The Vegan Wishing Well

A document of the small triumphs, trials and journey of transitioning into vegan-world
lifeyogakingston: Yoga and our Relationships Influential American teacher of spirituality Ram Dass once said, “if you think you’re enlightened, go visit your family”. Even the gatherings of relatively happy families can have an unspoken background conversation, with everyone’s issues bumping up against each other over drinks or dinner. Memories, rivalries, and disappointments are only a part of it. More basic is the forced encounter with parts of yourself that you thought you outgrew years ago, and the equally insidious confrontation with the ideas that family members have about who you are. A family is not just a collection of individuals united by blood or marriage. It’s a system, an entity of its own. Years after you move out of your parent’s house, the family system tends to pull you into itself even when you’ve sworn that this time you’ll remain an island of loving detachment. So you revert to your role as the family rebel, or the good kid who takes care of everyone else. And that’s just your family of origin - Let’s not even talk about your in-laws and the roles they might have cast you into! None of us can help being influenced by how our family members, or anyone else, perceive us. The way you are seen and mirrored by others will, to some extent, create your perception of yourself, and this is never more true than in your family system. In other words, you grow up seeing yourself through the eyes of your family. Those early patterns can easily become part of your internal wiring. So, when you slip into the old roles, you are slipping into a consciousness matrix that you and your family members each hold in your individual emotional brains, and mirror for each other. Your family members share not only blood and genes, but also values and response patterns -regardless of how much all of you may have changed or worked through the family stuff. In my family, we routinely interrupted each other - a tendency I carried into later life, as friends and colleagues would point out to me. But, along with the normal discomfort of seeing your personal eccentricities mirrored by your family members, there can be more serious sources of discomfort at family dinners. Political and cultural differences, for example - one classic disjunction between yogis and their families. Perhaps you have parents with strong conventional values, or your siblings have turned into people whose view of life is radically different from yours. Maybe you have political or religious views that you have to keep to yourself in order not to wreck the atmosphere at dinner. I know that, when my older relatives (Depression-era grandparents for example) are reminded that I am a vegetarian - again at EVERY family dinner, but the way - they look at me as though I just told them I implanted faces into their wine glass - disgust mixed with misunderstanding.  Even for those of us lucky enough to have a great relationship with our extended family, there are often layers of unspoken feelings, difficult issues, hidden resentments. The family dysfunctions can burst out during get-togethers, or, just as often, be hidden under a veneer of normalcy that can make such gatherings feel strained and artificial. If you see your extended family only on holidays (this Easter weekend, for example), it’s possible to paste on a smile and skate through the occasion, knowing that you’ll soon be able to leave. But at some point, most of us feel the need to evolve our relationship with our families. They are, after all, central players in our karmic drama. No matter how different you may be from the rest of your family, you were born into this particular configuration of souls for a reason. Regardless of whether you accept the notion of karma, or believe in past lives, the truth is that your family relationships are part of who you are. You can break up with your romantic partners, even your spouse. You can quit your job and stop being friends with people you’ve grown beyond. But you can’t divorce your family (though in extreme situations you may decide that it’s better not to spend much time with them). At some point, it might makes sense to learn how to turn them into allies of your growth. At the very least, being with your family is a powerful spur to self-understanding. You may never get your father to approve of your choice of dress or your spiritual affiliation, but you can learn a lot about yourself by observing your reactions to him. Every member of your family, or co-workers who drive you nuts, or ‘frenemies’, is a teacher. Some of them teach you through their good qualities. Some of them teach you through their mistakes. Even more important, your family members offer a mirror of the issues that confront you in this lifetime. They show you your strengths - the skills and competencies you came into this life having mastered. They also reveal your weaknesses, the wounds and triggers that you’ll need to deal with sooner or later. A family gathering offers you the opportunity to understand something about who you are and what you need to work on. If you accept the fact that these people truly are your kinfolk-internally as well as externally-then they become teachers in the truest sense. They are the book in which you can read your own character and karma. Mindful awareness is one of the key yogic practices for transformation. As painful as it can be, taking an honest look at what sets you off is one step to freedom. Be aware of your reactions as you step into the family circle. What happens to your body? What emotions come up? Notice the thoughts that cycle through your mind. Notice what you say and do. Is it reactive? Are you withdrawn? Friendly? Do your words feel authentic? Be aware of the thoughts that grab you. Then refocus. Become the knower of these thoughts and feelings. If need be, go into the bathroom, take some deep belly breaths, and tune in to the awareness that holds all this. If you are visiting your family this long weekend - or for the next time that you see or speak to them - see if you can look at each of your family members and ask yourself the following questions: What do you show me about myself? What is it about myself that irritates me when I think about you? What do you teach me about how to live? In fact, one of the best ways to approach a family gathering is to see it as a special opportunity for practice. Rather than go into it with expectations or dread, wanting to be recognized or loved by family members, or counting the minutes until you can leave, decide that you’ll approach your family gathering as a practice experiment, an unparalleled opportunity to put your yoga to the test. What follows are some traditional yogic practices that, when applied to family dynamics, can turn a family gathering into a practice of internal yoga. Thanks for reading, Carly. As always, please forward comments, question, and blog ideas to blog@lifeyogakingston.com.  Portions adapted from ‘Your Roots are Showing’ by Sally Kempton.

lifeyogakingston:

Yoga and our Relationships

Influential American teacher of spirituality Ram Dass once said, “if you think you’re enlightened, go visit your family”. Even the gatherings of relatively happy families can have an unspoken background conversation, with everyone’s issues bumping up against each other over drinks or dinner. Memories, rivalries, and disappointments are only a part of it. More basic is the forced encounter with parts of yourself that you thought you outgrew years ago, and the equally insidious confrontation with the ideas that family members have about who you are.

