why do we control?

It is often useful to start with some simple but big questions for ourselves when we step into our practice, whatever it is. Particularly when we have an internal direction of building our life around mindfulness and deep honesty, questions are almost always useful. It seems the only time we don’t like being asked questions (or asking questions of ourselves) are when the questions make us uncomfortable for one reason or another.

And those times… amazingly… are probably the most potent spaces for being with the questions themselves!

So a new question: why do we control? What are we attempting to accomplish with this control?

I think of this question in obvious relation to a movement practice, but like any other quality of our “practice” it transcends every area of our life: Career, Relationships, Physical Health, Family, Finances, Mental Health and how we connect to Something Greater than ourselves.

Controlling helps us to feel that we can determine the direction of something, which is inherently a false assumption, but it makes us feel more secure and safe nevertheless. But while we are busy making ourselves feel falsely secure, we are also ignoring any information that may be coming out of that which we are controlling.

It is true that initially it is important to learn how to manage things that we need in order to survive and be. We learn to manage our body in walking and running when we are young. We learn to manage a bike, then a car, then whatever else we enjoy speeding along with. We manage our finances, our time, our boundaries.

But what happens when managing becomes controlling? At a certain point, if we manage well, we should be able to let our grip loosen on the reins, so to speak. We should even be able to let go and observe what happens. This is the space of play and wonder, of observing and listening. It is the invaluable space of insight.

However if we are taught or learn that we are not “safe” enough to let go, not adept enough to observe and listen, not allowed to play and wonder… we often will turn to the opposite. We grip harder on the reins and we tighten down in order to avoid catastrophe.

In my own yoga and movement practice, for many years I tended to turn toward further and further ways of controlling my body and my experience, because it was both an interesting way to “fine tune” my body and also it made me feel more secure in my internal experience. I didn’t have to “feel” anything because I was so busy telling my body what to do. I took an authoritarian air with my own physical experience. There was no dialogue, only top-down instruction.

Since I have shifted my intention toward listening and observing rather than directing, my experience has opened up dramatically. I will say that it is not always a comfortable and easy place, the place of observation, but it opens up so many other possibilities that were simply not there when my body had no voice of her own.

I am fairly clear on many of the reasons I wanted and needed to control myself (and still do sometimes). It has taken a lot of work to begin to navigate those reasons and find the meaning in my inability to surrender or let go. This is where yoga practice really becomes a life’s work. It transcends all the areas of our life because we are invested in understanding and observing our whole self. And we set out to do so without clouding our observations with judgement.

In this paradigm, we begin with a question. We ask ourselves, “can I do this?”, “what happens if I move this way?”, “what are the differences in this movement right to left?”, “where do I feel my feet connect to ground, and how are the pressures in my feet different right to left, front to back?”. Like this, we offer our body a dialogue; a capacity to have a voice. As we learn to listen to the voice of our body, she begins to tell us stories and to share deep insights that we would not have witnessed if we were busy controlling and directing her.

Over time, as the stories and insights expand, they connect with other stories and insights… and our understanding of who we really are deepens. The yoga practice becomes a life practice. Our life practice enhances and supports our capacity to be honest and mindful beings. Our contentment and connection increases. We become less resentful and more appreciative of even the most difficult and painful aspects of our life. We evolve. And grow. And learn. And build. And surrender.