Overcoming Bad Habits
By Nancy Owens • Northport, NY

Yogis realized thousands of years ago what scientists are just realizing now.

Replacing our unskillful behaviors with more life-affirming actions is largely a matter of the mind. Yoga and meditation can make the critical difference in the process of understanding the mind and the tricks that it can play! Learning to work with our minds is what leads to life transformation.

Developing the willpower to practice asana and meditation everyday can be difficult at first. What we tell ourselves so often is “I just don't have the time.” Does that sound familiar? I believe that is the first of the tricks that the mind plays on us. The language we use is very important. Perhaps it is time to replace “I don't have time” with “I choose to do other things with my time.” We must begin to be pointedly, if not cruelly, honest with ourselves. If we have time to chat on the phone, read a book, clean a not-very-dirty-or-messy room, watch a movie or TV show, go to bed 15 minutes early, or hit the snooze button for that extra 10 minutes, we have time to do yoga or meditate. It is just a matter of choice; don't kid yourself any longer.

A little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. Let this be the week you find 10 minutes a day to practice. You can do a couple of sun salutes in 10 minutes. You can choose to do standing poses one day, back bends another day, etc. You can sit quietly or lie in bed and watch your breath come and go another day.

The key to replacing less skillful habits with more skillful habits is consistency. And the keys to understanding and gaining some control over the tricks of the mind are yoga and meditation. So, let’s begin somewhere. On the days you have no class or practice, start with a minimum of 10 minutes.

Work with what the ancient yogis called samskaras. Samskaras are the habits of action and thought, which, like grooves in a muddy road, get deeper all the time. Everything that you think or do increases the likelihood that you will think or do it again. That is true of both the desirable and the undesirable.

Repetition is the key to deepening the samskaras. Perhaps you would like to make a promise to create the habit of doing some sort of yoga or meditation for a given period each day. Maybe you can take class once or twice a week--so those days are already accounted for.

Be advised: Creating new samskaras will not magically make the old ones disappear. Reappearance of old samskaras even after you’ve been on the yogic path doesn’t signal failure. It just lets you know how persistent those samskaras are. Don’t despair; just recommit!

Nancy Owens is the founder and director of Less Stress Yoga, offering yoga and meditation classes and private sessions, workshops and 200 & 500 hour yoga teacher trainings in Northport, NY. She has a master's degree in education and teaches children with learning differences in a public school setting. Visit her website to view the event calendar or to sign up for the weekly e-mail message: lessstressyoga.com.