Less Light?

I wrote down this quote seven or eight years ago:

“The fact is, if it was a tight muscle, you probably would have fixed it in the last 15 years in which you’ve been stretching.” – Dr. Eric Cobb

Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of good things from Dr. Cobb’s Z-Health Performance — which looks at movement from a brain-based perspective — that have helped me, even helped me rehab myself, and I’ve tried to pass those things along in my classes.

Here, generally speaking, I think he’s saying that doing more of the same thing that isn’t working probably won’t resolve the issue. Maybe you need to rethink the problem. First, is it actually a problem? Or is it simply a feature of the system, as they say.

If it is a problem, maybe there’s a cause other than the one you’ve been assuming and operating under. Maybe rethinking the situation produces another action that’s more like a solution. In the literal stretching example, maybe it’s the nervous system at work, doing its thing.

All of that, to me, falls into the category of something sometimes called the Streetlight Effect. You might have seen the cartoon: Two people are searching for something, usually a set of keys, under a street light and one says, “Are you sure you lost them here?” The other says, “No, I lost them somewhere else, but the light is better here.”

The street light — or “available light,” from the linked article above — might be your assumptions, your premises, your mindset, received ideas, the zeitgeist, the current state or limitations of knowledge or information, the particular model or paradigm you’re working with…you get it.

You’ve been stretching your tight hamstrings for 15 years.

You’ve been fighting your anxiety for even longer.

You’ve been rolling the boulder up the mountain your whole life.

You’ve been quieting your mind and seeking peace for how many breaths?

I think I’ve been living a good part of my life under the street light. Maybe that was one thing that came out of my hospital stay — a resolve to spend, perhaps out of necessity, a little more time in the darkness, where the light might not be as good but the seeing is better. You just have to let your eyes adjust.

I don’t have the credentials other than my own experience to support it, but I believe a lot of things in society today are still problems because of the streetlight effect.

Especially in health and wellness and the things we often talk about in yoga classes over the years, as well as wellness circles in general. I don’t think I’m talking about conspiracy theories, but just the fact that so many solutions aren’t really solutions.

Strength and muscle maintenance and building — I’m sorry, but that seems like it could be the longevity street light, after a certain level of effort. But I digress…

I’m likely wrong, but a lot of the longevity and anti-aging and wellness strategies seem like street light to me.

I pick up books and read popular articles all the time and I think: street light.

I read research articles that delve into stress and anxiety and general fitness topics and so many times it seems the very premises of the paper, the researchers’ given model or paradigm, is street light to me.

There could still be good reasons to do these various practices — and who am I to say anyone should do otherwise? After all, there’s a high likelihood that I’m trying to rationalize my own choices and proclivities and available options.

But I’m thinking a good yoga practice should fit in about here. One possible effect of a good yoga practice, besides stretching your hamstrings, should be helping you discern when you’re looking under the street light for what isn’t there.

Switching the metaphor, maybe rather than a street light, it’s sun light, and the sun has simply moved on across the sky. Night has fallen.

A good yoga practice should help you become more comfortable at moving into the shadows, into the darkness.

More skilled at aligning with the circadian rhythm of your soul, or whatever time scale it follows.

Examining the conventional view, the accepted premise or definition of something, what we’ve been given as a given — that’s an uttanita practice in my book.

These days, based on my surgeon’s recommendation, that’s about the only inversion I’m trying to hone.