Failing Well

by Jen Whinnen

On the last night of winter break my son got out of bed to make a confession. He needed to tell me about something he’d done. It had been eating away at him all break, torturing him. He hoped it would go away, but he couldn’t take it any longer. He had to come clean.

He failed a test. His teacher had given them a pop geography quiz before the break and he only got 1 out of 7 correct. Other kids in the class knew all of the answers and were going on the next round of a geography bee, but he was not. He “didn’t even know where New York was!” In front of his entire class, he failed.

Watching him paced the floor like a caged animal while choking down tears broke my heart. What a small thing to be so tortured over! A pop quiz? Geez, I’ve probably failed thousands of those!

But, Jack never fails tests. Learning has always come easy to him. He was reading novels before he lost his first tooth and he understands abstract concepts and complicated math better than most adults (present company included). He’s a brainiac who goes to smarty pants school with other brainiacs and has no idea what it’s like to struggle to learn.

He was at a crossroads. If he’s not smart, what is he? How can he live in a world where he fails at the one thing he’s really good at?

Jack’s feelings of worthlessness and identity-lessness in the face of a small failure are not unusual. In a job market that is increasingly competitive, our children are being raised to believe that they have to be the best at all times or some terrible impoverished fate will befall them. Likewise, our social media driven world glorifies a glossy, photoshopped perfection. Success is, more than ever, measured by a very outward display of accumulation. We succeed when we are well groomed, eat well prepared meals and can do handstands in the sand. When stacked up against cyber perfection, it’s not uncommon for most of us to feel defeated by our flaws.

And while I don’t find social media good or bad, it’s also not the whole story. Social media is the equivalent of our living rooms. It’s the place to show the nicest, most “successful” sides of ourselves; our family photos and vacation slide shows, cyber nic nacs and tastes. But, it’s not the whole house. We don’t show our closets or cupboards on social media (nor should we) and our ability to be resilient, pliant, flexible or agile in mind and measure don’t photograph well. Nevertheless, each of our lives are filled with clogged drains, closets we are trying to sort through and unfinished projects. Our life houses are stacked, top to bottom, day in and day out, with little and big failures.

That’s why for the New Year, I suggest we get good at failing. We need to get big and bold about our failures!

Using failure as a New Year’s resolution theme may seems tragically defeatist, but I don’t really think so. It’s important to learn how to fail well. Learning how to fail is key to unlocking a truly bountiful life. Learning to fail means that we trust that our self worth is not diminished when what we set out to do does not go as planned. It is understanding and believing that we are OK regardless of the outcome of our efforts. It’s the faith that we are allowed to try again. It’s the way in which we make it past week two in our resolutions and how we get busy doing the work of doing. In order to be successful, we need to get comfortable with being “bad” at things.

In yoga we talk about the idea of accepting where you are. I’ve often misinterpreted this as “where I am is OK, because sticking with this will make me better.” This is not the same thing as allowing myself the option of falling flat on my face, of looking stupid and feeling silly. Detachment is not being attached to the fruits of our labor. That means not being attached to getting what I want to happen, as well as, not getting attached to the things I did not want to happen.

Getting good at being bad teaches us that the discomfort we feel isn’t the whole story. It is a chapter, a passage, in the novel of our lives. It brings us back to knowing our intrinsic beauty. When we allow ourselves to be in process, to be efforting, when we know we are not diminished when we do not accomplish goals, we afford ourselves grace. We give ourselves permission to try again. We continue to grow. And growth is our birthright.

No matter what happens, we are perfect, beautiful and allowed to be here. When we provide a consistent, reliable do over button for ourselves it creates a groove. It teaches us the language of forgiveness and love. It reaffirms that this moment isn’t any more important than any other. When I know I am “good” at something I identify with it and I can no longer be. If I can hang onto “I am” then I can “be” anything. I can try. I can fail. No matter what happens, I am. Messing up, failing tests, failing at relationships, crashing the car, breaking a bone, going bankrupt, saying unkind things, cheating on a lover, none of these things is the sum total of who we are. Because we are. I am. Flaws and all.

Medicated Yoga

by Jen Whinnen

As a yoga teaching community it is important that we know that depression and anxiety are two very popular reasons people come to the practice. Yoga is an effective tool in managing many illnesses, depression and anxiety included, so this is not unusual. It is imperative however, that we understand that when someone comes to the practice looking for tools to manage their illness, they are not served by our opinions about how they “should” manage it off the mat. 

In each training I ask my student-teachers about how they feel about “western medicine” because I’ve found that people’s feelings about this subject are similar to their political beliefs; they do not change easily. How they feel about about medications, namely antidepressants and anti anxiety medication, will often dictate how they intend to talk to their classes. If they fall into the “no meds” camp, they are running a great danger of creating conditions for suffering in their students. Therefore, it’s important that we as a learning community suss out our feelings before stepping into a classroom. 

