Author: Andrew Cawood

We can easily slip into thinking that somewhere around the corner is a big change, the chance of a lifetime. A top job, our achievements recognised, our salary up and all of the day-to-day struggles fading away.

It would be nice if this day would hurry up and happen, so everything we’ve been hoping and working for lined up.

What would you do with an easy life, our health good? A struggle free existence.

It might be hard to imagine, but when that day comes, you’ll wake up, you’ll tend you yourself and the home you live in. Around mid-day you may become hungry. After lunch you may become tired or bored. This bold new life you’ve attained comes with the same requirements of living you have now, perhaps the same responsibilities will exist for you.

The life changing event many of us come to hold out for, might bring us a whole new way of life, but the pattern of your day to day will continue. It must. The tone you set on waking, the thoughts and experiences, the interactions with friends and family. These continue in a regular pattern that has started, remains in motion and will continue to tick away into the future.

Seeing daily life as a fixed experience waiting for a major change or something to sweep away all the heartache and struggle we have now, can keep us waiting or even working for something that may not come along and even if it does, it may not be the life change we expect it to be.

A much more effective is the path of regularity. Small things done often and with awareness rather than big changes or major strokes of luck or fortune.

Regularity is not something we need to introduce, but rather something we need to notice and observe. Each day is a pattern of thinking and doing. We already have the pattern on which our future is built and we already have the small changes that can set us in the right direction. We can’t add regularity to our day, we can only observe what things we do each day and uncover the pattern we’re in.

We can see and notice the patterns of thinking and doing that begin on waking and continue as we lead ourselves to sleep at night.

As we notice some of the patterns of thinking and doing we engage in each day, we can make small changes and small changes made regularly will add up. We may not get the life changing flash of light where everything changes at once.

What will happen, however, as we start to see the regularity within our daily activity is that we can start to make small changes to the pattern that already exists.

We start to interact with the pattern that makes up our journey through life by small adjustment rather than big overhaul.

Over time we learn to tweak the pattern rather than find an escape from it. We make small adjustments that lead to a more harmonious pattern, through the various practices available in Yoga.

All this month we’re inviting you to develop a pattern of practice that will support you along the way. A small 5 minute change to your day that will add up over time and could very well change things for the better.

Feel welcome to practice now with us:

For the practices of yoga, meditation or self-care, regularity and rhythm are central.

A rhythmic beat of a drum is the same sound repeated evenly spaced in time.

For a skilled musician this produces a steady beat and a pleasant sound, perhaps even movement and dance.

The rhythm of the ocean and a wave moving and breaking in a steady pattern. The lapping of water at the feet. A regular morning walk. A steady pattern is soothing and supportive.

The rhythm we’re in with waking and sleeping, checking email, time with friends and taking care of our home environment. The conversations and relationships we have all imbibe their own rhythm that carries us through.

A rhythmic beat that can support us. Or a stop start stutter undermining our efforts for health and vitality.

Consider for a moment how you might make a small change to your rhythm so the pattern improves. What can you add or take away that will simplify the rhythm, or give it some bounce.

We don’t need big changes, just small moves regularly refocused in the direction that matters to us.

The breath is a wonderful tool for practicing regularity. As we develop a routine in Yogic practice or any self care, we must find ways of working with what we have. A busy life. A job or two. The pressures of making things work for ourselves and our family. These types of pressures are true for all of us in some way and it’s impractical to think that we can switch it up one day and have a perfect routine of self care and personal development. We do have to start somewhere however.

Big changes disrupt and can be hard to sustain. Small changes add up to momentous change over time. We can look back at any skill, course of study or health habit we’ve engaged with. When we look back at sustained effort of any kind we see regularity as a common theme. The same thing done again at regular intervals.

If you decide to take on the practice of breathing consciously for 5 minutes a day, the commitment seems small.

Each day you take 5. You watch the breath coming and going. You breathe slowly and carefully observing then deepening the breath. You deepen and slow the breath with some effort. Within days the effort shifts and becomes effortless practice. You find that a pattern of inhalation and exhalation has been created that induces a mild feeling of calm and wellbeing. A pattern that ripples out into the rest of your day.

If you manage to do this once, there’s an invitation to move from a simple start to new and positive habit by doing it a second time. A habit now comprising only 0.347% of any given day.

If you kept this up for 5 days, 10 days, a whole year. Where might it get you?

You might do the math and see that something like this could add up to 1.2 days of your year.

