Having a 'discomfort practice' helps you cultivate superpowers

I’ve recently started using the term ‘discomfort practice’ to describe those moments when anyone consciously chooses to be present with discomfort - to practice it. This is basically what I teach when I teach Yin Yoga each week. It’s a passive, floor-based practice in which students hold poses for sustained periods (like a few minutes) in order to soften and access deeper stretching in their fascia/connective tissue. If it sounds easy, imagine sitting in a slightly challenging position as your body starts to loosen and open, until you discover a new ‘edge’ of your comfort zone you didn’t even know existed. And then you sit there and breathe and practice not running away mentally.

Yes, I too have had moments of making mental grocery lists / checking out my pedicure / thinking about killing my yoga teacher just then. But the more I have practiced stillness and simply breathing and being present, no matter how uncomfortable things get, the more patient I have become. The less reactive I am able to be. The more perspective on discomfort I have - that it’s temporary. And, yes, my comfort zone has expanded.

Fast forward to March 2020, where my life in Barcelona came to a screeching halt as entered the type of lockdown where I barely left my house for three months. All of my work stopped. There was no one to hug. The person I had only just started dating got so ill with covid there were put in a coma and on a ventilator, out of touch in a hospital I wasn’t allowed to visit. It was like being pinned to the floor by the Universe and asked ‘So you think you know about discomfort, huh?’ All of the ways in which I subconsciously coped and distracted myself were stripped away and I was NOT happy. In fact, I was downright irritated. I fought it. I fought it hard. I didn’t WANT to sit in the discomfort. I was angry. I resisted.

And then, gradually, I began to soften. To accept. To sit with the discomfort and get comfortable with it. And then the riches of it began to become more apparent (and probably will continue to for some time). New connections. New ways of working. New collaborators. New patience with life and myself. More space for the right things to flow in and the things that weren’t serving me to flow out, because I wasn’t able to delude myself that I had control over anything. 

I practiced softening until I actually softened. Until I expanded. Evolved. I can’t imagine how difficult this period would have been if I hadn’t already had a ‘discomfort practice,’ with the insight and techniques to breathe my way through the darkest moments, rather than just open a bottle of cava or try to save myself through work. 

And then #BlackLivesMatter kicked off anew, after the murder of George Floyd. I’ve worked on and been conscious of racial equity and justice issues for a very long time now, so I’d had that initial shock of realising I was White, privileged and didn’t know what else to do / think / be. I’ve had 20 years to work on this and there are still things to work on to use my privilege to create space for others. There are still things I get wrong. And there are still days when I need a break, so I can re-fuel to come back to the fight. Years of being a campaigner and activist, or the lone voice saying ‘This system is keeping people in poverty; I don’t care what your shareholders think’ has taught me that, to fight the war, sometimes you have to choose your battles and sometimes you just need a nap or a week off. But you have to come back; otherwise you’re checking out on your privilege.

My relationship with discomfort had already changed and my perspective shifted over the lockdown. So now I teach differently. Rather than telling people to find their edge and sit in it, I encourage them to find their edge and then find out where they need to be in relation to that edge in that moment. Today. In this breath. Because it’s not necessarily a virtue to always throw yourself head-first into discomfort (as is my personality to do); the value of a ‘discomfort practice’ is in having a relationship with discomfort. Of seeing it, of saying hello, of knowing it’s there, and of choosing when and how to engage with it and when to take breaks.

But having a discomfort practice cultivates super-powers. You can get through anything five breaths at a time, and sitting in discomfort is the fast track to rewiring your brain and impulses to believe and sit in that. Get yourself some superpowers. Start a discomfort practice.

You can join me from anywhere in the world for Friday online yin yoga classes or book a private session with me by clicking here.