I have no reason to believe that my New Year’s resolutions will stick. But somehow, I can’t resist the annual temptation to fix my life. A new year is full of potential for change, and to miss the opportunity to make unrealistic promises to myself… well I wouldn’t think of it.
I will finally give up bread, once and for all. I will stop rolling my eyes at strangers for no reason. I will meditate each day, start exercising in the morning, and plan for my financial future. These plans all sound so reasonable. So why is it that come February, those resolutions are long forgotten? Why am I back on bread, back to the 8pm exercise routine, and back to overspending on everything but my retirement savings program?
I promised in my last article that I would attempt to explain (to the best of my non-expert ability) the reasons that we hold so tightly to the patterns in our lives. How is it that every year, without fail, we attempt to change things about ourselves and fail to make any progress? Well that’s simple, and it all comes down to our Biology. These patterns were carved when we were between 12 and 18 months old, which for most of us was a very long time ago. And the portion of the brain that processes these emotional patterns (the limbic system) operates below the level of the cortex (the thinking brain), subconsciously. So you never really had a chance.
So you see, these responses that we have to change (fear, anger, anxiety) run deep, and they’re not just in our imagination. They live in our brains like the deep, inescapable mud ruts of a true Belgian cross race. Neural ruts, if you will. And what do you do when faced with these ruts in bike racing? You aim your wheel for it. Why? Because it’s easier than making a new line. Your brain does exactly the same thing. Compounding the issue, these neural ruts (patterns) grow deeper and more intense each time you engage in the habitual behavior.
So basically, your brain has spent your entire life riding the good lines… and you wonder why it’s so hard to change things.
But don’t despair. It’s not too late! Your brain is fully capable of change. You just have to do things differently. In fact, as a simple exercise, next time you come across a difficult situation that would invoke anxiety or stress, do anything differently than you normally would (I stole this from the Buddhists). Next time you catch yourself starting to freak out, think for a minute about why it’s happening. In these situations, the freak out generally comes either from predicting what will happen in the future, which you can’t control, or remembering something that happened in the past, which you can’t change. So just try something else. Walk outside and sit on the front steps. Go in your room and get under the covers for 5 minutes (your head too). Scream at the top of your lungs into a pillow. Lie on the floor with your legs up the wall (this solves most problems). Do anything to shake up the old patterns that are no longer positively contributing to your life. You’ll find that this simple exercise is very difficult. That’s the point. Do it anyway.
Going a bit further, yoga can help us to access the emotional brain, where the patterning happens to begin with, and where new patterns can be formed. We practice staying calm in stressful and difficult yoga postures, and then hope that our bodies remember what to do when stress arises out in the real world. We do twisting postures that create constriction in our breathing. Overtime, we learn that in twists, we can breathe more into the back portion of our lungs, and these postures become easier.
We hold standing postures for as long as we can. We watch as our minds freak out, panic and request that we stop. But we don’t stop. We breathe and continue, and over time our bodies learn to be strong and relaxed at the same time, and the postures get easier. We lie down to rest at the end of our practice and our minds start racing. The grocery list, the plans for the weekend, the next race, TAXES. Eventually, with practice, we learn to acknowledge these thoughts and then let them go. At least for a few minutes, we breathe and continue to lay there.
Don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t always work. Sometimes you can’t ignore the thoughts that come in. Sometimes yoga is like life: Hard and frustrating and impossible-feeling. But other times, it does work and things do shift for the better. With practice, even centuries old patterns can change course as our brains carve new, positive, healing neural ruts and our behaviors reinforce them. With practice and a lot of patience, even the most difficult of New Year’s resolutions can stick.
