Mindfulness vs. cell phones in yoga class

Yoga Teacher Erin Bidlake (erinbidlake.com); Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Uncomfortable with discomfort

Cell phones in yoga: compassionate approach

As a meditator and long-time yogi, I’m fully aware of how the discursive nature of my mind often keeps me from engaging with the present moment (being where we are, doing what we're doing, remaining mindful of this very moment).

The internal chatter of “pick up some greens for dinner, her comment felt judgey, should I change jobs?” is relentless and often painful.

The human desire to avoid pain and get comfortable is at the root of every addiction. We over-eat, shop, drink, and get high to numb the pain of our situations.

And more recently, we scroll and scroll through our social media feeds, looking for something to validate our lives, even as our lives are happening around us.

In this way, discursivity (the habit of letting the mind wander endlessly in search of something to amuse it and satisfy its cravings) is just one more thing we’ve outsourced to our cell phones.

No, it's okay, I can talk. What's up?

When the vulnerability of our situation becomes too much, a never-ending stream of status updates is there to provide distraction and relief.

Knowing this, compassion seems like the only thoughtful response to students checking cell phones in class. (Who needs mindfulness? I mean, I thought that was why you came to moving-meditation of the postures, but I guess not.)

As a yoga teacher, I want to encourage my students to work with their vulnerability, discursivity, and addiction, so I hesitate to take a hard stand on cell phones in yoga class.

It's not because I condone them, but because I see them as symptomatic of a much larger issue: a widespread and almost pathological aversion to discomfort of any kind.

• Dr, Reggie Ray: Busy-ness is Laziness (elephant journal)

Learning to stay

I don't have to do what craving says?

How do we learn to stay with discomfort? We learn by doing it. Say we notice an itch, whether it be to scratch our nose or check our phone. Then like a patient and loving master says to her dog, we say to our own reactivity: "Stay."

We practice staying, breath by breath, mindful moment by mindful moment. We stay with the discomfort, the itch, the burning, the agony of not reacting to everything in our habitual ways.

In this way, we cultivate resilience; we cultivate an ability to hold our seat (asana, posture) when things get uncomfortable. (What do we do when things get tough? We get going.) Stay. More

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  Mindfulness practice takes courage. It’s contrary to how most of us live our lives! But where better to nurture the seeds of resilience and non-reactivity than on our yoga and meditation mats? Once we’ve practiced sitting with "benign discomfort" on our mats, we can take the qualities of attention, presence, non-reactivity, and resilience off the mat and into the world. Who would we be in our daily lives if we actually stayed present? We might hold our position when things really matter: when we’re with our partner, kids, friends, enemies, the boss or stuck in traffic.
• Intention? Cell phones in yoga class (elephant journal)