This blog discusses the importance of seeing things from different points of view in order to have a greater understanding of the matter at hand as well as how this benefits us. The Yoga Sutras teach this concept and I will link a Sutra teaching into this blog.
This past week, I was enjoying a lovely walk around Lady Bird Lake or Town Lake for those of us that have lived in Austin for a while. Ahead of me was a family of three that had started to slow down. The mother was carrying a child around the age of 2.5 to 3 years old but the little girl wanted something different. Together, the mother and the father stopped and the mom handed her off to her dad, where he placed the little girl on his shoulders. I watched her bright eyes grow wider and her face beam with joy as she settled into that steady high seat. In that moment, I was reminded how shifting perspective can shift our outlook on many levels.
In the many years of yoga training and therapy training, I was taught to observe (without judgement), a student in a variety of postures and to look from different angles. A side view may reveal something that a forward view did not while still a backward view may prove helpful in understanding how someone is experiencing a breath centric movement or shape of yoga. I remember the first time I went through this process to both observe and be observed. It was a foreign concept to use a variety of perspectives without judgement to gather information. How many times do we collect information from one perspective and rush to judgement? It’s a great question to hold and think about.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras Chapter 2, line 33 include two very important words/concepts. These are pratipaksa bhavanam which translates to mean “to take an opposite or different view”. The teachings illuminate this concept of when we are troubled by negative thoughts/emotions or in conflict with someone to try and see from a different perspective. For those of you that are counselors or social workers, etc., you may understand this concept as “cognitive reframing”. Google defines Cognitive reframing as a psychological technique that consists of identifying and then changing the way situations, experiences, events, ideas, and/or emotions are viewed. Easier said than done…right?
Perspective shifting is worth learning because…it benefits you. When we get stuck in unexamined ways of thinking or cognitive biased, it can BLOCK our ability to experience a sense of openness. Stuck is the word to pay attention to here. Being stuck means no forward progress. Without forward movement, we are no longer in a process of yoga. Yes, the practice of yoga is a beautiful system that involves physical movements but yoga is truly a way of thinking that supports everything flowing. Let’s look at this from a multidimensional level. Flowing looks like:
our movement being more fluid
our breath being more spacious
our emotions being more balanced
our attitudes toward others being more compassionate
our attitude toward our self being more loving and accepting (key to it all)
our minds/attention being more directable
Raise your hand if you want some of that?!! Once you learn to “play” with this concept, you may find a greater sense of living with joy. If someone calls me “free spirited”, I LOVE that compliment…what can be better than a spirit that is FREE?!!
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra: II,33: vitarka badhane pratipaksa bhavanam (using Mukunda Stiles translation)
vitarka = negative thoughts or emotions
badhane = on being disturbed, troubled by
pratipaksa = the opposite, contrary
bhavanam = cultivation, habitual thoughts
Translation by my teacher, Gary Kraftsow: “When we have afflicted thinking, try to take on another perspective.”