Learnings from a little bee.
A bee is just a bee
Yoga is about slowing down enough to be aware of what passes through your field of awareness. It is like being the watcher of a movie of your own life.
If you use your superpower of observation, through the practice of yoga and meditation, you will see that peace and calm lies in the non-reacting to what comes into your awareness: the non-identification with where that thought can lead.
Imagine you are sitting in a lovely, calm forest. A bee buzzes by, minding its own business. “Oh,” you think. “That’s a bee. I might get stung. If I get stung it will hurt. If I get stung it might cause an allergic reaction and I will swell up. If I swell up around my neck area I could stop breathing. If I stop breathing, I could die.”.
Meanwhile, the little buzzy bee has gone on its black and yellow merry way. It had no interested in you whatsoever.
We can’t stop the initial thought of seeing and hearing the bee. Your mind’s job is to keep you safe it does a really good job most of the time. But it is a total over achiever, and it is not always right. It is only aware of itself and not aware of the impact it has on you.
We can bring the power of observation to just noticing the initial thought as it arises. If we are calm enough, with enough space in the present moment, the thinking stops there because we see if for what it is - the nature of the mind and not the nature of our Self. It is a bee who has a place in world (just like you), and it is looking for something to eat.
Another course that we could take is that the thought comes in about the bee because you saw it and heard it, and your nervous system follows this initial identification through and you jump up and swat the bee and get stung!
Yoga shows us that meditation is the practice of sitting in stillness and silence, and watching our thoughts without reacting to them. By doing this we can create distances between thoughts and disrupt action so that we can feel calmer and more peaceful. And not get stung.
The profound calming buzz of a bee
The Bharmari Breath (or bumblebee breath) can bring transformation to your nervous system. Sit comfortably with your spine lengthened and your head neutral (not forward or back). Put your thumbs over the flaps of your ears and gentle push your thumbs into your ears, so you can hear yourself from the inside. Rest the fingers on your forehead. Put your tongue against the top of your teeth by your soft palette and close your mouth. Take a deep breath in through your nose into your belly, and with a closed mouth, buzz out like a bumblebee… mmmmmmmm until you run out of breath (don’t strain). Repeat 10 times. Let your arms go and rest them on your legs. Dissolve into the feeling that is present in your muscles, nerves and cells.
PS. I am allergic to bees! When we moved into our house in Titahi Bay, the neighbours kept bees. The little bees would fly over and drink from the water than pooled in the brick path in our forest. At first, I wanted those little bees gone. But the girl living next door loved those bees and was worried that they wouldn’t have anything to drink if we stopped the pooling of water. So, we left it alone. If we let the bees be they had no interest in us at all. It also led me to a new love of other live within our garden: the fungi growing on rotting logs; the mimic of korimako from tui; and when I was really unwell, the orchestral sounds of a forest.
Bumblebee image: Will Parson