Over reactive people are impacted and imprinted by their environment, thus soaking in all the stresses and pressures like a sponge and storing it all in their muscles and mind.
Reactive people are often super sensitive to their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Reactive people are also affected by the “social weather.”
When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive, depressed or even sick. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others.
The goal is to carry your own weather with you. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to your inner landscape. As you develop the muscles of mindfulness, you will be influenced by external stimuli, but your response, whether conscious or unconscious, will flow effortlessly from your calm center. You’ll be “in-formed (formed from within) rather than “out-formed,” or formed from outside forces, which are often negative.
Living life from the outside in depletes your energy. The build up of stress and pressure creates anxiety, anger and pain, which makes us distracted, spent and upset. This state pushes us toward false comfort, like food or addictions, that temporarily alters our moods and states.
Through your practice of Baptiste Yoga, you release the pressure gage of your mind and muscle, and let out the steam and wash yourself of internal build-up so that your cravings gradually disappear leaving you calm and centered.
Being centered empowers you to act from what you “know” is right in your heart. The meditative mind set gives you control. Instead of reacting to the outer pressures and possible cruelties of life, you respond to your own “inner pressure” of intuition, and you act from what is right for you, in that moment.
Think about the word responsibility—”response-ability”—the ability to choose your response. Your yoga practice puts you in the centered state of mind to do exactly that. As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” In the words of Gandhi, “They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.”
