Anukampa Yoga - Living with Care
Thursdays 5 - 6:15 PM
In May of 2021, I posted an essay on the website introducing the word, Anukampa. This is a word, typically translated as compassion, that Gil Fronsdal discovered as he was translating the early texts. Anukampa turns out to be very common in the texts but is rarely used in traditional teachings. Gil’s translation is broader than compassion and includes what we usually mean when we say “Care” as in a CARE package.
The Thursday evening (5 – 6:15) Yoga class, Anukampa Yoga, focusses on the cultivation of care, both on and off the yoga mat. The class is gentle, emphasizes mindfulness, and especially self-care. For the next 10 months, I will be introducing a series of the Buddha’s traditional teachings on the Perfections (pāramī) which, as the name suggests, are noble character qualities generally associated with enlightened beings. This list enumerates the traditional understanding of what we want to cultivate to improve our capacity to live carefully, not just for ourselves but for all living beings. Each month for the next 10 months in the Anukampa Yoga class, we will be exploring the cultivation of a different one of the perfections along with our postural practice.
The first quality on the list of the Perfections is Generosity. I suspect you have heard spiritual teachers suggesting that you can practice generosity by giving or donating time or money to the organization. Yes, this is how spiritual organizations are supported but there are other targets for our generosity that may be skillfully used to cultivate our capacity for generosity. The first week of the series, on March 5th, I reminded students that cultivating generosity for ourselves might be a good place to start our practice. After all, it is not wise to give unless we actually have resources to share and we genuinely feel the aspiration to give, not just to get something back. We create our own resources with good self-care. We eat healthy, sleep, exercise and maintain social connections so that we have the energy and abundance to share. I often hear Yoga teachers invoking this recommendation at the end of class by saying “Taking care of ourselves, we take care of others. Taking care of others, we take care of ourselves.”
Another gift that generosity can bring is the generosity of providing a community in which you feel safe. Many students in yoga classes all over the country report an awareness of feelings of safety, relaxation and open-heartedness during savasana, the closing pose at the end of class. Just sharing space with others that we believe are on a spiritual path to behave ethically, has the potential to make us feel safe.
Behaving ethically is a precious gift of our generosity. One way we can express our ethical intention to provide safety is to avoid speech that is harsh or divisive. We don’t gossip, we don’t use negative labels to describe others, we protect the clarity of our minds by staying calm and non-reactive. Research in psychology has shown that when we care for someone, we cut them slack, we give them the benefit of the doubt and refrain from reacting negatively when they do something unskillful. Knowing what we should do when we see unskillful behavior in others is complicated and beyond the scope of our space today, but it is clear that negative reactivity is not likely to improve the situation.
This is a sample and illustration of what it means to train and cultivate a healthy mind and body. When we practice yoga, we are training both. Change is possible with practice. Our confidence in the process motivates us to persist on the path to health, happiness and harmony in our community. Join us on Thursday evenings from 5:00 – 6:30 for Anukampa Yoga.