Personal Blog: Wrecking my Scooter in India
I'm learning so much here at Sharath Yoga Center in Karnataka, India and am surpassing my limiting beliefs about what I am capable of daily. But learning to drive a scooter in India might be my greatest "yoga teacher" yet. 🤣
There are no (enforced) rules here, the streets are in constant beautiful chaos. Motorcycles, auto rickshaws, huge trucks, people, and animals of all sorts share the roads. The cows in particular, run the streets. They know people respect them here and won't think twice about strolling into your path or having a good snooze in the middle of the highway. Yet somehow all the moving parts flow cooperatively and everyone gets where they're going.
One of the most profoundly impactful changes that happened to me when I first started practicing yoga back in 2016, was that I began to notice the quality of my breathing in random moments outside of practice. I'd be washing dishes or walking to work, and suddenly catch myself holding my breath. This translated to involuntary tension in my body, to stiff shoulders or clenched fists. The simple act of noticing what was happening, allowed me to consciously breathe again and to release tension that would have otherwise lingered undetected. Physical tension that we are unaware of can affect our behaviors and emotions in sneaky and unpleasant ways.
After all my years of practice so far, I am still discovering places where I subconsciously hold tension, especially in my deep abdominal muscles. The breakthroughs that I'm experiencing here in Mysuru, are more related to my learning how to let go and breathe calmly in order to go deeper, rather than trying harder as is my usual approach to overcoming a challenge. But while many of my teachers including Sharath have told me on numerous occasions to relax, it was my daily scooter drive to the shala that drove this lesson home.
During my first week of "scooting," I could feel myself shaking when huge buses or trucks whizzed past me by only a few inches. I'd hold my breath, feel my whole body go rigid and my fingers clench the handlebars as if a death grip would somehow protect me. The fear caused me at different times to slow down, waver, or alter my course of direction. It interrupted not only my flow but the previously cohesive flow of everyone else around me. Add to this the fact that I was getting less oxygen and thinking less clearly from holding my breath and you've got a dangerous situation.
I had a minor wreck on the highway on my third day of driving. It was entirely my fault. I got scared, tensed up, and slammed on my brakes when I should have kept my steady pace. The scooter skidded and I went rolling into the road facing oncoming traffic. Motorcycles dodged me on all sides. I was thankfully unharmed, but took the lesson to heart: If you can't relax and breathe, you're eventually going to get hurt. This is true in asana and in life. Much of the tension and resistance in our lives is created artificially in our own minds. This is not to say that the tension is any less real though.
Our minds are extremely powerful. The significance of the placebo effect in pharmaceutical trials clearly illustrates this fact. And the existence of somatoform disorders (psychiatric illnesses that present as physical issues) such as vaginismus (when vaginal muscles involuntarily or persistently contract and prevent intercourse) or pseudocyesis (when a female OR male-bodied person falsely believes they're pregnant and experiences the associated symptoms) shows that when our minds believe something to be true, our bodies will cooperate to reinforce that truth. In other words, if an executive assistant is agonizing over their upcoming presentation while seated safely at their desk, their body doesn't know the difference between real mortal danger and the excessive fear of social failure. It responds as if it is being attacked, releasing all the hormones necessary to fight or flee and prepares the muscles to respond. This would be useful if they were facing a literal predator, but more often, the threat is psychological in nature, and activating the fight or flight response is counterproductive. We can't control our heart rate, blood pressure, or endocrine system directly. But we CAN control our breath rate, which affects all of the above.
After recovering emotionally from my minor wreck, I was fortunate enough to have a local friend offer to meet me at the shala so I could follow him home a few times and rebuild my confidence in heavy traffic before driving alone. I spontaneously started repeating a mantra to myself "Just breathe. You're okay. Just breathe." And slowly but surely, with practice and patience, the unnecessary tension and fear faded away. A healthy respect and cautiousness remains of course, but after just over a month of living here I'm passing busses, honking and hand signaling with the best of em'. To say I'm excessively proud of myself would be an understatement.
My scooter story illustrates how my breath had the power to affect not only me but the world around me. When I interrupted the flow of one moving piece, I interrupted the flow of everyone else by default. We are all interconnected.
Research has shown how the human nervous system coregulates. One person breathing more slowly can literally downregulate another person's breath rate, heart rate, and activate their rest and digest response simply by being in close proximity. This is just one reason I am so passionate about sharing the practice of yoga with others. When we take the time to notice our breath on our yoga mats and learn to better control it, we improve not only our own ability to downregulate our nervous systems, be less reactive and find more peace, but we subtly improve the environment around us to allow others to tap into that calmness as well.
If any of this interests or resonated with you, and you'd like to start developing a conscious awareness of your breath in order to reduce unnecessary tension in the body check out two of my offerings below. A virtual yoga class that includes beginner-friendly pranayam (breathwork) and asana (yoga postures), or an initial private consultation at a reduced rate of $45.
A much less chaotic moment on a back road (Don’t worry I was a passenger when this was taken, not photographing and driving!)