A family is not just a collection of individuals united by blood or marriage. It’s a system, an entity of its own. Years after you move out of your parent’s house, the family system tends to pull you into itself even when you’ve sworn that this time you’ll remain an island of loving detachment. So you revert to your role as the family rebel, or the good kid who takes care of everyone else. And that’s just your family of origin - Let’s not even talk about your in-laws and the roles they might have cast you into!

None of us can help being influenced by how our family members, or anyone else, perceive us. The way you are seen and mirrored by others will, to some extent, create your perception of yourself, and this is never more true than in your family system. In other words, you grow up seeing yourself through the eyes of your family. Those early patterns can easily become part of your internal wiring. So, when you slip into the old roles, you are slipping into a consciousness matrix that you and your family members each hold in your individual emotional brains, and mirror for each other. Your family members share not only blood and genes, but also values and response patterns -regardless of how much all of you may have changed or worked through the family stuff.

In my family, we routinely interrupted each other - a tendency I carried into later life, as friends and colleagues would point out to me. But, along with the normal discomfort of seeing your personal eccentricities mirrored by your family members, there can be more serious sources of discomfort at family dinners. Political and cultural differences, for example - one classic disjunction between yogis and their families. Perhaps you have parents with strong conventional values, or your siblings have turned into people whose view of life is radically different from yours. Maybe you have political or religious views that you have to keep to yourself in order not to wreck the atmosphere at dinner. I know that, when my older relatives (Depression-era grandparents for example) are reminded that I am a vegetarian - again at EVERY family dinner, but the way - they look at me as though I just told them I implanted faces into their wine glass - disgust mixed with misunderstanding. 

Even for those of us lucky enough to have a great relationship with our extended family, there are often layers of unspoken feelings, difficult issues, hidden resentments. The family dysfunctions can burst out during get-togethers, or, just as often, be hidden under a veneer of normalcy that can make such gatherings feel strained and artificial. If you see your extended family only on holidays (this Easter weekend, for example), it’s possible to paste on a smile and skate through the occasion, knowing that you’ll soon be able to leave. But at some point, most of us feel the need to evolve our relationship with our families. They are, after all, central players in our karmic drama.

No matter how different you may be from the rest of your family, you were born into this particular configuration of souls for a reason. Regardless of whether you accept the notion of karma, or believe in past lives, the truth is that your family relationships are part of who you are. You can break up with your romantic partners, even your spouse. You can quit your job and stop being friends with people you’ve grown beyond. But you can’t divorce your family (though in extreme situations you may decide that it’s better not to spend much time with them). At some point, it might makes sense to learn how to turn them into allies of your growth. At the very least, being with your family is a powerful spur to self-understanding.

You may never get your father to approve of your choice of dress or your spiritual affiliation, but you can learn a lot about yourself by observing your reactions to him. Every member of your family, or co-workers who drive you nuts, or ‘frenemies’, is a teacher. Some of them teach you through their good qualities. Some of them teach you through their mistakes. Even more important, your family members offer a mirror of the issues that confront you in this lifetime. They show you your strengths - the skills and competencies you came into this life having mastered. They also reveal your weaknesses, the wounds and triggers that you’ll need to deal with sooner or later. A family gathering offers you the opportunity to understand something about who you are and what you need to work on. If you accept the fact that these people truly are your kinfolk-internally as well as externally-then they become teachers in the truest sense. They are the book in which you can read your own character and karma.

Mindful awareness is one of the key yogic practices for transformation. As painful as it can be, taking an honest look at what sets you off is one step to freedom. Be aware of your reactions as you step into the family circle. What happens to your body? What emotions come up? Notice the thoughts that cycle through your mind. Notice what you say and do. Is it reactive? Are you withdrawn? Friendly? Do your words feel authentic? Be aware of the thoughts that grab you. Then refocus. Become the knower of these thoughts and feelings. If need be, go into the bathroom, take some deep belly breaths, and tune in to the awareness that holds all this.

If you are visiting your family this long weekend - or for the next time that you see or speak to them - see if you can look at each of your family members and ask yourself the following questions: What do you show me about myself? What is it about myself that irritates me when I think about you? What do you teach me about how to live? In fact, one of the best ways to approach a family gathering is to see it as a special opportunity for practice. Rather than go into it with expectations or dread, wanting to be recognized or loved by family members, or counting the minutes until you can leave, decide that you’ll approach your family gathering as a practice experiment, an unparalleled opportunity to put your yoga to the test. What follows are some traditional yogic practices that, when applied to family dynamics, can turn a family gathering into a practice of internal yoga.

Thanks for reading, 

Carly.

As always, please forward comments, question, and blog ideas to blog@lifeyogakingston.com. 

Portions adapted from ‘Your Roots are Showing’ by Sally Kempton.

jivananda: Natarajasana: Seek balance in all things

jivananda:

Natarajasana: Seek balance in all things

Its crazy how we are brainwashed into thinking that meat is the way to go. I remember all these biology textbooks that were like “the human jaw has developed for meat consumption through centuries of hunting in tribal communities…” Dont get me wrong, I remember tasting meat and its great, but I’m so over that now! :-p And living vegan is great :-)

Its crazy how we are brainwashed into thinking that meat is the way to go.

I remember all these biology textbooks that were like “the human jaw has developed for meat consumption through centuries of hunting in tribal communities…”

Dont get me wrong, I remember tasting meat and its great, but I’m so over that now! :-p

And living vegan is great :-)

(Source: reloveplanet)