The United States is a melting pot of split personalities when it comes to our relationship with mental health. We have the best medications on the planet, the best psychiatric care, we know more than we ever have about potential causes and triggers of mental illness, yet we persist in stigmatizing it. Psychotherapy is still the butt of cocktail party jokes and medications are largely condemned as the means by which Big Pharma gets richer. If you need help and accept help, there’s something intrinsically wrong with you. A kind of wrong that makes you “less than” those who don’t need help. Accepting help is often seen as a flaw, something to overcome. If you go through a rough patch and come out the other side, you are a hero, a warrior. If you need this help the rest of your life, you have somehow failed as a person. It separates you from the rest of humanity. It keeps you from being able to make friends, from getting a decent job, it isolates you. It can be a twisted, painful situation for someone suffering from a mental illness. A dirty little secret you can’t tell anyone. Just imagine what it is like to live in a world that says “here are things that can help you, but if you need them you are bad. Oh and don’t tell anyone you are taking advantage of these things because they won’t want to hire you or be your friend.” 

My family’s mental illness pedigree goes back many generations. It is a colorful patchwork quilt of alcoholism, anorexia, depression, suicide, bipolar disorder, mania and PTSD. Each of us contributes to the quilt in our own special way, but some of us add more squares than others.  One of the greatest contributors has been my dad. He suffered from type 1 bipolar disorder. Diagnosed when I was six and in and out of institutions, hospitals and prisons for most of my childhood, his life was a roller coaster of manic highs and debilitating lows. He would regularly take his medications and regularly throw them out, both with varying degrees of success. At the time of his death he was being weaned off one medication and onto something else. This caused him to slip into a hypomanic state. In his hypomania, he walked into the woods, got lost and died from exposure. 

His meds basically killed him. The first medication made things worse, the second didn’t fix it. If he’d never started on that one he wouldn’t have had to move him onto something else. If the second had been more effective, he never would have had the anxiety attack that caused his brain to switch over into hypomania, etc. He died because of the drugs. 

So, I am violently anti-meds right? No. I am 100% pro meds. GO meds! 

Why?

Because, although my father’s case is extreme, I still believe modern medicine saved his life. Because, I have other bipolar family members who have done amazingly well on meds. Because, without meds, these family members would be dead by now. 

Because, no matter what I think about the pharmaceutical industry or about healthcare in the United States, no matter how many close family members and friends I’ve seen suffer, I still do not know what it is like to live with a chronic mental illness.

And because of all this, I know that I can not judge someone else’s life.

My student-teachers will often say “yeah, but you are talking about extreme cases. Those people are really, really sick. What I am talking about is the person who just feels sad and can’t deal.” And no, I’m not. I’m also talking about the sad guy who “can’t deal” and goes to his doctor and asks for Zoloft. Him too. We don’t get to pass judgement on the degree of someone’s pain any more than we get to decide someone’s sexuality. Their choice is not a reflection of our hurts or our recovery, it is not related to our friend who was on meds and successfully got off them or about the family member who committed suicide because of them. No matter the belief; whether it’s that we are an overmedicated society that is too dependent on drugs, or everyone should be on something, we are not the judge and jury of someone else’s mental health. 

Yoga teaches us first and foremost that the practice is personal. The first sutra of The Yoga Sutras says Atha Yoganusanam (1.1), Now the exposition of Yoga is being made. Now, meaning this moment, we chose to take this audience. We chose to sit at the feet of the learning right now. Not “when you are ready, turn to page six” or “next week we will cover this topic” but we do it in the present. We make a conscious choice. The doing is done by us. We chose. The second sutra, Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah (1.2), The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga, means to practice yoga, we control our mind’s chatter. We learn to reign in our mind and focus it. 

Now I choose to control my thoughts.  

Not; “Now I choose to control the thoughts of others.” 

Even when I am sure I know what everyone else should do, I must come to grips with the fact that that conviction is a distraction. A distraction that keeps me from doing the work of knowing my true Self. 

If you have a visceral reaction to medications, if you feel strongly that everyone can and should get off their meds, that the world is overmedicated, that is totally, totally fine. You are free to believe whatever you want. Go for it. But, know that how you feel about medication is just a feeling. Feelings, even strong ones, don’t make us right. They just makes us opinionated. Opinions are not facts. Opinions are not truth. They are distractions. 

Whether Prozac and its brethren are a deplorable representation of the state of life in the modern age, a reflection of our inability to cope, or a need being filled, doesn’t matter. Because yoga teachers are not preachers. We teach yoga. That’s it.

Teach yoga and practice Ahimsa by holding your tongue. As Satchidananda says “If by being honest we will cause trouble, difficulty or harm to anyone, we should keep quiet.”  

