What Sitting with Discomfort Can Teach You About Yourselffeatured

“Do you always have to stomp around when you’re in a hurry to go somewhere?” someone asks me.

I sit with the question for a bit, then take a big gulp, realizing I have never really stopped to notice how hastily I move my body when I am trying to transition from one thing to the next.

My gut response to this question would be something infantile like, “Yea, so why do you care?”

But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything. I stay quiet and let the question wash over me.

I had no idea this stomping question would follow me as I embarked on my latest yin yoga training journey. If you don’t care about yoga, that’s okay. But here’s an interesting fact about yin yoga in particular: the purpose of this practice is to find your “edge” on the mat. Not to fall asleep, not to leave your body, but rather to find the edge in postures and sit with that uncomfortable edge for an extended period of time.

No, pain is not the goal in yin, but sitting with significant sensation by reaching for those uncomfortable spaces within your body and mind is. It’s not about pushing your body to its limits; it’s about breathing, listening, and softening – physically, metaphorically, and metaphysically.

When I first started my yin yoga training a few months ago, I found myself falling asleep during our practice hours. I began to wonder why, and I realized that I was missing the entire point of yin yoga. Yes, it was wonderful that I felt so safe in the spaces we were practicing, but yin yoga is about finding your edge, sitting with discomfort, and breathing through it constructively – allowing growth to happen along the way.

After this realization, I made it a point to mindfully find my edge within the poses that we were learning.

And guess what?

It was absolutely impossible to fall asleep when welcoming such deep sensation.

Throughout the years, I have found safety in my yang practices – my HIIT & Crossfit workouts, my vinyasa & hot yoga classes, even cycle & zumba… but coming to the mat to soften into yin postures felt foreign to me after so many years of “stomping around.”

Softening into discomfort is not something I have been practicing every day, and this training made sure I stared this fact in the face.

I mean, think about it. As humans, when are we ever like: “Yea, you know what… I know that hard thing is going to be super awkward, uncomfortable, and hard…and I want to make sure to propel myself toward those feelings every moment that I get?”

It’s natural for us to fall in love with our comforting routines, our busy schedules, and our predictable high-intensity workouts. They all offer avenues of avoidance, ways to power through and zone out when the world feels like too much. They offer us a sense of control in a world with so many uncontrollable variables.

And that’s what I had been doing while falling asleep in those yin poses: I was actively avoiding feeling anything at all.

Read that sentence again.

Is that NOT a completely contradictory statement? I was actively avoiding feeling by falling into a deep sleep? Yes, I guess I was.

So what does all of this have to do with me stomping around hastily when I am in a hurry to go somewhere?

Through my exploration of yin principles, I realized that I had been “yang-ing” (I just made that term up), or focusing on the strength/external, throughout my everyday life, leaving very little room for “yin-ing,” or softening/looking inward.

So I then decided to observe myself and the way I moved my body while in a hurry in the morning. I noticed that I was even applying lotion onto my skin in an aggressive way. By moving through the world in a “hurry,” I was not only negatively affecting those around me, but I was also forgetting to show love and kindness to the one person who depends on it the most – me.

And that’s when the yin/yang symbol suddenly made all the sense. Life is a perpetual dance between hardening and softening, between comfort and discomfort, between masculine and feminine, between lightness and heaviness. And those of us that are able to mindfully meet our edges and make intentional adjustments can help create a more balanced and peaceful inner world for ourselves and, in turn, radiate more love and kindness to those who surround us.

So I will leave you with this: How do you physically and mentally move through your world? Are you always in a hurry? What kind of words do you say to yourself when trying something new? How do you transition from one thing to the next? How do you drive? How do you eat your food? Where can you soften a bit?

Love Deeply and Forever,