You might even do a little research and find that regular breathing practices alter the state of mind and body and bring us back to a state of rest and ease, but no one will ever be able to give you the experience that comes from creating a positive routine of self care over time.

A 5 minute breathing practice is such a small building block which will make a huge difference when you add it up. Unfortunately getting to the end of the year and cramming it all in a couple of days just won’t cut it.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, For now all we need to do to generate the momentum we need is to pick a time and set a reminder to practice again.

When we work to start a new habit or positively reform an old one, it can seem daunting, and at times things are intent on getting in our way.

Making new habbits can be big job or a little job. When it is a big job, we summon up all the courage and willpower we can and make a 5 point list of all the things we are going to take on tomorrow. We set about making this bold project a reality and off we go with 5 point plan in hand.

Such an approach can lead us to the kind of stop start thrusts of energy into a routine that isnt quite right for our life.

Far better is to take things in smaller chunks and build a small new habit we know we can get to diligently for a while. On a small habit we can add things. Time can be added to a regular routine of movement. A recipe can be added to a healthy meal plan, a day added to a weekly routine of Yoga.

Its often best to start small and grow things than to start big and have to dismantle them.

Many of us in daily life breath incorrectly. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a judgement or criticism but to check if it’s true remember the times you were given instruction back at preschool, primary school or high school. Can’t think of it?

Perhaps you were taught breathing before that at Kinder or in the home.

My first recollection of observing someone breathe was watching the clouds of smoke emerging from a group of smoking adults, so i am pretty sure my education was minimal.

In Yoga we are given good instruction on the correct way to breathe, which helps in many ways to improve the way the mind and the body operate.

It’s is not enough however to merely know how to breathe, but rather to practice these important techniques regularly so they become a natural and automatic practice we do unconsciously.

To begin this journey with the breath you need simply to breathe well for a short time regularly. Each week in a Satyananda Yoga class, each day with a short recorded instruction. To begin with either, we have options for you, so begin now.

Do you remember the last time you said you were going to do something different. To change your outlook. To make the most of a bad situation. To get fit. To eat healthy. We can all slip into thinking we need to make big changes when all we need is small ones done with regularity.

By focussing too much on the big changes we think we need, we can sometimes overlook the small ones that when added together create an incremental wave of positive change.

Starting a new and positive habit can feel daunting when we consider how we often start and stop things. It can create a feeling of failure when we waver even slightly from an ambitious 5 point plan started in a Monday.

We begin with good intentions but fall short on day 4, 9 or even after months of steady work we can slip into old habits or not keep up the ones we know help us the most.

Introducing one small thing can make things more manageable. A new routine that reminds us to stop and appreciate what we have. A daily walk or run, a coffee group with friends.

Welcoming a small change is easier than putting the pressure on to completely change things up and risk it not working out the way we hoped.

When we take one small thing, we just need to try it on today and leave the next small thing for next week or even next month. Making one small thing part of your routine is the exercise of regularity, and when this regularity is applied to our yogic practices, it can soon lead to a more steady and pleasant state of being.

If you’d like to make one small thing this week a daily practice, feel free to practise now for free.

When you think back a year ago, two years, three… do you remember the vision and aspirations you had for yourself?

Did the experiences of day to day life you now have come from an aspiration you had back then?

Did you intend for things to be the way they are now?

Whether you did or didn’t, there’s likely to have been a pattern of thinking and feeling that led you here. A pattern of saying and doing that brought you to your current circumstances.

If life threw you a few challenges along the way that’s to be expected, and true for us all, but we all have within us the power to shape our thinking around these circumstances with intention going forward.

In Yoga we call this intention San Kalpa and it becomes the direction toward which our practice is aimed.

Whether a simple word such as “Abundance”, “Peace” or “Harmony” or a statement such as “I am becoming…” or “I feel…”, the San Kalpa we choose gives power and direction to our yoga practice.

With unwavering repetition, the San Kalpa moves from a simple word or statement to a feeling that charges our being with positive constructive energy.

Our practice of Yoga creates this energy and the San Kalpa gives it direction.

Asana is the word used to describe the various stretches, positions and postures which are used in Yoga. The word Asana itself refers to simple being seated. In an early text on Yoga by Patanjali, the word Asana is used in the following way “sthiram sukham asanam” which means that Asana is the act and process of sitting comfortably and with ease. This refers to both how Asana should be performed(comfortably and with ease) and the attainment of practicing Asana regularly, which is to attain comfort and ease in the body.