You're Not Stuck, You're Protected : Safety at the Expense of Aliveness

Most people don't realize their greatest strength is the exact thing keeping them stuck.

Being defensive in the right way can literally change your life.

I feel like I've lived so much of my life trying to protect myself in the wrong way. And I’m pretty sure a lot of us are doing this… because I’ve seen this over and over with people I’ve worked with.

Living on the defense felt safer. And in many ways I needed to. Until I learned how to tend to the parts of me that were actually carrying fear and pain, I didn’t really feel like I had a choice.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how much it cost me.

I thought being safe and protected made my life easier… but it was actually keeping me stuck, perpetuating my pain, and subduing my aliveness and power. Damn it.... lol. Trust me it hurt when I realized this. 

When we lean on protective tendencies, they give us momentary relief… but always with a cost.

My self-reliance protected me from the rejection of my vulnerability… but it cost me intimacy, support, and truly balanced relationships.

My over-caretaking protected me from being vulnerable and in my want and need .. but it cost me from receiving what I really wanted and needed. 

My shutting down protected me from more pain… but it cost me my agency.

My avoidance protected me from risk and the unknown… but it cost me growth, experience, and maturity.

If you’re honest… where is this showing up for you right now?

In your relationships?
In your work?
In the decisions you’ve been putting off?

Most people try to fix this by “opening more” or “pushing through fear”… and it doesn’t actually work long term.

I still do all of these things at times. But I see the cost more clearly now.

And that changes something.

Because when the cost is fully felt — not just understood — these strategies start to lose their grip.

We often need to understand what we’re trying to protect… and either learn how to actually take care of that part of us, or recognize that the threat isn’t what it used to be.

I’m not trying to eliminate these parts of me or force myself to be different.

I’m learning something more precise.

The goal isn’t to stop being defensive.
The goal is to become accurate in your defense.

When I feel these patterns arise now, I try to slow it down and ask:

What is this protecting me from, specifically?
Is that threat actually present right now?
What will this cost me if I follow it?

And then I choose.

Not perfectly. Not always with clarity. But with more awareness.

Sometimes I still choose protection — and that’s actually the right move.

But now it’s conscious.

Can I stay open enough to receive what I actually want…
while tolerating the vulnerability required to have it?

I don’t see myself becoming fearless — I’m honestly kind of a scaredy-cat.

But I do want to increase my capacity to stay present without closing.

If you’re someone who:

• has done a lot of inner work

• understands yourself pretty well

• but still finds yourself stuck in the same patterns in relationships or work

this is exactly the kind of thing I help people break through.

Most people are trying to “fix themselves” without ever actually identifying the core protection pattern that’s running everything.

Yoga in the West: What's the cost of Adaptation and Innovation?

Let’s face the reality. The yoga we practice in the west is not the same yoga that emerged and evolved in India and surrounding countries through the height of the tantric era. Yoga in the west has become its own unique expression of the ancient practice. Absorbed by the cultural environment of capitalism, uninhibited innovation and appropriation, stress, materialism and entrepreneurial cavalier yoga has been contorted to fit any and all functional purpose that anyone creative enough could muster.

On one end this is amazing. On the foundation of a spiritual embodiment practice people have built a unique cultural movement around a hodge podge of fitness, collaged together spirituality, self-improvement, mindfulness and stress-reduction. Yoga asana practice and the accompanying yogic philosophy was used as a template and scaffolding that was gradually removed in the process almost in its entirety to aid in birthing a western, capitalist friendly spiritual embodiment practice of our own. And there is no doubt that this new creation is a living breathing, transforming beast of healing and transformation in our culturae that is changing and improving people’s lives all across the culture.

But some of the “innovation” that is happening is upsetting to purists and those of us who are sensitive to the west’s careless tendencies in cultural appropriation. This is well warranted. Yet on another level it seems to be an inevitable attempt within western culture to assimilate elements of a spiritual and personal development system that offers ideas and practices that they needed to fill a glaring gap within our own cultural development.

