Dropping the need to control

    The other night I walked in to teach a hot yoga class. I had barely finished introducing myself and welcoming students when I heard a student ask another, “Are you going to remove your cellphone from the studio?” 

I stopped.

“What’s going on,” I asked her.

“He’s got a cellphone,” she replied, “There aren’t supposed to be cellphones in the room.”

I needed to resolve this matter quickly. I try to start and end my classes on time. This little matter was holding everyone else up.

“It’s on silent,” the other student explained.

“There aren’t supposed to be cellphones in the room,” the first student injected.

Now, this wasn’t exactly true, but I did not want to start explaining the intricacies of our studio’s policy regarding cellphones.

“Would you be okay to leave it outside,” I asked the student respectfully.

“Where should I put it,” he shrugged, pointing to a small pile of items that were innocuously piled onto a window ledge. There was a set of keys and a folded up shirt- nothing remotely obtrusive about it at all. Asking him to leave the room and go locate a locker to put his tiny pile of belongings seemed ridiculous. 

“Can I just put it at the front desk and you get it after class,” I asked him.

“Sure,” he replied, and proceeded to fish his phone out of his balled-up shirt pocket.

I started the opening breath-work for the class and quickly dipped out to put the phone out of sight.

I came back in after a few seconds and resumed teaching the class. It went off without any more hitches but there was an awkward feeling in the air- a tension that was hard to shake. After the class ended, the first student was waiting for me in the hall. She pointed to a sign by the studio door that said “Cell phone use is not permitted in the studio.” 

“See,” she said, “No cell phones.”

“It actually says ‘no cell phone USE,” I clarified.

“Oh,” she relied, “Then I owe him an apology.”

When I got out of the shower, she was waiting in the hallway, with just a towel wrapped around her. Clearly this was an urgent matter.

“There is a sign in the women’s room that says ‘Do not bring cell phones into the room,’” she announced, “Check it out!”

“I’m not going into the women’s room to look at a sign,” I told her, “If there is a contradiction, I’ll bring it up with the owners. We have never made it a policy as far as I know.”

I found the same signage in the men’s room after the fact. This was one of many items on a “Studio Etiquette” list posted in each bathroom. These are not rules though- merely ways that students should be respectful of the studio and its students. These etiquette standards are broken almost daily- people come in late, they leave early, they leave sweat puddles, they eschew deodorant. It’s why we post such suggestions- they are easy fixes that optimize the experience for everyone. We have never kicked anyone out for their violation though. 

I know this is a touchy subject- cellphones in a yoga studio. As a teacher, I am not bothered by them. Mostly they are just inanimate objects nearby- like car keys or eyeglasses. 

I have on a few rare occasions seen people discreetly noodling with them during floor work, but I do not call anyone out. Such instances are usually very brief and I see no need to create any drama around them.

Sure, I would love to see each student giving a hundred percent of their attention to their asana, but I am also a realist. There can be any number of reasons why someone may think they need to interact with their device during a public yoga class. If it were a common occurrence, I would speak to it, but it is so rare that I usually assume there must be a good reason for it.

The fact is, people bring cellphones into class all the time. Sometimes they tell me outright: 

“I might get a call. My phone is on vibrate. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” I always say. I unflinchingly believe that anyone who musters the time and energy to get to their practice deserves a little grace. Life doesn’t just stop when we go to a yoga class. I get that completely.

I have students who are medical professionals, midwives, parents who managed to get away from their kids for an hour yoga class. I do not interrogate people for their reasons for having a cellphone in the room. We have a clear policy that “cell phone use,” is not permitted in the studio and I almost never witness any violations. 

As far as I could tell, in this particular interaction, the cellphone in question was not being used at all- it was simply in the studio space, and that was an affront to another student.

This is an issue that needs addressing- our tendency to take our little peeves and annoyances and amplify them in our heads as major offenses. 

This is not unique to yoga studios. People do this everywhere.

We have elevated being offended into a virtue. 

