It’s 6pm and you want to go home and do yoga, or read that good book you bought last night. Instead you start zipping through the too many channels with too little to tell until you settle on the music channel, or start watching the sport highlights from last weekend. Your better half comes home slightly frustrated with something that happened at work. She sees you slouching on the sofa with an absent-minded look in front of the TV. Her glare is not sympathetic, she notices you still didn’t call the plumber for that dripping tap in the kitchen and has a go at you. You decide you had enough, raise your voice and battle the desire to have a drink.
What could have been a nice or at least normal evening is now an episode of Eastenders (a popular British soap). Your partner is grumpy and uncommunicative and you just want to bury your irritability somewhere, anywhere, maybe at the bottom of your stomach so head for the fridge and eat the first bit of leftover you can find. A simple carbohydrate full of sugar, you gulp it down as if there was no tomorrow, it gives you a few minutes of quick relief, until your blood sugar level drops down and that familiar, irresistible crave for comfort comes back multiplied. Guess what? You deserve a treat, something rich… You order in the takeaway your battered metabolism doesn’t do well with but who cares? You had a long cr*p day and deserve some greasy, inflammatory pizza to go with it right? And 2 cans of beer or a bottle of wine.
That was an example of a vicious cycle, the opposite of a virtuous cycle. How to avoid it? Well… the guy in the story had many chances to create a better existence for himself that day. And even when things started going bad (the initial choice to switch on the TV instead of doing something more elated was the first misplaced step), he could have chosen a better program than mindless old sport highlights or the often toxic music channel. Or he could have sat down quietly, put on some chill-out music and actively relaxed first. Another healthy way to escape from a bad day is through reading a novel. A little more mindfulness would have worked wonders with his tired partner too. But I know life can be challenging and a full day at work sometimes toxic.
Being the master of your universe means feeling grounded and in control of your immediate environment, being aware of your mood and attitude towards others, avoiding constant negative feelings and emotions, (the positive ones are good to be expressed). By the principle of resonance, your positive energy, your centred, balanced predisposition will influence people around you.
All of us experience virtuous and vicious cycles all the time, at home, at work, with friends, on public transport etc. Some people tend to be more accident prone and or seem to get themselves into negative situations more than others though, almost as if they attracted them. What is that? It might have to do with certain moods or vibes, we can call it energy, that everybody emits and receives.
One of the most interesting theories I learnt from studying Yoga is the principle of resonance: according to this not scientifically proven, a bit esoteric notion we are all like radio transmitters, we have the ability to emit and tune into certain frequencies. This sounds like crazy, from a sci-fi movie but after trying the practice with an open mind for a while, it feels true to me. You can take it metaphorically if you prefer.
If we walk into a room with lots of sad looking or depressed people we tend to feel a little low too. If we meet someone joyful and balanced we tune into this as good moods are contagious. Everyone knows people that tend to be happy and easygoing as well as people who are pessimistic, negative and often very critical of themselves and the world at large. When we are freshly in love we tend to be smiling and be more light-hearted and people around us might feel it.
We are instinctively doing this all the time, to a certain degree, but what if we could always and somewhat precisely recognise vibes or frequencies different people are on? What if we could consciously identify not just the extremes of the really happy or depressed but all the different shades in between. And what if we could control the type of resonance we emit and people perceive? Wow, how fantastic would that be?
Well, according to certain Yoga traditions we can. We can, in 2 ways: by being conscious and aware of what’s the vibe around us. By tuning in an higher type of frequency and thus influencing our own mood and also people around us. Interesting? Well… I have been on a sort of journey of the frequencies at one of my Yoga schools and there are certain asanas (physical Yoga postures) and certain meditations that stimulate the creation of specific resonances.
I didn’t know what was the basis of it and I kept a healthy dose of scepticism to start with, but it feels right to me now. Specific asanas and meditations coupled with certain music, induce states of mind I can easily associate with feelings of love or strenght and courage, or of being grounded and feeling safe for instance. There are excercises devised as a number of steps to move your vibration to an higher resonance. Like a virtuous cycle, one asana leads on to another and little by little your mood and perception change for the better. Marvellous! This is Yoga, with a capital letter!