Yoga filled a gap in a culture rebelling from the grasp of orthodox religion that functioned on the shaky pillar of faith. Yoga was a bridge between Mysticism, Religion and the more self-referential, rational and pluralistic postmodern culture. In a culture quickly waking up from a modern rationalist to post-modern subjective, relativist and pluralist, there seemed to be a realization by many that religion in the form that it was being presented to us, did not cohere with our evolving worldview. Many who felt tricked, abused and traumatized by their religious backgrounds walked away from religion but yet needed something that filled that gap. 

In came psychedelics, the beatles and the onslaught of imported eastern spirituality. It was a breath of fresh air for many. The new spirituality was centered around self-exploration and practice vs. blind faith and adherence to dogma. But as the glamour wore off and our modern and postmodern tendencies kicked back on some of us stayed true and stuck with the traditions and many of us began dismantling and disassembling the traditions and practices within our relatable and acceptable contexts. 

Granted this is merited and an important process. We should analyze and examine things based in healthy skepticism before we pour our valuable energy and time into it. We needed to see what was truly valuable and useful and what aspects are the archaic remnants of a refuted worldview based in magical thinking. Blind faith and cultural artifacts that were not useful to us in the modern world were often discarded over time.

Yet inevitably in the process of breaking something like eastern mystic traditions down with our rational deductive process, we fail to understand the depth or relevance of certain practices. Be it a language barrier, laziness or confusion and simple misunderstanding, we threw a lot of the baby out with the bathwater. 

One example would be the guru and devotional practices. Yogic traditions place a high value on the role and function of the guru. Through the combination of abusive behaviors and questionable or confusing conduct on behalf of many eastern gurus, the west has understandingly been aversive to gurus at large. As a result many don’t engage in any sort of devotional practices along with their yoga or meditation.

We don’t prostrate (bow) to the teacher with a sense of reverence. We don’t visualize and pray or make offerings to our teachers. In the world of postmodern relativism and pluralism and self referencing, the guru is purely an internal, subjective object. The guru is “within”. This is an understandable approach and has many merits to it. And it’s ultimately true in many contexts. But there are also many unforeseen consequences to this approach as well. 

When we mistakingly believe that in all contexts we are equal to the guru, we fail to recognize that a teacher who may have practiced for 40- 50 years in a rigorous course of study and practice may be at an equal level of knowledge as us in their area of expertise. This is obviously absurd. It fails to recognize the value and experience that the teacher has to offer and can close us off to that wisdom due to our arrogance. The hidden danger in this sort of approach is a shadow side effect of what we were originally attempting to do: reify our self or ego. 

And this brings us to a very tricky and complex topic that we need to continue to explore and discuss collectively with the help of well experienced and skilled psychologists, meditators and people who are steeped in the direct experience of human relationships and development. When do we strengthen and hold the ego and when do we soften and let go of it?

One of the core teachings and wisdoms of the eastern traditions is the fallacy and pitfall of the ego. Eastern traditions specialize in warning us of the dangers of being trapped in ego reification and worship. Many eastern systems of yoga teach us that being identified and caught in a cycle of unconscious addiction to the impulses of the ego lead us into endless suffering. But from a practical perspective, those of us who’ve been practicing in these traditions for a long time may realize that it’s not that simple. We realize that many people actually need to develop a healthier sense of ego due to their developmental wounding and insufficiencies in attachment and healthy relating templates that has stunted the development of healthy adult ego attributes internally. This is something that will be an ongoing point of development in the synthesis of western knowledge in psychology and eastern mysticism wisdom. But I digress. 

Coming back to eastern yogic traditions, we need to understand the function and usefulness of these traditions on a deeper level. Devotional practices aren’t just archaic practices of feudal hierarchies, they also play the function of gradually helping the yoga practitioner release their rigid grasp on their unconscious ego sense that prevents from entering into more open and free somatic and psychic territories. Again, to emphasize that in some conditions this can be premature for some people without proper ego development. But that being said, devotional practices are one of those things that many have discarded from their practices of mindful meditation and yoga that may serve a crucial role in the process of reorganizing and liberating old latent conditioning in the body/mind. 