I have a very minimal expectation that this point will land in the societal space outside of the yoga studio. I am acutely aware that in our western societies people exert tremendous amounts energy announcing their displeasure at the endless litany of life’s disappointments- too many cars, too much noise, homeless people existing, public breastfeeding, commercials, political views, clothing choices. 

There seems to be no limit on the things we complain about. 

I do not expect that this will change anytime soon. 

The yoga studio is different though. It is a place where we actively invite discomfort. We lean into it. We test our edges- our thresholds of tolerance. We actively question the validity of our perceived comfort levels. That is an essential part of the asana practice- breaking down our ideas of what is acceptable to discover an ever-expanding sense that nearly every condition of life is tenable- that no matter what happens to us, we can work with it. The irony in my cellphone anecdote is that it was in a HOT class. 105 degrees. It is the very definition of uncomfortable. To make a stink about a cellphone merely existing in one’s space seems patently trivial. The hot room is a place of such extreme physical discomfort, that I can’t help but chuckle at the idea that a silenced cellphone simply sitting on a window ledge is an obstacle to a satisfying practice.

I am amazed at what practitioners of yoga complain about- someone came in late, someone is breathing too loudly, someone isn’t doing what the teacher instructed, they don’t like the music, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, the teacher said their name, the teacher didn’t say their name, the teacher said something political, the savasana wasn’t long enough. Most yoga students seem to be pretty easy going about such matters, but there are always those vocal ones who will gladly recount to anyone who will listen how their experience was sub-par.

I find such discussions fascinating- not on the merit of their content, but on the mere fact that people who seem to have a sincere interest in the yogic path still get hung up on their need for the perfect experience. 

Yoga is where we come to let that go- the standards, the conditions, the comfort, the control. 

Yoga is about living in union with what is. It starts with the basic acknowledgement and acceptance of what is happening and committing oneself to standing fully and openly in the experience of it. 

Somewhere along the way, some of us seem to have decided that only some conditions should be released. Others- like no cellphones in the sacred space- must be vigorously defended.

The ego likes to hide behind its own desire to control. We can wax endlessly about our spiritual practices and the blissful states they confer on us but as soon as we find our agendas being challenged we ask to speak to the manager. 

Many years ago, I taught a class on the 4th of July. I opened class by talking about our imperfect history in America, how slavery was a looming issue when we penned the Declaration of Independence, how we still had work to do in creating a just and equal society that lived up to the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal.” It was a celebration of the American ideal, but an honest reflection that we still had some work to do.

For one student, this was unacceptable. She reached out to the studio owners and asked them what their policy was on teachers saying political things in class. She was enraged and as far as I could tell, she was the only one. But I got a call from the studio owners who recounted the complaint. Thankfully, they stuck up for me. They insisted to her that I was one of their most valued teachers and that they do not micro-manage what teachers can and cannot say. They assured her that they would relay her concerns to me. When she threatened to cancel her membership, they asked me to call her and try to iron it out.  

When I called her, she said she couldn’t talk right then as she was getting her nails done. She said she’d call me back.

I was in the grocery store when she finally called me and I spent a good hour walking up and down the aisles with a cart full of food listening to her side. She recounted with great detail and passion about she found my theme offensive. The 4th of July, according to her, was a time to celebrate America. All the talk about slavery and racism had no place on such a day. I’d call it a conversation but there wasn’t much interest in my viewpoint on her part. I spent the better part of an hour listening to her lay into me. 

Despite my humble apologizing and sincerely imploring her to not cancel her membership she never came back to my class. I believe she canceled her membership soon thereafter. 

It was an eye-opening experience for me though. People can read offense into anything. I said nothing that was factually wrong. I did not bash America. I merely offered that we, as a country, could do better. 

That assertion was unacceptable apparently.

My 16 years of teaching asana is peppered with similar instances- people taking small, insignificant experiences that could be easily dismissed, and amplifying them to the point where the drama created after the fact seems entirely justifiable. 

I scratch my head at this. Instead of softening, allowing, and going with the flow, even seasoned yogis can maintain an iron grip on their requisites for what should and shouldn’t occur in a yoga class. 

