We had the second meeting of our Willpower Instinct Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss yesterday.   We came together for gentle yoga practice, meditation and discussion of the second and third chapters in the Willpower Instinct:  I Will, I Won’t, I Want:  What Willpower Is, and Why It Matters.

In these chapters author Kelly McGonigal describes the willpower as a biological instinct that evolved to help us protect ourselves from ourselves!  She also compares it to a muscle that tires from use and regular use makes it stronger.

In our gentle movement practice we explored Kelly’s premise that self-control is a physiological state or in yoga-speak a body/mind state.  We began by simply focusing awareness on our current state:  bodily sensations, experience of energy and quality of heart and mind.  We attended to how these expressions of life changed with breathing, moving and pausing.  Kelly describes the self-monitoring system that attends to our thoughts, emotions and sensations that works to keep us safe from ourselves by detecting impulses to act in ways that undermine our wellbeing.  She calls this capacity the pause and plan response.  We cultivated this state by slowing our breathing, by moving intuitively and by pausing to experience a sense of equanimity.

After a period of sitting meditation we allowed some time for contemplation and journaling about the inner impulse that threatens our resolve to meet the willpower challenge we’ve accepted for the course.  The thoughts or feelings that makes us want to do whatever it is that we really don’t want to do.  When we choose not to do what we really want to do, what are we saying yes to?

Kelly talks about the two amazing capacities of mind that keep us safe.  The oldest is the fight or flight response that is vigilant against external threats.  It works well in situations that we need to act on an impulse – like swerving to avoid an oncoming car.  Boy do we feel that one!  Our hearts race, body temperature rises, blood is shunted to muscles that help us move.   As we faced fewer external threats our brains evolved the pause and plan response to more subtle inner threats we perceive: the impulses that undermine our intention to live our purpose.  Improving our self-awareness enables us to recognize the state we’re in and respond in ways that give us that time and energy to make optimal choices.

I described Yoga’s Kosha model of a human being (handout at this link) as one that can help us to recognize the state we’re in.  According to the Kosha system, the nature of being human encompasses physical and psychological aspects that function as one holistic system. The Kosha system refers to these different aspects as layers of subjective experience. Layers range from the dense physical body to the more subtle levels of emotions, mind and spirit. Psychology refers to the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of our being. Together, all aspects make up our subjective experience of being alive.  I’ve given you a handout that illustrates this model.

Yoga’s philosophy of healing also centers focuses on the perception of stress. This yogic model is similar to Kelly’s observation:  Anything that stresses the body/mind can interfere with the physiology of self-control and sabotage willpower:  poor diet, sleep deprivation, overwork, anxiety, anger, depression, loneliness are all associated with lower heart rate variability, a biological measure of self control.  Chronic pain and illness are also significant stressors.

When practicing self-reflection we can use this model to assess how stress may be manifesting in these different dimensions of being:

1. Annamayakosha/Physical body – restore through body awareness, skillful use of diet, movement and rest
2. Pranamayakosha/Energy body – restore with conscious breathing practices and reestablishing a connection to our natural environment
3. Manomayakosha/Emotional body – restore by turning awareness inward and practice mindfulness practices
4. Vijnyanamayakosha/Wisdom body – restore with focused attention and meditation practices
5. Anandamayakosha/Bliss body – restore by embracing all dimensions of being and living in harmony with nature

We discussed the nature of our willpower challenges and how they related to living intentionally, with purpose.  Empowering our will is certainly a worth goal when you consider that we live in a culture that is collectively experiencing what Kelly describes as “willpower fatigue”.  We have many choices but don’t seem to have enough energy to make the right ones for our selves, for our environment and for future generations.

I referred to Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s article, The Dignity of Restraint, in which he considers the value of restraint:

“What’s good about it? Well, for one thing, if we don’t have any restraint, we don’t have any control over where our lives are going. Anything that comes our way immediately pulls us into its wake. We don’t have any strong sense of priorities, of what’s really worthwhile, of what’s not worthwhile, of the pleasures we’d gain by saying no to other pleasures . . . Actually, there’s a sense of wellbeing that comes from being totally independent, from not needing other things. If that state of wellbeing doesn’t have a chance to develop, if we’re constantly giving in to our impulse to do this or take that, we’ll never know what that wellbeing is . . .

The mind is even more independent when you develop the discernment that’s able to dig out the source of those impulses and see where they come from, to the point where the whole issue of temptation is no longer an issue because there’s nothing tempting. You look at the things that would pull the mind out of its stillness, out of its independence, and you realize they’re just not worth it. In the past you were training the mind in a sense of hunger—that’s what we do when we keep giving in to impulses: we’re training ourselves in hunger. But now you train the mind in the direction of having enough, of being free, and you realize that the sense of hunger that you used to cultivate is really a major source of suffering. You’re much better off without it.”

Thank you for these words of encouragement.  Enough said!

Next week’s homework is outlined on the attached summary:

The Willpower Instinct Meditation Book Group Meeting 2 Homework

You can try “right clicking” your mouse over these highlighted words: guided relaxation audio as a way to experience calm.  (Note that the audio takes about 7 seconds to begin.) Good luck with your challenges this week!  Let’s remember Kelly’s advice:

“. . . to succeed in meeting your willpower challenge find or cultivate a state of body/mind that puts energy toward self-control versus self-defense.  This means giving ourselves what we need to recover from stress.”