Obstacles: setbacks and plateaus
Yoga sutra 1.14
sa tu dirghakala nairantarya satkarasevito drdhabhumih
Yoga is the effort full path!
It is a road with inescapable obstacles, plateaus, and setbacks.
When we are facing a challenge, it is easy to disregard the valuable opportunity of gaining a deeper understanding of who we are at our core with weaknesses and strength included. As we begin to take the necessary steps to overcome our discomfort, more often than not, we’ll gain insightful information and resilience, as we work our way through overcoming our road blocks. Dealing with an injury, a disrupting life event, or anything else that impedes us from taking daily practice, can leave us feeling defeated. A sense of defeat begins to cheap away at our spirit.
I’ve been there!
It is important to understand the power of taking mouse bites. Applying effort consistently and steadily is all it takes. Consistency, however small your effort might be, is what gets you to breakthrough when you hit the proverbial wall. The key to overcome that sense of defeat lies on the steady consistent mouse bites of effort.
Compassion towards oneself is too required. Time and patience are necessary and valuable elements to not only continue on the path, but to heal from the adversity itself that has knocked us down. That which hinders progress can be an opportunity for insight, strength, and empowerment, if we choose to shift our mindset and seek the hidden lessons.
Setbacks, are great opportunities to observe and study not only the makings of our mind, spiritual strength, and will power, but also the reasons why we take on a spiritual practice in the first place. Oftentimes, when we deal with injuries in our physical yoga practice, and our ego gets knocked down a pec or two, we realize that inner peace, joy, contentment can still be achieved through the other limbs of yoga; such as: pranayama-breathing techniques, concentration, meditation, etc.
We begin to realize the value on the more subtle aspects of our physical practice and how restorative it is meant to be and feel when we are forced to decelerate. Yoga always offers an invitation to deepen our awareness exactly as we are. When our ego gets poked and deflated, it is easy to loose faith. However, this is the time we have been training for all along. There is beauty in the humbling power of a setback. We are given the priceless opportunity to become stronger, as we learn and re-learn what we have been doing up until that point. More often than not, we gain a double punch of extra power at the end of our testing time. More often than not, we comeback stronger when we learn to overcome our seemingly insurmountable walls.
Fear not your setbacks, for the bigger they are, the stronger the comeback will be. The lessons learned will be that much deeper and that much stronger.
Obstacles and setbacks present themselves in our path, no yoga practitioner is exempt of them, unless you quit and abandon the practice all together. But if you decide to stay the course and navigate with awareness the challenge presented, you’ll be bound to experience the deep transformational power of a firmly established yoga practice. When the next obstacle comes along, you’ll find yourself naturally adapting to what is…
Plateaus can be tricky. That strange purgatory like stage where nothing happens no matter the effort, big or small. This can bring a sense of apathy and sadness, a debilitating confusion of sorts. In this phase in which everything feels stagnant, nothing is evolving, no shift, changes, or apparent progress are on the horizon is too another opportunity for growth.This too is part of the yoga journey.
So what to do? Stay the course!
You will eventually reap the rewards of your own determination. You will look back with a wiser understanding of why you even found yourself at a plateau on the first place. If the plateau has come as a result of monotonous repetition in your practice, a way out is to challenge yourself, your practice a little.
Study yourself, your practice, and tighten up the loose ends.
Practice becomes firmly grounded
When practiced over a long period of time, without interruptions… regularly-steadily, and with devotion, love, and respect.
The couple of times I have personally experienced a plateau, I have asked myself; “Why am I even feeling like I am plateauing when I know for a fact here are a lot of loose ends in my practice that need some tightening up?” There are many aspects of my practice that need working, polishing, and being more firmly established. Going through the motions, day in and day out, will eventually land you in that dreadful place. When we create awareness, an honest inner understanding that we could deepen our practice through focus and attention, then the game changes.
Choose a project in your practice that you know could benefit from concentrated attention, say for example: jump backs and jump throughs, anyone?
That’s exactly what I chose when I entered into my first plateau. Attentively working on my inner and outer strength, sharpened my focus when I tried to lift myself off the mat each and every time. The end result, it not only helped me gain back my attention, it double it, as well as it increased my strength both internally and externally.
My whole practice has benefited when I have chosen that route. Remember, this is a mind training practice, it is not about the ultimate expression of a perfect pose, or the floating effect of weightless jump back. It can be as subtle as simply bringing full attention to the quality of your breath during practice, or keeping a steady gaze through the length of it. Choosing an element in my practice that needs some work and applying all my effort into it has been incredibly liberating and worth it.
Practicing through a challenge is the ultimate training ground. Isn’t it? Getting in the arena and getting your butt kicked is the prerequisite for victory over your difficulties. Gladiators are not extinct in antiquity, they are dormant within. It’s not people and animals waiting in the arena, but the obstacles and the challenges that need facing, and we can do so intelligently.
Time to awaken our inner hero, that primal archetype available in all of us that’s powerful enough to slay dragon-like-challenges. ⚔️ 🐉
