Compassion in Action

Breathe in the world's pain, breathe out love, and let karuna (compassion) blossom in your life.

By Anne Cushman

An Inner Oasis

Asana practice can be a powerful tool for helping us study and transform the way we habitually relate to pain and suffering. Practicing asana refines and enhances our ability to feel, peeling away the layers of insulation in the body and mind that prevent us from sensing what is actually going on, right here, right now.

Through conscious breath and movement, we gradually dissolve our inner armor, melting through the unconscious contractions--born of fear and self-protection--that deaden our sensitivity. Our yoga then becomes a laboratory in which we can study in exquisite detail our habitual responses to pain and discomfort--and dissolve unconscious patterns that block our innate compassion.

In our asana practice, while being careful to avoid creating or aggravating injuries, we can deliberately explore long holds that evoke intense sensations and emotions. Then we can investigate: Do we respond to our weaknesses and limitations--a back that goes out, a torn hamstring--with tenderness or with judgment and impatience? Do we pull away from painful sensations? Are we drawn irresistibly to pick at them like a scab? Or can we learn to soften our jaws and bellies even when our leg muscles feel like they are on fire?

When unpleasant emotions--jealousy, anger, fear, grief, restlessness--flood us during practice, we can train ourselves to swim straight into them. We can study the way these emotions manifest themselves as physical sensations: a clenched jaw, buzzing nerves, hunched shoulders, a collapsed chest. And we can welcome any part of our body and mind that particularly needs compassionate attention--whether it's a throat tight with sorrow, a stomach queasy with fear, or anxieties that rob us of energy and zest.

If this focus on the uncomfortable becomes agitating, we can center our attention on the steady metronome of the breath, asking the discomfort to take a backseat in our awareness until we are steady again. And if we continue to feel overwhelmed, we can move into a more soothing practice, using our yoga to help us cultivate and take refuge in an inner oasis of peace and joy. As Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writes, "It is important for us to stay in touch with the suffering of the world...in order to keep compassion alive in us. But we must be careful not to take in too much. Any remedy must be taken in the proper dose. We need to stay in touch with suffering only to the extent that we will not forget, so that compassion will flow within us and be a source of energy for our actions."

Kinship with All Beings

Working with yoga in this way, we take the first steps toward becoming intimate with our own inner worlds in all of their light and shadow--an intimacy that is one of the foundations of true karuna. As Chödrön writes, "If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them. True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings."

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