June has arrived and how amazing the roses in the gardens are, the hedgerows with their rich greens, early morning birdsong, and the lovely long light evenings that invite us outdoors for just a little longer.

Yet despite all this beauty, the changeable weather has been asking something of us lately, hasn’t it? 

One week we are navigating record-breaking temperatures, searching for shade, and sleeping with windows wide open, and wondering how to make our UK homes comfortable amidst so much heat. The next, cooler winds, rain and grey skies, requiring extra layers and a return perhaps to the heating indoors – a different kind of adjustment.

These weather shifts have certainly been a talking point in classes. One week we are outdoors for practice, basking in the warmth of the early morning sun. A few evenings later, we are turning the radiators on in the hall. 

Some students delighted in the heat and now miss those warm rays. Others found it surprisingly challenging and welcomed the return of cooler weather.

I found myself reflecting on how differently I meet summer sunshine these days. In my younger years, I would happily spend hours in the heat of the sun. Now I often find myself seeking a cool breeze and the relief of shade.

I often wonder if that is an age thing or whether the heat is in fact becoming more intense. Perhaps it is a mix of both.

Whatever the reason, it struck me that even something as ordinary as the weather continually asks us to adapt and adjust

We adjust our expectations, we alter our plans and our routines.

How we dress, sleep, eat, work, and activities we do or don’t turn to are all impacted.

Life is constantly asking us to reset things so we maintain our balance, not only through shifting weather patterns, but in all aspects of life.

Ayurveda fully understands that living a happy and balanced life requires a continual process of adjustment – to environment, climate, season, age and stage of life.

We are invited to walk a kind of tightrope, making small corrections as circumstances shift around us – corrections to lifestyle and diet,  as well as to daily activities, dress, work patterns, even to the type of Yoga we practice.

There are the other inevitable changes too – health changes, relationship shifts, plans unravelling and requiring us to find new directions. New demands appear that we have no roadmap for. What once felt reliable becomes unreliable.  And sometimes, there is just too much coming at us all at once. We lose our grounding and flail around in the ocean of uncertainty for a while until we find our way to ride the waves again of life again and continue.

Sometimes life places more before us than can be met with a few simple adjustments. We find ourselves carrying responsibilities and navigating difficult situations that we never anticipated.

We talk about it often in class these days.  Some are supporting an ageing parent whilst still trying to show up for children, partner, friends and work commitments.

On top of this, some are  caring for a spouse whose health is declining and whilst household income consequently declines. 

Fnancial uncertainty is visiting many of us with rising daily costs.

Then there are the other inevitable aspects of life – grief, loneliness, personal illness, and susbequent seasons of emotional and physical exhaustion.

And then there is the caring for an elderly pet, or supporting a rescue animal with fears and behavioural challenges. Also family members, they require far more of us than those who have not been there will ever understand. 

These are all the many real ife situations we are faced with at one point or another in our lives, that we would not have freely chosen, and yet from which we cannot simply walk away from.

There is no easy solution and no convenient bypass. We simply have to dig deep and find a way to meet what is showing up.

I have been experiencing some of this myself recently – though I know some of you are carrying so much more. 

Showing up in my life right now are an elderly parent needing increasing support after a series of injuries. My own recovery from a fall. The arrival of a new and very large rescue dog with a greater degree of reactivity than anticipated. Neighbour reactions to the reactive dog – not aggressive by the way, just likfe 45kg of boisterous puppy energy that is easily misread in a large dog.  Alongside all this, there remains a business to keep going and all the ordinary responsibilities of daily life that in themselves alone are challenging enough for many of us these days.

Some days it has felt as though there is barely room for anything beyond meeting what is immediately in front of me.

All that can be done is to meet one thing at a time. One step at a time.

Perhaps you recognise something of this too?

In one form or another, we are all carrying something. I know it – I hear it all the time. Even those living the seemingly most charmed lives are carrying….something. 

And we know that some are carrying so much more than most of us could imagine is bearable.

It was whilst reflecting on all this that brought to mindI remembered one prized quality on the path of Yoga. It is known as titiksha.

Titiksha is often translated as endurance, forbearance, or patient perseverance.

This is not the kind of endurance that requires us to simply grit our teeth as we push through difficult circumstances.

Titiksha is not asking us to endure life’s difficulties in this way.

It is to pass through the fire of life – those times when life truly burns – without losing ourselves in it.

When challenges arise, it is easy to become so completely absorbed in them that we can feel like we are drowning – we are losing any sense of ourselves and only the seemingly insurmountable difficulties we face fill our minds and hearts – leaving no space for us to anchor ourselves in anything untouched by life’s vagaries.

And so we become caught in worry, frustration, resentment, resistance, fear, or despair, losing contact with any part of our being that can offer a deeper, steadier grounding. All that remains is total identification with the turbulence itself and a loss of the capacity to see that we are so much more. There is so much more inside us – in our deep, ever -steady centre. 

Yoga shows us another way – a way that promotes harmony, stability and expansion of being. 

