Leaning has been quite the hot topic around the studio lately. Not the leaning you do against a fence post, or even the kind of leaning you do when you’re adjusting a carburetor. No, the leaning we’ve been talking about is more of a metaphorical type.

The leaning here in yoga-land has a mental and emotional flavor. This leaning is related to yearning and dissatisfaction and desire—and it can poison our lives. Pay attention and you’ll most likely find yourself leaning on a daily basis: leaning into the future in anticipation of some longed for happening or circumstance; leaning into the past with regret or fondness of memory. It’s even possible to lean sideways into an alternative version of now; one in which I’m a little bit trimmer, healthier, or wealthier.

Leaning can thus in many ways be seen as an effort to escape this moment as it is. I lean toward that which I believe will improve the moment and away from that which seems to detract from it. And while this in and of itself isn’t such a big deal, what is potentially problematic is this: it is my focusing on an alternative to now that makes now seem more and more untenable. To put it another way, the more I lean toward making $200,000 a year, the more my $30,000 seems woefully inadequate. And it is this sense of lack that launches us on a crusade to compensate for the perceived inadequacy of now.

But here’s the thing: as anyone who has been hanging around Yoga Pura for more than a week can tell you, reality is non-negotiable. That is to say, that this moment is as it is and can in no way be any different from how it is. I’m not suggesting that it won’t change over time, perhaps it will, but what I am saying is that as it is happening, the moment is irretrievably as it is. This means that as this moment arises you have two options:

1. You can have the moment as it is

2. You can have the moment as it is and pile a tower of resistance, irritation, and frustration on top of it.

Either way, you get the moment as it is, and this is an inescapable fact. You can either take it or, well, take it.

So leaning then, reinforces our habit of struggling against the one thing that can’t be any different from how it is: this moment. It perpetuates a way of interacting with our lives that actually creates a sense of lack and dissatisfaction. In short, it doesn’t support one’s happiness and ease.

With all of this said, it wouldn’t be surprising if one adopted an anti-leaning stance. Because after all, it seems like I am saying “don’t lean,” but the truth is that’s not it at all where I’m going with this. Here’s why:

If I were to encourage you not to lean into the future, I’m actually encouraging you to lean—because in the moments when you’re leaning, wanting not to lean is just another flavor of leaning. Here I am anticipating what my day will bring; I find myself leaning, I choose for an alternative reality in which I’m not leaning and then begin leaning toward that. I’m leaning away from leaning; I’m anticipating a time when I won’t be anticipating. It’s a game of trading one kind of leaning for another—and an interminable one at that. The troubling fact is this: anything you do to try to get rid of leaning is itself leaning. So there’s nothing to be done, but here’s the clincher, there is something to be un-done.

In many circles you’ll hear that the goal of our practice is to stay in the moment—not to lean. So according to this train of thought, sitting in a yoga class and having thoughts of Krispy Kreme donuts is out. But what is often not fully recognized is that my thought about the future is part of this moment. The thoughts that are in my head right now—even if they are about a far off vacation in a far off land—are part and parcel of now.

What this means is that leaning is not so much about the contents of a thought, but instead, leaning derives from our relationship to the thought. Said another way, thinking about next year is in no way more of a problem than thinking of the fact my knee hurts now. This of course is good news, for you don’t have to be in any way different from how you are in any given moment—and this includes whatever fantastic thoughts the mind might be spinning at that moment. What is at issue however, is how we relate to a thought, or for that matter, any element of our experience. What’s important is that we don’t become engaged with the thought; that we don’t enter into a dialog with it.

For example, one might be sitting in yoga class, aware of breath, aware of bodily sensations, aware of sounds, and aware of thoughts about a certain donut shop. No problem. They are all part of this moment and being aware of all of them equally as objects in awareness is to simply be present to the moment with all that it contains. That is to say, I’m upright, not leaning.

The trouble starts when we begin to focus on one aspect of our experience over another. Our attention congeals around a particular element of our experience—it may be a thought or sensation or sound—and as a result our attention becomes hijacked by that particular element. We become engrossed with that and cut off from the whole of our experience. Instead of a thought of a delicious Krispy Kreme being a part of the landscape of my experience, it has become the landscape.

Yet this focused attention still, in and of itself, isn’t a problem, but what happens next typically leads us into the fray of angst and struggle. With our attention focused on this one element, we begin to think. Now, thinking is different from being aware of thoughts. In thinking we engage the thoughts, encourage them, talk back to them. And it is through this process that true leaning begins.

My experience is no longer just a thought about the drippingly delectable confection, rather it’s about how wonderful it will taste, how much longer it will be until I get one, it’s about how I really shouldn’t have one and about how I really want to—and on and on it goes becoming ever more irresistible until I feel like I need to do something about it. It’s true, I begin to believe, that my experience is lacking and that I’ll be fulfilled as soon as I can get one of those sugary treats into my pie hole (or donut hole in this case).

From this point of view, it’s easy to see how I’ve become off balance. I’m not upright; I’ve began leaning away from my experience as it is and toward another experience. And through this process, the experience of this moment, and eventually all of my life moment-to-moment begins to seem less and less fulfilling.

The remedy then is about inclusivity, not manipulation. I don’t have to change or restrict the thoughts in my mind; rather I simply need to include them together with the totality of my experience. The moment that I notice that I’m thinking about a Krispy Kreme while sitting in yoga class, I’m upright. I’m in the now. Because the truth is that my experience in this moment does in fact include thoughts of my donut friend—it’s part of my reality. And it doesn’t have any negative effect on me—unless I begin to focus and engage the thought in a way that causes me to be off balance, to lean.

In this way, the cultivation of a moment-to-moment, inclusive awareness can act as a curative in our lives. There’s no need to struggle, control, or manipulate. Just include. Resting back as the sky-like awareness that you are, including and allowing all the myriad aspects of experience simultaneously, can transform your experience of even the most mundane of events.

Happy including!

Love and blessings,

E

Yogi E, a.k.a. Eric Walrabenstein is the founder and director of Yoga Pura in Phoenix, AZ. He is the architect of Yoga Pura’s year-long Advanced Studies Program and trains yoga teachers nationally. E regularly travels the country holding workshops on the process of enlightenment and translating ancient yogic truths for daily living. He is currently at work on a book on unreasonable happiness.

Copyright 2006, Eric Walrabenstein, all rights reserved.