It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. Or even a middle-aged guy. But I wasn’t prepared to find my world turned upside-down by a simple yoga class.
Confession: I do like my Sunday ritual, which consists of taking Zoe, my Jack Russell terrier, for a long walk by the river, followed by a light breakfast, then an hour-and-a-half of mindful yoga.
On a recent Sunday, I showed up to class to find my yoga teacher, Amy Gorely, seated cross-legged at the opposite — and dark — end of the room from her usual place. “What’s up with that?” I asked her as I tried to orient myself to this new configuration. “You’ll see,” she said.
I had not thought much about it before, but with Amy as my North Star, I had known my place. With this, I scrambled to figure out where to put down my mat.
As it turned out, this was the second class of a series on “habits,” which Amy defined as “ways that we have trained ourselves to act and react so it’s become almost automatic to act a certain way.” She added later: “They are like ruts in our brains.”
Amy reminded us of the previous week’s homework assignment: “Instead of brushing your teeth standing on two legs, stand on one. Stand on the other the next time. I want you to change it up and work on your balance.
“We usually think that change is bad,” Amy continued, trying to convince a roomful of perplexed souls to get with the program. “I want us to try to see change simply as different. Without a value judgment.”
But I liked my routines, my inner chatterbox prattled. I liked my “ruts,” thank you very much. And I didn’t like Amy shrouded in darkness against the back wall, or having to crank my head in the other – wrong – direction.
Above all, I liked not having to think about where to sit. Very unmindfully in this mindful yoga class, I was used to just assuming my position.
Not that I had any choice in the matter.
I know that I am capable enough of switching up my habits — it’s just hard to break free. For instance: I got lost a few years ago while hiking through a Northern California fog bank, trying to find the full moon in the sky to lead me home. I knew our celestial neighbor was there because I had seen it earlier, before it disappeared. To find it again I made a slow 360-degree twirl but was unable to see anything other than thick mist. I got a little panicky. Still, I kept rotating. No, I don’t regularly get lost in fog banks, but my approach to solving the problem was typical: Try. Repeat. Fail. Try. Repeat. Fail.
Finally, a quiet revelation. A helpful little voice spoke up in my head: Hey, Steven, this is not working. You need to try something else. It was all I needed to snap out of my own fog, change course and walk 10 yards toward where I thought the Pacific Ocean might be. The fog parted and the moon winked. I was found. By being mindful — or let’s just call it awake — I had discovered a new way to respond.
Oh, that little voice. I also remembered hearing it when I was single and dating … and dating … and dating … and still single. I kept following the same steps, expecting a different outcome each time, only to find myself still single. It took me years to defer to that voice, which echoed: Try a different approach. Change your intention.
So simple. So radical.
Back in yoga class, Amy was adding to the confusion of the day by changing the flow. How much did I hate her now? She was throwing long-held traditions out the window: Left-to-right became right-to-left. Confusing! And not just for me. About two-thirds of my classmates were facing in the wrong direction by now. What a mess.
Still, it was a mess that had me thinking: I walk my terrier on the exact same route every morning. I shave my face in the same direction, from bottom to top, every day. I call my parents on Sunday afternoons. I could go on … and on. I would call these my superficial habits, the ones that allow me to move through the day without thinking much. Do this, followed by that, which raises the question: Am I sleepwalking through my life?
On the “fire log” pose, Amy went wild: “Reverse the placement of your legs and put your ‘other’ leg on top.” I literally could not. My hips were too stubborn to change.
When the class ended, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. It had run long, there was a crick in my neck from looking in the “wrong” direction, and I was exhausted by having had to pay attention to Amy’s directives — instead of just going with the usual flow.
Still, I heard Amy as she reminded us: “With mindfulness we can purposefully choose a new and different way to act.”
I took her teaching to heart, starting the very next morning by walking Zoe in the “wrong” direction (despite her insistence on pulling the usual way). As I walked, feeling the morning sun on the other side of my face, I realized everything looked different in reverse. I noticed for the first time a huge pecan tree, recently fallen, which had nearly demolished a house. The sidewalk cracks and steps required new attention. In the meantime, Zoe found a new world to sniff — and to mark.
This all got me thinking about some of my more ingrained habits, those that help me glide through the day less mindfully, less in touch with myself and others. I default to reason before feeling; I withdraw from a problem instead of confronting it. Try. Repeat. Fail. Try. Repeat. Fail. Is there some of this I should revisit?
At the end of class, Amy gave us a new homework assignment: When you wake up tomorrow, say one word to yourself: “Gratitude.”
The next day, as soon as my eyes opened, I reflexively reached for my iPhone, my brain buzzing with the day’s “to-dos”; that little voice shouting out directives: “Do this, then that.” Before my legs reached the ground, I remembered to say the word, “Gratitude.” It interrupted all the noise, quieted me, allowed me to focus. That small, simple word suspended the habitual way I usually start the day. No sleepwalking today.
Steven Petrow, a writer living in Hillsborough, N.C., is a regular contributor to Well.