One of the most impactful things yoga has brought to my every day life is my newfound ability to tune into my body. The mind, often referred to as the monkey mind in Buddhist tradition, can become a runaway train. It is influenced by past experiences, traumas, expectations of the future, and so much more. It’s influenced by your diet, your relationships, the time of day, and a number of other external circumstances as well.
In relation to my monkey mind, I find I struggle with decision making. Especially since I have started to live a more intuitive path, trusting the Universe to provide what is needed, I’ve found myself get stuck from time to time. Stuck not knowing which road to follow. At the fork in the road, do I follow left road or the right? There’s a personal practice I’ve begun using only recently to help me. It involves taking myself out of the monkey mind, away from the million possibilities and potential outcomes. I tune into the only thing I can be certain of in any present moment - my body.
I bring up a decision I am trying to make. This could be as simple as a decision to reach out to a friend, or what to wear on a cold day; to as complicated as making decisions about making a commitment, or planning an international trip.
I bring my awareness to a particular option. I stop. And I tune into my body instead of my mind.
1. Am I clenching? Am I holding tension in a particular area? Does it feel like there is a sense of urgency? Is there fluttering and flips in my stomach?
Or…
2. Do I feel a fluttering in my chest? An overflow of love? A whole body “yes”? Do I feel a sense of calmness and peace despite excitement being present?
3. Or do I feel none of this? Do I feel something else?
I have found that this physicial check in allows me to come back to my highest truth, and my truest intuition. The monkey mind will monkey you around, but the body is often trying to give us messages that we cannot even decipher due to living our lives trapped and controlled by the mind. When I feel tension, a sense of urgency, I am likely making this decision out of fear. If I feel an overflow in my chest, an openness and peace, it is my heart that is making the decision. If I cannot feel strong feelings of either of these sorts (which, is not often… if I am tuning into my body it is typically because I am having a hard time tuning into my heart and escaping the monkey mind) then I know more time is needed to make the decision, and that perhaps there is no need to rush a choice at this time.
From a place of urgency, or anxiety, we can feel the strong desire to force all the puzzle pieces together. I've learned this last year looking back at the decisions I've made and how the result manifested for my life. When I rushed plans out of fear, anxiety, fear of missing out, or fear that another opportunity would not come - I haven't received the best experience or have noticed many obstacles and messages telling me I am heading in the wrong direction. In that, I believe I've attracted and manifested a "lacking" experience when I made the choice to endeavour from a place of perceived lacking. When it came from believing in abundance, the result was beautiful. I can trace back big and small decisions and I can remember how I ignored my body in favour of the monkey mind. I can see now that my mind has not ultimately served my greatest purpose.
The puzzle will be more beautiful, and it will stay together longer, if we allow the pieces to find their place in the big picture. We can breathe and pay attention to the physical messages when our minds seem like they are trying to monkey us around.