Now Focus on the Coffee Table

In my yoga class on Wednesdays, I have this really amazing teacher who has been practicing for almost 10 years and truly understands how to help and teach other people. She's incredibly wise and sweet...I've learned a lot from her already. And to top it all off, she is absolutely gorgeous.

One thing I love about her is that she brings a holistic approach to her classes. We meditate in the beginning and do breathing exercises together. She then tells a story relating to the philosophies of yoga or describes another yogi's teachings. And then we do the physical poses, ending class with meditation.

This past Wednesday, not only did she help me do two moves I had never done before, but she also described an incredibly interesting mental exercise that her friend shared with her. Apparently over the weekend, she was having a tough time with something that made her feel negative and angry, and kept dwelling in these feelings. Her friend told her to look around the living room she was sitting in and notice all the individual things, like the plants, the coffee table, the rug, the books, etc. Then, she was instructed to take out every object one by one until the space was completely empty. She spent a few minutes in her mind removing each thing, and then sat in the empty space, noticing how open and big it felt. Her friend then told her to put the objects back in, one by one. After this, he said to her that the space was still just as large and open, it just had things in it now. He instructed her to look around and notice all the things while also noticing the space. Next, he told her to focus in on the coffee table, so she stared at the coffee table for about a minute in silence. This wise friend of hers then said, "Now this is what you're doing in your life right now. You are focusing in on the coffee table, on this one issue, and you're ignoring everything else in the room. Even when there's something big and stressful going on in your life, there are still other things of equal importance also going on. Now look around and notice the other things in the room." She did this, noticing the plants again, the rug, the couch she was sitting on. And it made her look at all the other things in her life that were going on, and helped her realize that she was zeroing in on the coffee table, even though there was so much else happening in the big, open life of hers.

This story really stuck with me. I've recently adopted this very Buddhist philosophy (as a result of my yoga classes) of trying to look at all of my emotions as another emotion I experience and then move on from. Frustration, anger, sadness and pain are all emotions, just like happiness, pride and excitement are all emotions. Rather than dwelling in one of these, which thus takes away from experiencing whatever else is happening in the room/life, it's best to recognize the feeling, experience it, and then move on. Getting stuck in an emotion, whether it's positive or negative, really doesn't help anyone. It only takes the stuck person out of the present moment and keeps her in the past emotion. And if that emotion is negative, then it keeps her in a really bad place that effects her interactions with other people. But on the other hand, if she stays in a positive emotion, this can also negatively effect her interactions. Rather than getting worked up about an event and its emotions, or overjoyed about an event and its emotions, I want to experience all events and emotions as simply events and emotions. This is a really interesting and difficult practice!

I have yet to try the exercise I described, but just hearing about it really helped me. I want to try it sometime soon, to see if it opens the space around me a little bit more and helps me look at all the aspects of my life instead of just the few I typically focus on. And who knows... maybe it will help me see my tiny, cozy apartment as an enormous loft with plenty of space for dinner parties. We'll see.