The Silent Moments Between Rising and Restraining

Last week I was teaching at the National Labor Leadership Initiative. I am so full of gratitude for the opportunity to be part of that program. It enriches me on so many levels I barely know how to describe it. This is my third year of being on the teaching team. The first year I felt like I mostly observed and pitched in where there was an obvious place for me to help. Last year I started to make suggestions and took on a few topics myself. This year I really began to see myself in the curriculum – both because I took on larger segments of each day and because I helped create a stronger focus around how mindfulness connects to the challenges of being a leader. One of the reasons I started this blog was to better integrate the yoga/mindfulness practices in my life with my work in the social justice movement. I can thank the NLLI for helping me see the need to do that, and for giving me opportunities to experiment with it. It feels like the right thing to be doing right now.

Meanwhile, I have been settling into the rhythm of my life now, without a manic schedule, crazy job, multiple flights a week. I thought it would be hard. I made a lot of plans to help me keep moving forward and not stagnate. Either because my plans are good, or because I didn’t really need plans, it is really working for me.

In the week before the NLLI, I was reflecting on Sutra III.9:

Study of the silent moments between rising and restraining subliminal impressions is the transformation of consciousness toward restraint.

I can’t say exactly why this sutra came to mind.

Maybe because I was working on how to talk about mindfulness to social justice leaders who don’t start with a ready frame of reference.

Maybe because I’ve been doing more pranayama myself lately, so I’ve been experiencing more of those silent moments.

In his commentary, BKS Iyengar talks about how many of the yogic practices that help us move toward restraint are external – like the yamas and niyamas. They are a set of rules we follow that help us become better people and live a better life. The external restraints give us guideposts for how to behave. But at some point the sense of restraint has to come from inside. Starting with pranayama – control of the breath – we start to see how the restraint can emerge from within (pranayama is still an external form of restraint, but it gives us insight into the internal). In pranayama, the silent moments happen between breaths – at the end of every inhalation and every exhalation is a pause. The quiet state of the breath corresponds to the quiet state of the mind. By learning this in the breath, you can come to experience quiet states between thoughts.

Overtime you don’t only notice the pauses, you start to dwell in them and ultimately to lengthen them. The prolonged pause – between breaths, between thoughts – allows for rejuvenation and recuperation.

I have realized that I’m also experiencing this pause on a kind of meta level. I am having a silent moment between rising and restraining in my work life. I have left behind what was to be left. I don’t know yet what is to come next.

My tendency is to try to fill in the space.  I feel the impulses to hustle to get more work. To schedule and overschedule so I don’t have to face that underlying terror – of not having income and not having purpose. I’m just trying now to be in this space. Allow what is to come to come on its own terms. Don’t rush to make it arrive sooner. Dwell in this pause and allow for rejuvenation and recuperation.

I feel such gratitude for having had the freedom to leave my job, create space in my life, and try to find a new way to live and work more fully.  

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be free of suffering.

May all beings be filled with loving kindness.

May all beings be at peace.

That means you and me too.

With gratitude, love and solidarity.