W.W.B.D.?

What Would Bikram do?

I had this thought as I was lying in the final Svastana last night at yoga - love and pain. I had just pushed myself beyond the normal human capacity for intense physical movement within a 110 degree heated room. This type of yoga is the ultimate metaphor for life - it makes you feel uncomfortable, withering in overheated exhaustion and wanting to just do the seemingly easy thing of giving up and walking out. Yet the only thing you really have to battle is your mind. Your body can be pushed drastically beyond any measure of  suffering or discomfort. Will you give up the ultimate benefits of staying the hour long course or will you give in to your egoistic thoughts that just want you to do what seems easiest at the time?

So I laid there. And instead of trying to clear my thoughts and focus on my breathing - which is a common thread linking many Eastern philosophies - I desired to just feel the discomfort, the exhaustion, the heavy breathing and over-heated particles of every bodily facet. I said to myself, if I can just embrace this "pain" for what it is, it won't become exacerbated by my attempt to ignore it.

So, is that how I showed love for myself? Is that a part of self-love? Being able to embrace the times when you are uncomfortable and not letting any external forces, including your ego-driven thoughts, control you? I think the same is true within our relationships. It's easy to walk out when things get tough. By walking out, that could be anything that distracts you from the discomfort of the situation - cheating, passive-aggressiveness, ignorance, shutting down, breaking up. I'm not saying any of those things aren't normal human reactions. (Well, EXCEPT for the cheating. It's my opinion that there's never a good enough reason to do something like that. That concept is for another post, however.) Pain and suffering is interwoven into life, relationships, and love. The greatest test for us, though, is how we perceive the discomfort and use it as a means to advance our own relationships...be it with our own thoughts or our own loved ones.