Curiosity over conclusion

Curiosity over conclusion

Are you so sure? Stay curious.

"Can someone actually always think they are right?" My Mom is largely my inspiration for my life path and work, and so many of her wise kernels stick with me. The person actually always did think they were right. It was impossible to have a conversation. It was always a monologue, always shutting down other views with reasoning that never opened up to alternate perspectives - I am right, I know, you are wrong, you don't. Exhausting. It's bad for our health to operate at this level of conviction, and terrible for our relationships.

This decade, our personal and collective circumstances and trauma has created similarly exhaustingly polarized environments that may not only coerce and force us to choose sides, but also to defend our views as if our lives depend on it (and granted, they often do).

Are the sides choosing us, or are we choosing the sides becomes the questions. When our minds are not stable, delusion can parade as conviction, and Yoga knows that from the very beginning of its defining text. Both correct and incorrect perception happen via the same mechanisms, which are threefold: direct sensory contact, inference and/or via a reliable source. Correct perception is preferable, but it does not always feel so.

Let’s example these mechanisms for correct comprehension. We look outside, water is continuously falling from the sky, it is raining - sensory contact. We see the ground is wet when we go outside in the morning, we infer that the wet ground is due to rain. We’ve learned a tropical depression brings wind and rain, it’s forecasted to do so this weekend, we cancel our pool party, and sure enough it rains. These are simple examples; however, we can also apply these to more complex situations.

Let’s example these same mechanisms, direct perception, inference and reliable source, for incorrect comprehension. I hear rain on the roof, it’s raining - but it’s not rain. My attic fan is broken and making strange sounds (true story - I keep thinking it’s raining lately, but it’s the fan malfunctioning). The ground is wet, it rained - but it didn’t; instead, my neighbor’s sprinkler sprinkled into my yard. My Iphone tells me it’s going to rain all week, every day, while I’m on vacation. I bring a rain coat and an umbrella. I change my vacation plans. It didn’t rain.

How to discover clarity in the midst of conditioning and dysregulation? Awareness that curiosity is possible. Rather than conclude, pause, breathe, slow down, stay present, enter a calmer state. Here, decisions and conclusions are based less on conditioning and more on clarity, less on imagination and more on available facts, less on believing this one or that one, more on personal research.

October will bring on two new courses, appropriate for everyone, especially those struggling personally: Trauma Informed Yoga for a Calm Mind and Body, taught by Kathleen Zadrozny, and Yoga Therapy for a Calm Mind and Body, taught by Danielle. Look for more classes like this, because the only good stress is the kind we can process, learn with and grow from - and that's what we'll do.