And if you can’t hold your tongue, then don’t teach yoga. Your visceral feelings about meds will not help someone decide what’s the best course of action for him/herself. 

Each time you think about commenting on psyche meds or making a statement like “you don’t need that crap” try and remember that there is a human being on the receiving end of that statement. A person who showed up to the mat. They showed up. That’s enough. 

That’s all we can ask of anyone who comes to our class.

The Schism of Yoga and Capitalism

by Jen Whinnen

I am a professional yoga teacher. This is my career. I use my philosophical and spiritual practices to make a living. As such, I live in an irreconcilable paradox. By profiting from my spiritual work, I willingly participate in the system of capitalism. Capitalism is in direct contrast to the principles of yoga. Capitalism is an economic and political system that is interested in profit, in gain. Yogic practices aim to free oneself from the things capitalism relies upon to thrive; desire and attachment. Capitalism aims to produce an experience in the material world. Yoga aims to release the consciousness from the material world. Capitalism does not care about yoga. Yoga cares not for capitalism. They are irreconcilable.

However, I do not feel the need to bring these two systems to a peace accord. I do not believe, as is often touted in yoga circles, that I can make my capitalistic career yogic. “Conscious Capitalism” is an oxymoron. It places morality upon a concept, a thing. Things are not moral or amoral. They are things. A natural disaster is a disaster in name only. Nature shines and produces, rages and destroys. That’s what it does. Our feelings about destruction are not shared by nature. Capitalism produces and consumes for profit. That’s what it does. Therefore, conscious capitalism is a distraction. It takes the responsibility of consciousness off me. It anthropomorphizes a thing, giving it a moral compass it does not have. This is the antithesis of the yoga practice. I can not rewrite the terms of capitalism because it makes me uncomfortable.

I can, however, get comfortable with the fact that, in terms of my yoga practice, choosing to participate in capitalism is an imperfect choice. I, being a sentient being with a mind and body to govern, must acknowledge that I am making an imperfect choice.

Imperfect however, does not mean “bad.” It simply means not perfect. Perfect Love, Universal Consciousness, the Ultimate, is a concept that is nearly impossible to conceive, let alone achieve. How many of my day-to-day actions reflect this kind of experience? Very little. Probably none. But that doesn’t mean I am bad. It simply means I am not perfect. I am not fully realized.

Ironically, this imperfection is the thing that assists in revealing the Perfect to me. This is the yogic paradigm. We have to be in the world, to use the world, to reveal the truth that is beyond the world. Accepting my imperfection, my limitedness, accepting that my experience is skewed by my misconceptions is the thing that will afford me an opportunity to change. Understanding my actions as being imperfect calms down the constant babble of “Oh no I am right for doing this because I want it. And because I want it, it must be the thing I need to do!” These thoughts keep me furiously racing in the hamster wheel.

However, when I start to think “Wait, do I need this? Do I want this? Does the thing need to change or do I need to change?” then I slow down. Once I slow down, I see that I can also moderate my pace. I can get off the wheel if I want. It’s not until I come to the point of realizing my imperfection that I can even conceive of the notion that I made a choice. I choose to run fast or run slow. I choose to stay on or get off. The wheel is just a thing. The wheel is there, but I choose my participation. If I stay, according to the yogic paradigm, I am doing so consciously. I am here of my own free will. I am participating in my own experience. I can not change the storms or stop the rains, I can not change the wheel. But I can change my relationship to the wheel. I can change the way I think. That is the only thing I can do.

Making money as a teacher is not a yogic act. Giving away my teaching for free is not a yogic act. I can be just as invested in my generosity as I can in my greed. Both are actions. What is yogic is how I manage my mind when I act. Krishna tells Arjuna “You have the rights to action, but not its fruit” (2.47). How easy is it to act without wanting a reward? This is No. Small. Task. This is a Big Idea. A big concept to wrangle with and work on.  In order to do so I must accept that I willingly make imperfect choices. In doing so I become aware of my desires, my attachments to the fruits of my actions.

As a “householder,” a mother, a wife, lover of chocolate and cheese, a teacher, a writer, I work trying to let go of my desires for romantic love, praise, stuff and try. Invariably I fall short, but that is not a reason to bemoan the effort. The efforting is the thing. Consciously accepting that I miss the mark keeps me from getting distracted with useless attempts at justifying my choices as valid or invalid. It liberates me. It allows me to be forgiving of myself and forgiving of others for doing the same stuff. I am in it too. Being imperfect opens me to the Perfect because I see that we are all, everyone one of us, doing the best we can.

I often joke with my students that I have no misconceptions about my place in the cycle of samsara (the cycles of reincarnation). If reincarnation is real, I accept that I am coming around again. I tell them, “So, I’ll see you next time. We’ll get together and have a coffee!”

My treat.