How Our History Has Influenced Our Mind

Can you think of a time in your life when you told your first lie? We practice so we’ll know what to do when we are not on the safe space of our mat or cushion. Feeling safe is the key, and at times our history can keep us from feeling that safety. When we understand how our history has influenced our mind and shaped our reality, we can begin to understand why we are where we are. If able and willing, we can reframe our thinking, change our internal dialogue and take the necessary action to change our lives. We can reframe our thinking and create a different environment even if, for now, it’s only internal. We can change our perception and have a clearer understanding of what is best for ourselves, so that we feel more secure and supported in our actions. What we think, what we say, and what we do matter. If you want to change, it’s your responsibility to make that happen. For me, changing my environment started when I got arrested. I knew that whatever decision I made after that point would set the tone for the rest of my life. I was fifteen, standing with my public defender in the Juvenile courthouse. My mom sat behind me in the gallery, and I could feel her eyes burning into the back of my neck.

The Ground Beneath Your Feet

I was a sophomore in high school and awaiting my sentence for trying to steal a cop car. With a simple stroke of a pen, the judge would decide my fate. He was short and stern and flipped endlessly through case folders. He’d judged boys all day long and seemed confused by what I was doing there. I was a girl, all cleaned up, dressed in my mom’s nice clothes, and looked nothing like the teenage gangbangers crowding the benches, two of whom I recognized from our neighborhood. I knew he had the power to decide whether I would be another statistic, because up until that point, that’s what I was. This moment would determine whether I would live my life in the system or get a chance at creating a better one. I realized that I didn’t want to be sentenced to a life like the ones I had seen so many of my family members, neighbors, and friends live. A product of my socioeconomic inheritance. Every family on our street and all of my mom’s friends had kids in trouble with the law. Standing in that courtroom at fifteen years old, I knew this moment would define who I would be for the rest of my life. I also knew that if I was actually going to do better, I would have to swim upstream or I’d become another fixture in juvenile hall.

Living In The Real World

I would have to be radical. We were instructed that we would break for lunch and that I would get my sentence at the end of the recess. I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I would go back to my friends and hear the celebratory Welcome to the club, homie. As much as this scenario matched my environment and even felt normal, I knew in my heart that it wasn’t where I wanted to be. Doing what was normal, what was routine wasn’t resulting in anything that benefited me. If anything, it had only resulted in problems. We each see the world we are taught to see. Maybe if I could see the world differently, I would be able to see myself differently too. Our roots tell us a story about which lessons we are here to learn and how we can use these lessons to create a deeper connection to who we are. Whether our upbringing was pleasant or not can be irrelevant to the way we decide to live our lives, because we do get to choose how we live. Somewhere along the way, you make a decision that takes you off course.

It Isn't Gonna Be Easy

In order to make a change, you need to get to the root of the dysfunction. Most often, you must go all the way to the beginning. If you grew up in a fish tank, you don’t know any better. You know what you know. Radical comes from the Latin adjective radix, which means root. In Southern California, rad or radical is slang for excellent or impressive or something that is true. Telling the truth wasn’t something that came easy, especially when one of my first memories as a child was lying to a police officer. This was contrasted by my family, who were devoutly Catholic and often talked about the importance of honesty, integrity, and hard work. My entire life was a contradiction. It was no wonder that studying a practice like yoga made sense later. Yoga is the study of paradoxes. Contradicting ideas designed to understand different aspects of the same truth. They are aspects of a greater whole. Childhood is complex. On the one hand, you can see that perhaps lying to an officer is a bad thing. Lying to an officer at the behest of your parents can seem worse. However, if I told you the reason for the lie was to help save someone’s life, would that make it better? Does it justify teaching a child that omitting the truth is okay? A child doesn’t have the tools for discernment of this magnitude because they lack experience. Lying made me feel like I was all alone, disconnected from everyone and everything. I knew lying was wrong, but I was told to do it anyway. We all falter in some way, but that’s part of our learning process. This is about identifying the foundational cracks in your own experience that have kept you from feeling deeply rooted and supported in your life. Even as a child, the truth feels different from a lie. What was that like for you? It’s very confusing to be told one thing and feel another.