Flowing with change for a better life

Flowing with change must be learned because everything changes with time and experience. You can’t step into the same river twice. The water is constantly flowing and changing, but the river adapts, expands and shrinks, and accepts whatever come down the stream – it flows with change.

Cities are like rivers.  New people come, old people go, buildings are constructed, roads built, parks manicured, and cars flow through. Cities adapt. They are flowing with change.

 People also change. We tend to believe we are the same person, consistent all the time, that we have a non changing core, but in reality we change all the time. Thank goodness I think a bit different then when I was 4 years old. Do you think the same every day? Do you look the same every day? We change consistently – our ideas, believes, appearances, friends, jobs and even our health. Yet many of us struggle to flow with change, either accepting our own change or the changing of the people around us. This is why we have insurance companies – they help us deal with unwanted change. 

We do not want uninvited change

Parents struggle seeing the children grow, sometimes taking on paths they were hoping to be different. Friends struggle with other friends moving away, getting into relationships, or becoming yogis. A students of mine suffered when she got into yoga. She stopped drinking alcohol and eating meat, and woke up early to practice yoga. Most of her friends were drinking friends at night. After years of friendship, she had to accept that they are not happy with her change, and it was her choice to move on – she was flowing with change.

Rather than flowing with the change, we tend to become attached. When we have a good experience, we tend to want to experience it again and again. We want to have the same good time with a friend, or the same heart to heart connection with a coworker. In a way, this is a kind of addiction. We try to revisit each good experience, eager for it to be the same. but it rarely is. We also try to avoid getting new things we do not want. Not accepting that our bodies change, that we are less flexible, or have more wrinkles. “I used to be able to do this pose’ is something I hear a lot. That’s OK, we progress some, and then regress. Life is one big flow of energies, and we are part of this energetic flow.

My first time in India was in 1992

I was 21 years old and delighted with the overtaking of the sense organs. The smell of incense was everywhere, mixed with the smells of sweet, warm milk and chai boiling and the smells of Indian spices and aromatic oils. There were so many colors around; colors of the saris, the bindis on the third eye, the colorful bangles (bracelets), the bright-colored temples and sculptures of gods, and painted houses. Palm trees, dust, smoky buses, and people everywhere. The smells and visions were infused with sounds of chants, of horns blowing, the man selling brooms or chai, calling in a melodic voice. Birds were chirping away and people coughing up red spit. Loud Bollywood music could be heard all over.

How India has changed

Like many places around the world, change has been dramatic in the past 30 years. The essence of India has not changed much throughout my visits, and you can still feel much of what I described on my first trip. However, much has changed on the surface. Building are everywhere and unknown places, now have roaming tourists demanding comforts and service.  Street vendors have learned to haggle tourists, building up prices.  Walkable streets have become huge traffic jams, and palm trees have been replaced by four-story buildings. Most of the veteran travelers that have been coming to India for years express their nostalgia for the way things used to be.

Memories have a tendency to sweeten over time

My memories of my first visit to India are vivid and sweet. I don’t remember much of the struggles and fears I had, and when I do remember how I was sick, I tell it with fun, as a dramatic story. I am no longer upset by the sandals that were stolen outside the temple in Mysore. Now I tell the story of how I rode my motorcycle barefoot, and helped someone in need. These are coping mechanisms to deal with change. The nice things tend to be nicer, while some of the negative is twisted to be a ‘good story’. There are however some negative experiences that stick with us as trauma. We need to be flowing with change in order to release the past.

Learning to Flow

          What really changes is our minds. Our essence may be constant, but this essence is not the one            carrying the stories of our memories. It is not our essence that has expectations, but rather it is our              mind that is wishing for things to be as it wants them to be, different that they are.  Our mind clings              and resist to life flowing with change. It seeks to keep the status quo, at the price of us becoming                    discontent.

Flowing with change is the act of taking the right action or no action at a specific moment.

          Our happiness depends on us being able to let go of the past, and be in the present. We need to be               open to anything coming our way. It is not easy to be happy with unexpected situations, but if we can           see with clarity, there is almost always something good to be found even in the uninvited new                         circumstances. Learning to control the mind, to become flexible and adaptable is a key ingredient to             success and happiness. When the change happens, notice your reaction and ask your self if you in                   resistance or are you flowing with change.

Change is always happening, and all we can do is be present with it. This way we flow with it and the change will not disturb us.

A video about dealing with change:

“I was practicing Ashtanga third series as rain started coming down. My practice needed to be modified, I had to accept that the change in the weather had changed my abilities. Even so I still practiced. It looked sloppier than usual, but I was breathing; I was moving, I was flowing with change.”

Share the Similarity, and the Change

How do you deal with change? Do you have any good advice to share with us? Please leave it in the comments below. Share this article with a friend, start a discussion on how you deal with change in different ways.

Please join us for a yoga retreat or yoga teachers training at Doron Yoga & Zen Center in beautiful Guatemala.

Blissful Living,

Doron