Someone once wrote on the community chalkboard at our studio, “The more preference you have, the less peace you have.”

Can you see how this is true? 

When you constantly impose your sense of how it SHOULD be onto how it actually is, you cut yourself off from the joy of simply being in the moment where you are. Instead of opening up to life’s wild authenticity, we close down. We complain. We fight it. We deny ourselves peace. We hang our satisfaction on conditions that are often impossible to maintain. We decide that own own standards are sacrosanct and that any deviations from them are tantamount to outright violence. 

Spiritual practices are often hiding places for the ego identity. We esteem ourselves to be gatekeepers of something that must be protected and preserved. We resist any aspects of our experience that we consider wrong or out of place. We prioritize our own wants over other people’s legitimate needs. We demand our sacred spaces be sanitized and predictable. We often demand that the people in our designated spiritual spaces think and behave like we do. The irony in all of this is that what is intended to be an expansive path dedicated to growth, inclusion, wisdom, and evolution instead becomes a cloistered stopping point where we shrink and cloak ourselves in the petty rules and standards of our own thinking.

So am I saying that there should be no standards of conduct in a yoga studio? Absolutely not. 

It is important that everyone at the studio feels safe and supported. It can’t just be a free for all. There are certainly reasonable expectations for a class experience. It is incumbent on each of us to at least question just how reasonable those expectations are. 

I would go so far as to suggest that unless one’s physical safety is in question, there really are very few conditions that cannot be endured- even if it just means moving your yoga mat.

I want to encourage you, dear reader, to lean into the little things that seem initially bothersome. 

Did you find a certain behavior distracting? This is a common complaint I hear from students. Someone was breathing loud. Someone was doing something weird. Someone was futzing with their phone/watch. The potential distraction list is extensive.

So what is the harm in having your attention pulled away from what you wanted it to center on? 

Did this induce some physical pain? Probably not. Unless you were in the midst of giving birth and someone decided to play Barry Manilow while you were trying to focus on your breath, it is likely that any distraction is merely in your head. Just come back to to what seems germane to your practice. Let it go. 

Most distractions are not violations of our bodies but merely violations of our attempt to control our situation. 

If you can start with the fundamental surrender of external control, and recognize that outside of your physical body, anything can happen, then you have a made a monumental step towards lasting peace. 

If you are still operating with the belief that other people have to conform to your standards, then you have almost guaranteed that peace will always be at best fleeting, and at worst completely out of reach. 

There is a famous story about two monks who were walking along a road. They come to a shallow river and encounter a woman who is trying to cross it. One of the monks offers to carry the woman across. The other monk knows that this is a violation of the monastic vow to not touch a member of the opposite sex but he says nothing. They cross the river- one monk carrying the woman on her back, the other quietly stewing about the flagrant violation of the rules. On the other side of the river, the monk sets the woman down and they quietly continue on their journey. Some time down the road, the other monk finally speaks up, “I can’t believe you carried that woman! We aren’t even allowed to touch a woman and you carried her!” He seemed visibly distressed about it. 

The other monk replied calmly, “I know. But I set her down on the other side. You seem to be still carrying her.” 

This simple story presents an important contrast in the two primary ways we can handle life’s letdowns.

We will ultimately find ourselves in any number of situations that we may describe as sub-optimal- we get distracted, annoyed, or disappointed in some way. 

We can hold onto these events- carry them into the future, create drama, register complaints. 

Or we can simply let them go and move on. 

Instead of fixating on what is occurring around us and ruminating about our displeasure, we can drop back into the open space of awareness and just be with it.

It really is that simple. 

Each new moment offers a clean slate- a chance to live freely in what is happening. You may not like what is happening, but you can make the choice to acknowledge it and accept it. 

This is true power. It leads to an unshakeable peace. 

And, unlike the decision to complain, argue, and resist, this way is effortless and easy. 

So next time life puts the proverbial fly in your ointment, see if you can simply roll with it. 

Being non-reactive is incredibly liberating and you may actually discover a strength that you never realized you had.