A YOGI CHA BLOG

The constitution of you changes in perfect symbiosis with the rest 

Personality is on a spectrum.

We all have traits of it all. You are the narcissist, the empath, the introvert, the extrovert the thinker and the feeler. We have tendencies of hyper vigilance depending on the time in our life and the environmental context. We are not mechanical, we are organic creatures. We adapt, that is how we survive. This is why you will score one thing on a personality test when you are 20 and have a totally different outcome when you are 35.

If you would sit down in front of an Ayurvedic doctor, they would ask you to reply to the questions of your constitution depending on what you are experiencing NOW as opposed to what might USUALLY be or what it was like before.  Because Ayurveda is based on the fact that we change with our surroundings. Just like any other organism.

Ayurveda looks at the universe as the play of the elements that they reduce into three qualities. The three doshas play together in everything and we are also part of this everything. Depending on when and where I was born, on what my parents constitution is; I will be traced with one part of earth and water, another with fire and water and of course, a part of air. Like a trace of what was happening around me at that moment, I will be the result of this.

When I move around in the world, I will take this with me and therefore I will react to the changes of my surroundings accordingly.

If my surroundings change into a much more dry and cold climate, it will affect how my organism situates itself in the play.

What Ayurveda teaches us is to come back to homeostasis.

I love this principle because basically it means: this is what you’ve got to deal with and this is how you can find your way back to peace.

As we move through the year, the transition between seasons is decorated with rituals so that our mind and heart can welcome the new season. We condition ourselves for winter by celebrating Christmas, originally of course the pagan tradition linked to this season in the northern and western hemisphere. It looks something like preparing a big feast with the goodies from the rest of the year, stocked and ready to fill our bellies when the frost has hardened the soil and the animals have turned to their nests for hibernation. We hibernate in a way too, spending more time inside with lights and warmth. It is the moment for introspection for some, slowing down and conserving the energy, keeping the internal fire alive.

The rituals and traditions around the changing seasons are all there to help the body as well in it’s transformation. What we do with our physical bodies and what we eat will be traced in the rites of passage but it really helps us to transform from one “food body” to the next.

It really is the reminder of the constant change we are all a part of.

It really is the reminder to be humble because what we can do and eat one day might not work the next.

The better we become at accepting this constant change, the easier it also becomes to change along with the rest.

The better we become at being humble to what we can do today, the easier it becomes to feel gratitude on a daily basis.

Developing this attitude allows us to more easily change our bad habits and detach from limiting beliefs.

How so you ask?

Our biggest limit to change is our incapacity to be present. The more we go on automatic mode, the more we just let what has always been, be. We just do. It is who we are.

But if we can see the symbiosis between ourselves and the rest of nature, we KNOW that nothing actually stays the same at all. We becomes aware of subtle changes in nature and in ourselves and we adjust as a way to come back to homeostasis.

This awareness is the antidote to the automatic mode of always doing the same. It is adaptation the way any animal or plant does it.

There are plenty of obstacles to this awareness, created by our conscious mind at some point but then recorded in our subconscious part, in the automatic mode and settled in our behaviour.

As we begin to take an interest in this mechanism, we can see the obstacles we have created and therefore begin to confront them so that we can overcome them.

Finding peace, feeling acceptance of oneself and enjoying the present moment comes as the fruit of developing gratitude. And this is where we can close the loop of my earlier statement.

Following the changes of the seasons creates the presence and awareness of subtle changes as well as making us face the humble truth of how transient we are.

The day I realised that life is too long to not make the changes needed to enjoy it was also the moment I understood that it also is quite long and so we can renew ourselves every day if we just become aware. That is where the journey of the Self Image Project started, and then made its way to you.

Join the Self Image Project today : www.yogicha.com/self-image-register/