The One Mantra That Always Works When I Want To Get Back To Myself

by Conscious Reminder

The one thing that is common to all my classroom teachings is how to every fresh batch of little kids I have just one simple message- focus on your own self, worry about your own problems.

Now this is something that we say a lot, mind your own business, don’t worry about the others and so on. But did we ever really think about the implications of this advice much beyond the face value of it. Well, I have in a recent life changing experience and here I would like to share my story.

The first time I suffered hefty physical trauma was when my husband and I were involved in a car accident. Much more than the wounds and the aches, it was the emotional and the mental trauma that had me riled up.

You see, in a single event, my whole life was toppled upside down. My old routine was unceremoniously stripped aside to make way for physical therapy. I couldn’t work because staying awake for more than a few hours was a terrible task for my heavily drugged body.

Even when it seemed that life was finally getting back to normal, it wasn’t. I couldn’t join my regular yoga class because some wounds were still fresh. My first yoga class after my accident had mostly women many decades elder to me, all of us sitting on a chair atop a mat. But in some ways it was just like my regular yoga class as well.

There were individuals with their own quirks. One person had to always sit nearest to the door. Another could (or rather, would) only use pink colored weights, and so on.

The instructor asked us all about our individual problems and pains. And when people started telling about their pains, I realized I had no clue about their aches; just like they had no inclination of why I was sitting there without any physical scars or such. When we started practicing yoga, I was brought back to the reality.

My body called all my attention to itself. It took all I had to go through each Asana step by step. All my energy and thought was concentrated only and only to that one movement, every second. I didn’t care about who was sitting closest to the door or who had what colored weights, their quirks stopped bothering me because I was focusing only and only on myself.

And I realized, this is what I meant when I tell my little students to focus on themselves and not bother about the others. I have one such little guy in my class. He is always worried when someone is not mixing the colors properly, or misusing the class stationary or even simply sitting with their chair crooked. I tell him to forget about the others and focus on himself and that’s what I did in that yoga studio too.

I used that technique to survive from moment to moment. Thinking only about what was happening now. And after months of hard work, we are finally back to our old self. During this time, each of us had to look out for our own self.

My husband dealer with it in his own way, so did I. But what I have learned from this experience is to live in the moment and before anything else, worry about yourself.