So how can we move forward on this strange tight rope we are traversing? I believe that it requires that we carefully examine our pre-existing biases in an honest and assertive manner. I think it’s important that we take the time to really look deeper into the beauty and function of these eastern traditions in what they truly have to offer. Sometimes we just need better translators that can help transition these systems into a more relatable context without compromising the value inherent in the systems. And sometimes it’s just growing pains.

Western Minds and Yoga Philosophy: From the Practical to the Visionary

Yoga Philosophy is a treasure trove of wisdom waiting for us to access it. Yet it lies somewhat beyond the realm of easy accessibility for most of us modern Westerners. Most of us have had some introduction to the common concepts of Eastern Mysticism at this point. People throw around terms like "non-attachment", "karma", "past-lives", "true-self" etc. in posts, daily conversations and in yoga classes. But as we usually tend to do in the west, we take concepts and terms out of context and often misinterpret and misappropriate the concepts.

In our innocence and our eagerness to apply these eastern concepts, we often forget the deeper history, cultural context and essential meaning of these philosophical approaches. Often it requires that we carefully study, digest and translate the teachings so we can both comprehend and apply the wisdom into our daily lives. The role of modern teachers of yoga philosophy is exactly that. We must study these systems, practice and embody them and find ways to make the wisdom accessible and useful to students without neutering the power and essence of these teachings. How can we both extract practical benefit from our studies while protecting the integrity and higher aim of the practice? This is easier said than done obviously.

What I've gathered about us modern practitioners is that we're a pragmatic bunch of people. We like things that are practical. We like science. We want things to work or make sense. Logic and practicality helps us to feel safe. Hence we want practical improvements in our stress level and impact in career and relationship. As a result something like Yoga Philosophy can come off really abstract when we don't directly tie it into our understanding of how we can practically benefit from it. It makes sense. Why would we practice or spend our valuable and already limited time on something that doesn't really make sense and that doesn't meet my objectives and goals in life?

As a result what we see in the western world is a modified and appropriated version of eastern wisdom teachings; "mindfulness based stress-reduction", "yoga for backpain", "meditation for sleep and relaxation" and the list goes on. On one level this makes total sense and is important. It makes these practices appealing and relevant to modern people and practitioners.

But the downside of our pragmatism and practical nature is that we can unintentionally become shortsighted with our practice at times. We're after the low hanging fruit. Yogic systems have very ambitious goals by their nature. Yoga systems claim to show us our true nature and true nature of reality and to liberate us from mundane suffering as we know it. On one end the goal of yoga may seem unobtainable or just too mystical. On another level it's an opportunity to stretch our perspective on what's possible. And the reality is that a lot of people accomplish profound states and some others experience relief, healing and greater maturity which may not be the ultimate goal but still relevant for us in our daily lives.
To reiterate, can we somehow honor the need for practicality and at the same time strive to maintain the greater vision of yogic philosophical and practice pursuits?

Balancing Transcending and Embracing
As previously mentioned, Yogic philosophy and practices have a focus of guiding the individual to encounter, experience and ultimately abide in the recognition of their True Nature/Self. In Vedanta, a prominent yogic school of thought, it is believed that the recognition, realization and abiding in one's True Nature/Self leads to the experience of Moksha (liberation from suffering and delusion). In my experience and study, this is not some abstract or unattainable fantasy. They are pointing to something (although it may not fit the category of a thing) that is quite ubiquitous in our experience that we don't often recognize. This is our essential Awareness. When we can become adept at both recognizing the essential Awareness of our being, and learn to abide in the recognition, we become freer.
Being able to clearly recognize and stabilize this realization often requires a philosophical and mental preparation to support the experience. In Vedanta, we initially shift the location of self from our mundane identity associated with our body, thoughts and feelings, to this very awareness. This takes regular practice, but when we succeed in doing this, it removes us from a strong, rigid and unconscious identification with our thoughts and emotions and identities which can free us up from the drama of some of our mental and emotional habits. We shift from being our thoughts and feelings to being aware of and having thoughts and feelings arise in the field of our awareness. This can be powerful shift in perspective for helping us to access a new source of calm. Although a still mind is useful in having the original recognition of our True Self (yoga sutra 1.2.) what's amazing about resting in the Recognition of our True Self is that it doesn't require that we actually be calm or still in our minds. Once we learn to recognize and shift to our True Self as Awareness, our Awareness is already calm and still in its nature. It's literally like stepping into the eye of the storm. Even though the body, emotions and mind are still turbulent, we can view it and hold it from a place of calm within ourselves.
When we can loosen the grip of our identification and step into the role of the observer/True Self, we can begin sitting with whatever inner experience we're having, from a more spacious, calm and resourceful place. When we shift this spacious and embracing observer/True Self towards our body sensations, painful emotions and anxieties, they can be digested and released more readily and easily.
If we are willing to be patient and open-minded enough to cultivate the deeper purpose of yoga philosophy and practice, we can develop a connection to our essential being that can have both spiritual and personal/mundane benefits for us modern people. The goal of accessing this True Self is not to transcend and avoid/leave our human experience. Its purpose is to allow us to experience our human existence with greater calm, peace, flow and vibrance.

