Energy and Environment - org Feb 22 06

Tonight I taught my first yoga class in a long while. Most striking to my personal experience was how little energy I felt, and how my emotions on entering my door afterward were sad. This could be cleansing, I thought; no need to make more of the sad feeling than it needs to be. Could be stagnant energy on its way out. But unmistakable was how it showed me how low my energy state is, which parallels the borderline sickliness I have been feeling lately, more like the person who has the condtition I have than the person who lives as if he doesn't.

But that is not the point. Upon opening my refrigerator door and smelling the stink that has been growing there for weeks, today I decided simply to find and throw out all the potential culprits. It is a simple act, but one that I had not found the motivation to do for weeks. After pulling out a number of containers into a trash bag, I walked the trash bag outside the half-block to the dumpster. Normally, my trash makes it to the door and waits for me to depart for class to be taken to the dumpster. Today, it went all the way. This in the end is more telling about my energy state than my 'feelings' after class.

Energy shows up significantly in the actions we take. It is the difference between doing the small things that maintain our environments, our relationships, and our lives, and putting these small things off until later, until the problem has grown so big as to demand attention. Simple actions to raise our energy levels have direct impact on the qualities of our lives because they enable minor acts that add up in the end. Walking back into my apartment, having purged that stink from my refrigerator, my emotions were now happy. The energy I gained from Dahn (energy) yoga class manifested in a tangible improvement in my environment.

Next, I did some dishes. For weeks, again, since returning from school, I have tended to leave the dishes undone until the problem of the kitchen cannot be ignored. Today, while doing the dishes, I noticed an element of the experience of doing the dishes that was different than other times: I used less mind. Less consciousness went into formulating a plan for which dishes I would do first, at what point I would stop sudsing and rinse some, and the best order of operations in order to conserve water. Today I began and had a stack of sudsed dishes and was rinsiing them before the first thought (of how this was different from normal) entered my head. What had happened?

The Yoga class had moved my energy from my brain down into my body. Resting in my body, the energy was more available for immediated action. Typically, the thoughts about how to do the dishes and the time it is taking add to the laboriousness of the process. Often, this is the reason the dishes do not get started: The energy that would go into accomplishing the task gets squandered on considering and planning (or excusing myself from) the task. So it gets put off.

The energy, on these days, has its home in the brain. In order for the energy to transfer into my body and thus into action, a process of permission must go on before the brain allows the energy to move into the body. If we pay attention, we can notice that the brain is actually very cunning. For often, we make excuses and put off tasks until later. In these instances, the task does not get done, and notice that the brain never had to give up its energy to the body and the accomplishment of the task. Under the auspices of weighing the decision to act, the brain has actually used up the energy doing what it likes to do best: idly thinking.

Notice that the majority of lifestlyes that have evolved through modern convenience and stay-at-home information gathering and computer-based desk jobs actually promote a general trend of energy movement away from the body and toward the brain. Our body does not need energy to accomplish tasks that can be done through telephone wires and radio waves. We do not need to move. At most, our brain needs to work to figure out how to operate the software or the machinery. This is at least true of my gradualte student life. The prescribed activity involves uses of the brain while the body is sedentary: reading, writing, discussing around a table. The reason my dishes do not get done is intimately related to the encouragement of my energy to be in my brain, ready to read or answer or process at the drop of a hat, rather than in my body, ready to empty my refrigerator when the need be.

Of course this is not to allay responsibility. My energy is my responsibility, as is undertaking whatever activities I personally require to keep enough energy in my body for purposes of everything from cleaning my apartment to creating blood to stay alive (which for me is also a conscious daily responsibility). The purpose of writing under the topic "Energy and Environment" is to show that our energy is not separate from our environments, but actually intimately influenced by and creative of them.

One day when, last semester, I awoke on a Saturday morning in a deep depression, I thought long and hard of how to cheer myself up. Something of the burden of responsibilities of indepenedent life and study and work weighed heaviliy on me, but I had no singular upsetting thoughts. Actually, every indicator I could think of showed an immensely positive trend in my life. I was happy with where I was at. But still I was depressed.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I was lying, practically paralyzed, in an apartment that I had not cleaned the week prior. Dust was on the floor, and the kitchen had not thoroughly been cleaned as I had been doing since moving in. Lying there "depressed," I knew the apartment needed to be cleaned, and this had been adding to my burdened feeling about the day. But, worried by the phantom depression, I was putting energy into trying to root out the source of my sadness before getting up and repressing it under a flurry of activity.

Finding no culprit for my sadness, however, I realized that my depression may be reflecting the abundance of energy stagnating within my un-cleaned apartment. One of the ways we kept the energy fresh in the yoga centers was cleaning constantly; at least every day, and then to fill the time when there was nothing else to do. This created a very clean and pure energy environment, and many students enjoyed coming to class just because it "felt good" inside the centers. Sure enough, when I left behind my presumption of a psychological cause to my depression, and set about tidying, dusting, washing, scrubbing, and letting fresh air in, my condition was "cured." I was happy as if nothing had happened.

We know - at least our bodies know - the difference between good (fresh) and bad (stagnant) energy. While our intellectually-oriented culture often finds the sources of our displeasure in deep, grandiose scars or sweeping ennui about the future and our place in the world, it may often be that our emotions are responding to stagnation in our energy environments - small things that have gone untended - whether in our domiciles or our relationships - that are very much in our power to do something about. In fact, we may be just one yoga class away from making a number of changes that will deeply change our lives for the better.




copyright 2006, andrew varyu