And today I found that this juncture is where yoga is my friend. For most of the session, my mind is working so hard to convince my body to be malleable that I don't have time to be caught up in the nitty gritty details of my day. Today offered up a rather fitting mental exercise as well.
As we began class, focusing our minds and bodies, the instructor asked us to assign ourselves a mantra, completing the phrase "I am..." Quickly cataloging my day, and maybe even a macro level of my life, I struck upon the realization that most of my tension was caused by my reactions to other peoples actions.
So my mantra became, "I am in control of my reactions". There's not much I can do about what others say or do; my only power comes in the form of how I handle what happens around me or to me. It's my choice to be upset or calm, the build something up or let it lie.
In an ideal world, this single yoga class would magically evaporate any future tension caused by reactions and expectations. As a realist, I know that I'm bound to fail at it again...and again. But I have to imagine that being cognizant, and reminding myself, that I'm in control will ultimately help. Maybe it'll make me stop, think, breathe - thirty seconds of stepping outside the issue can deter escalation.
I mean, I could be all wrong. I'm not a psychologist or anything. My only other explanation, though, is that I forgot my earbuds this morning. It was a rough deficit for the day, so there's a possibility that it threw everything out of equilibrium.
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