work with her to ease some pain, physically and mentally and to prepare her for dying.  “Do you know why I am here?” I asked. She nodded. “Let’s help you move forward.”

I felt so privileged by her trust in me and in our connection. The sacred of this moment was pure sattwa. Our love for each other was palpable and so we could do this work together. 

Sattwa, bliss, joy do not negate intense grief nor anger. They are our ability to be fully here in the experience of being alive while not losing ourself to the illusion that this is all there is or that any of it is permanent. 

The teeter totter will teeter and tot. We will love and we will lose. And if we are willing to be so brave as to be right here, right now, and in connection, this will all be so much more.

Let’s celebrate our emotionally expensive work. Let’s rejoice over our choices to love deeply and to invite more people into our circle of influence and connection.

After all, isn’t this why we were born?

Allie Chisholm-Smith

Chronicling the yogic journey of Self-knowledge and belonging.

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