Yoga Is Dangerous!!

Maybe that’s an extreme statement. But again hear me out. Yoga is a powerful practice. No matter what form of yoga you do, it has deeply transformative effects. Both the physical and mental yogas can significantly alter your pre-existing patterning and habits. This is inherently disruptive in nature and we need to come to reality around that. Although change is a great thing for most of us, it would be wise for us to realize that it can also really rock the boat. 

1. Yoga can really change your sensibility around things and reorganize your priorities. Reconnecting with your body, and changing the somatic landscape of your system can activate awareness, feelings and change your orientation of self and everything around you drastically. As an extreme example, I’ve known countless students who left their jobs, broke up their marriages and went through complete life transformations. If you’re ready and up for this, great. But be clear that this is very likely a possible side effect.

2. Yogic meditation practices and philosophies practiced in a traditional context is for and can be Ego shattering. Depending on where we are at in our mental health, our proclivity towards dissociative states and our ego strength and other defensive strategies we use to cope with life that keeps our world together so we can function; jumping into a superficial deep dive (really studying it but not in a formal context with guidance over a long period of gradual integration)  and adopting these views can have very harmful effects on some people. Some people don’t need to destroy their ego sense, they need to develop a healthy sense of their ego first. 

I’d like to see more in depth dialogue around these topics and work towards create safer containers for people’s transformative process as well as clear warnings around potentially disruptive side-effects of practice and a more nuanced understanding of how and when to properly practice and apply the views and practices of yoga. 

Accept Yourself and Clean Up Your Shit

Accepting ourselves as we are is so important. I spent so much of my life hating myself. Hating how I looked. Hating my body. Hating my insecurities. Hating my fearfulness. The list goes on. When I first encountered personal growth and spirituality, one of the first things I started to work on was self-love. I know I needed it. I did everything I could to learn to accept myself more and care for myself better. I got really good at being with myself and taking care of myself. I spent an enormous amount of time by myself in self-care land. It was glorious. Walks on the beach, dancing, traveling, taking myself out to dinners. I was in a pretty good marriage. 

Then I started to get lonely. I wanted a companion. A partner. And so I started to have girlfriends. My bubble was burst. I was a selfish dick. I was really good at taking care of myself but I still had a fragile ego. Whenever my partner criticized my shortcomings or poor behavior I got angry. I got defensive. I made it her responsibility to manage her own reaction and reality and threw it right back at her. I couldn’t take criticisms at all. I was horrible at being able to examine the negative impact of my behaviors on my partners and promptly apologize and work to correct my behavior in a timely manner. 

Without me realizing it, part of my “self-love” became enabling my poor habits. 

To my credit the process that was being worked out within me was complex. I had an upbringing where I was yelled at, punished harshly where my needs and feelings were rarely understood and heard. I easily panicked, shut down and closed up when someone got upset at me. I would be terrified and overwhelmed by guilt and self-loathing that made me numb out. That was how I dealt with being punished while having my needs and feelings totally shunned. And that scenario replayed in my body and mind everytime “I was in trouble.”

