The Power of Gentle

My yoga teacher has been on a big campaign lately with his students to make changes slowly. Why? Because if you try to "change everything today", you're going to fail.

This is certainly NOT to say that change is a losing proposition (and the cynical among us may say "people never change"), but it is to say that change, when it does successfully occur, is due to persistent, small advances.

In the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, there is a hexagram (symbol pictured right) that is relevant here. It is "The Gentle", and it arises from the concept of wind, and the energy of penetrating. The admonition within this hexagram is: "THE GENTLE: Success through what is small." And in the discussion, Wilhelm says, "Penetration produces gradual and inconspicuous effects. It should be effected not by an act of violation, but by influence that never lapses." I love that. Influence that never lapses. It is the gentle, consistent, ever present influence that carves down mountains into hills, and polishes river rocks into smooth discs.

Thus, in this way, as my yoga teacher has been saying, it is the only way to lasting change. To try to change a lot of things quickly is essentially a violent act, and those conditions holding the circumstances you want to change in place will surely and shortly reverse this violent attempt. Diets are a perfect example. Sure you can lose weight really fast in several ways, but all of them, because they are fast and require rapid change, are almost certainly doomed to fail. There is simply too much counter habitual momentuum to offset without a great deal of force.

David R. Hawkins, wrote an entire book about this subject: Power vs. Force. True power, he says, is staying power, and staying power is achieved by steady, unwaivering energy that is in harmony with the forces of your life. Force, on the other hand, is essentially violence. It goes against the flow of momentuum, and requires a lot of energy.

By making small changes, easily incorporated into your daily routine is the best way to effect total change over time. And when you are changing, you must make time your friend.

For example, you've finally become fed up with your level of physical fitness. The worst thing to do is to run to the local gym, spend a thousand bucks for membership and shove aside everything else to make room for 2 hours a day of workouts. Even if you were able to do this for a short period, 1. Your muscles would be sore and in shock, 2. Your family and friends will start whining about what you're doing--or downright ridiculing you, and most importantly, 3. There will be days when you logistically can't make it happen, or just don't feel like it, and then become discouraged and shortly you'll conclude it was a "dumb idea in the first place."

Here's a better way to ensure success. First, chose the smallest thing you KNOW you can do EVERY DAY. Maybe it's walking for 5 minutes, or spending 1-2 minutes when you first wake up in the morning doing stretches. Then, once that has become a habit, move up to 10 minutes of walking, or 5 min. of yoga in the morning. Before too long, you'll be doing these things effortlessly and starting to feel your level of fitness increasing. This may spur you on to wanting to make a bigger change. Don't do it. Choose the next smallest thing that seems like barely nothing, and do that day in and day out. You'll know it's become a habit when if you skip a day, you really miss it. If you DO skip a day, do so without judgment. Simply return to the routine.

This approach is how Nature herself changes. Sure, there are storms and earthquakes and landslides and such, but they are violent, extreme events that once they are over, the effects are slowly and surely worn down by the gentle routine of water and air moving inexhorably around the Gaia sphere.

As Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, advises: "Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves--slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future." And so by also making changes in this way, you harness the true power of momentuum that is already available to you to become everything you want to be.

In vibrant health,