It gives us the means to remain connected to that still inner ground, even whilst life throws so much at us that would make the ground feel unsteady beneath us. 

It does not mean that we become untouched by what is happening.life’s diffiulties or indifferent to them. 

It means that despite them, we are able to remain rooted in something deeper. The circumstances may cause turbulence on the surface of our lives, but we stay anchored to those depths that turbulence cannot touch. 

Over the past weeks we have explored awareness, discernment, self-abiding, and the witnessing presence that exists beneath the movements of the mind.

Titiksha is, in many ways, what enables all of these to be sustained and to become a greater part of our makeup.

Our enquiry then becomes – as we meet the ups and downs of life:

Can we remain connected to that deeper ground when life becomes demanding?

Can we continue to act from wisdom rather than reactivity?

Can we hold steady when circumstances are anything but steady?

This does not mean we have become passive, detached, or emotionally numb.

It means we are super alert, aware. We feel everything – maybe even more so. My teacher used to speak to how sensitive the Yogi becomes.  Yet we are not consumed by what we face and feel. We are not lost in it – because through our consistent and steady practice, we have built a consistently steady place of refuge within. 

And so, when life asks much of us – when there is much to endure, there seem to be two broad possibilities.

Through hardship we can allow ourselves to become hardened. To become closed, resentful, cynical, defensive, or guarded. The experience was painful, we were fully identified with the thoughts and feelings that surfaced as a consequence. We had little space from there. There was nowhere to go within that was not touched by this hurting. And so, nderstandably, we attempt to protect ourselves from further hurt.

And that comes at a cost. 

We armour to stop further from getting in. Yet this means that all the good things in life also cannot enter in. We are closed to them too. 

Joy struggles to penetrate us. Trust becomes difficult. Spontaneity and enthusiasm diminish. The heart has contracted.

In trying to protect ourselves from future suffering, we can unwittingly lock ourselves in the prison of our past  suffering.

And as the wounds we are protecting remain locked within us, unseen and unresolved, they tend to weep and smart meaning – the inform our perceptions, influence our choices, colour our relationships, and feed our expectations. Not only this, the energy needed to keep weeping hurts contained, becomes a constant drain on our energy so that maybe one day, we become sick. Then the only way back is  through the healing power of illness: to look at the root and message of an illness in that sealed off pain within. 

What began as protection can, if we are not aware, gradually become another source of suffering.

Yoga asks us that rather than hardening, we consciously endure.

We remain steady and present amidst our hardships. We are mindful not to be pulled by those familiar bedfellows of like and dislike, attraction and aversion. 

We witness what is arising and we allow our challenges to teach us and as remain mindful of our reactivity, and give space for wisdom to rise with appropriate responses. 

In this way gradually, instead of becoming diminished by life’s trials and tribulations, we are refined by them. The rough edges of our habitual reactivity are smoothed. As we witness and experience our own suffering, understanding and compassion for the suffering of others deepens.

Our  resilience and patience strengthens, and wisdom matures. And our capacity to remain present becomes ever expanding.

We have all met people who have endured much and yet somehow remain the kindest and most understanding human beings we know. 

We have met people who have suffered incredible hardships, and yet are  amongst the most compassionate and tolerant that we have ever met. 

And they are beings we love to be around. Their very presence feels like a shelter from the blazing heat of life. 

This is because they have not allowed their difficulties to close their heart. And in choosing thus, they have actually ]] allowed difficulty to deepen and expand within them, all the qualities of hte heart. All that makes us human. 

These are the fruits of titikṣā – endurance, forbearance. Succesfully navigating life’s challenges does not mean we suffer silently and harden.

Rather it means we are able to acnhor into a steadiness within that allows us to remain , soft, open and loving – even when life is difficult.

We have a different kind of  strength – it carries a softness and caring with it. 

We have a resilience rooted in wisdom and understanding rather than resistance and pushing through.

A reflection on titiksha remind us that life will always change. We will always have blue skies for a period, followed by grey and stormy skies that cast a shadow over everything, until the blue skies finally return again. Just as we cannot change the patterns and colourse of the skies, we cannot change the ups and downs that will inevitably visit us through the course of our lives. 

By a certain age we know this too well. And we now know we don’t have to be resigned. To numb ourselves with substances, distractions, even addictions. 

The pleasant will not remain forever, but nor will the unpleasant. And titiksha invites us to stand steady in this understanding. And to know the blessed fruits of standing steady and meeting difficulties with grace, acceptance and adaptation.

The practices of Yoga offer us so much more than physical tone and flexibility. In truth, this is only a very small part of what Yoga has to offer as we navigate contemporary life.

One of the great blessings of a regular practice – one that gently reshapes our psychology as well as our physiology – is the capacity to stand more steadily within ourselves, without becoming overwhelmed by the many waves that rise and fall in life.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts of titiksha, It helps us to mindfully cultivate this capacity. 

For  surely, it is how we meet the grey stormy skies, with the winds that would knock us of balance, more than the calm, still “blue sky” days that shapes us into who we become