It took me almost 2 decades to work through this. And actually I’m still working through it.  I had to build enough awareness, resilience and clarity to see what was going on and realize that 

1. My childhood scenario wasn’t happening now.

2. My way of dealing with it was preventing me from providing appropriate empathy and care to my partner.

3. The whole method of coping was preventing me from growing up. 

It was extremely difficult to come to the place where I can see the pattern, override the impulse to shutdown and escape, listen to the feedback I was getting, apologize and work towards correcting my behavior. But now that I’m doing it, it feels So …. Much…. Better….. 

For the longest time I was mistaking self-love with letting myself do whatever and be however I was. But allowing myself to continue playing out my past traumas through projecting them in my relationship, acting in my compensation/protective pattern of numbing and shutting down which would prevent me from empathizing and repairing the impact of my hurtful behavior with my partner and allow me to continue reacting in a way that wasn’t actually making me feel happy, wasn’t SELF ACCEPTANCE. It was SELF-SABOTAGE. So it’s a tenuous balance for some of us to practice Radical Self Acceptance and also clean up our shit:)

The Relationship between Physical Yoga and Meditative Yoga

Yoga, beyond being a wonderful health practice for the body and mind, originally was designed to help guide us into a very unique experience called Moksha or liberation. At first I found this to be extremely obscure. But after years of research, study and practice, I've come to understand that across many traditions of yoga, they were talking about something common. This "state" is not only achievable but extremely accessible in glimpses. We can begin to access this state with proper guidance and begin to reap the benefits of feeling freer and more liberated from our experiences of struggle. But before we go there we have to lay some context.

           When we say yoga we’re actually talking about a very large topic that encompasses numerous disciplines. Typically what we practice in the west that we call yoga is a derivative of what was considered Hatha Yoga - the physical and subtle body based practices of breath, posture, mudra etc. These practices were most likely popularized and integrated during the Tantric era 500 Ce- 1200CE

    When we study the Yoga Sutras, we’re studying another branch of yoga that traditionally was considered the meditative yoga or raja yoga. This is an older form of yoga and would very likely be considered the traditional yoga that is referenced in the Upanishads. 

    Hatha Yoga was most likely utilized as an adjunct practice to support Raja Yoga practice. Meaning Hatha Yoga was utilized to prepare one’s body, mind, nervous system and subtle body so that one can more easily succeed in the Raja Yoga (meditative yoga). 

    There are many references to how Hatha Yoga leads to the fruits of Raja Yoga in chapter 4 of the text. Including the following verse 78.

78. Those who are ignorant of the Raja-Yoga and practice only the Hatha-Yoga, will, in my opinion, waste their energy fruitlessly.

     The practitioners and teachers from a thousand years ago had a particular function and goal in mind for Hatha Yoga. It’s not that Hatha Yoga has no health benefits or can’t improve our lives in multiple ways (which it obviously does.) But considering that the original practitioners of this art felt that liberation and realization were of primary importance they make statements such as this. 

    One of my teachers from years ago contextualized the various texts as specialized texts, written for various purposes and for people at various stages of practice. He placed the hatha yoga texts as a technical text for hatha yoga that should be seen as a preparation for Raja Yoga (yoga sutras). And he said that the Yoga Sutras was a specialized text for Raja Yoga (meditation instructions). It’s kind of like having a text on how to grow food and a text on how to cook food. They’re on 2 different subjects that are related and can support the other. 

    When we place this in a historical context of tantra it becomes an interesting topic. Although Yoga sutra like concepts were obviously assimilated into latter traditions of Tantra, it’s questionable if the Yoga Sutras were actually directly utilized as an authoritative text in those traditions.

    But when you take a peak at vajrayana Buddhism you see a parallel treatment of these practices. Body based practices (Trulkor, Tsa Lung) which would be the Buddhist version of Hatha Yoga (with breathing exercises, postures, stretches, mudras and focus on subtle body) is utilized as an aid to accelerate the awakening and direct perception of one’s nature in meditation practice.

      Coming full circle, when we can learn to identify and rest in this nature, we experience immense freedom from our usual troubles and inner struggles. This is the essence of Yoga. When we get clear about this possibility and we utilize the practices in a more systematic way, we can achieve this goal more expediently. It's not that using yoga for other means or purposes is wrong. Not at all. But it's also important for us to understand the original purpose of yoga so we can pursuit such goals expediently if it is important to us.