Life is full of choices. While some of us have the tendency to want to do everything, the limits of the 24-hour day simply won’t allow it. The current pandemic response has freed up, or at least rearranged, schedules significantly. However, you may still find yourself wondering “should I meditate or do yoga?” with the time that you manage to carve out for self-care. Both have been recommended by reliable sources, such as Harvard Medical School and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (a partnership of UN- and non-UN agencies committed to humanitarian assistance), as strategies to support your mental health in the current conditions.
As a registered yoga teacher, I feel it is my responsibility to start with the semantics of this question. In popular culture, “yoga” usually refers to a physical, or asana, practice but this is only one of the eight limbs of yoga, according to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (a sacred Indian text, foundational to the philosophy of yoga). These “limbs” help guide individuals in living a meaningful and purposeful life, with the aspiration to freedom and enlightenment. The asana practice is the third limb, an important precursor, to prepare the body for the later mental practices. The fifth, sixth and seventh limbs of yoga, can be considered meditation practices. The drawing in of your senses, focused (one-pointed) attention, and then reflection and contemplation. With dedication and practice these can then lead to the eighth limb, samdhi, or union and sense of “one-ness”. So, if I want to be pedantic I would say that a physical practice or mental practice are both yoga and both important in pursuing many big-picture goals.
However, that doesn’t help with the question of “I just put the kids to bed. What should I do with my half hour?”. There is an abundance of academic and anecdotal evidence supporting the benefits of both the physical practice of yoga and meditation. So, in most cases, the best choice is the path of least resistance. If you desperately want to, or should, move your body and get your heart pumping, the answer is quite obvious. It gets more complicated when you are looking for a sense of ease, a feeling of calm in the current state where fear and anxiety are running high. For some, a seated meditation may not provide immediate benefits of creating space and ease in the mind. If that is your experience, try a physical asana practice and perhaps give yourself a little extra time in savasana. Savasana, or a final resting pose of choice, is often the hardest part of a home practice to retain. I encourage you to hold this time sacred and perhaps challenge yourself to make it a little longer as you build your comfort and positive experiences in stillness. (This comfort is fundamental to building a sustainable meditation practice – if this is a goal of yours.)
Restorative yoga is another wonderful path to recharge, release tension, and move out of a high stress state (of fight-or-flight). One of my teachers shared her struggles with a formal meditation practice, and it was only after practicing restorative yoga for many years that she found she could approach meditation without resistance. She described restorative yoga as being a bottom up approach to support physical, mental and emotional healing. Restorative yoga uses props to support the physical body in poses that may be held for 20 minutes or longer. The physical comfort and alignment of these poses can ease the transition into pratyhara, allowing us to withdraw from our external senses and focus inward. A meditation practice may also support physical, mental and emotional healing, but uses more of a top down approach. Where mental practices are used to directly change your state of mind, with rippling impact to your physical body and central nervous system.
Which one works better for you, top-down or bottom-up? If you are struggling to do either, choose the easier path. If you want a challenge, choose the one that feels less natural to you. Embrace this opportunity to find new ways and create new routines to nourish yourself and live and share in the abundance.
By Soo Chan Carusone
