Ummmm…
Mannerisms are a funny thing. We move throughout our day and beneath our conscious awareness we act and behave in ways that can be invisible to us. It’s a fascinating part of our lives that sometimes seems to exist outside of ourselves. Often times these mannerisms and behaviors become hidden from us because they are a staple in our lives. We pick up gestures and speaking patterns from our family and friends (It’s Saturdee, right?) and after much repetition they are then engraved into our condition and become hidden from the intellect which may have something to say about it.
There are mannerisms that would be desirable and others not so much depending on culture, profession or societal norms. Covering your mouth while sneezing or coughing has become so much a norm in societies the world over, not just in the last 2 years but within the last 200 hundred years, that we quickly notice if the behavior is not initiated.
So ummmmmm last night I noticed how much I repeated this exclamation that it became a bit of an annoyance to me and maybe to my company. I’ve been through this process a few times now but my intention is to make a concerted effort to overcome this less than desirable speaking phenomenon.
This intention is actually an applicable practice in the field of yoga. First there’s the realization part of it. In Patanjali’s Yoga the process of overcoming both base ignorance and spiritual ignorance is first knowing that we are ignorant. To put it another way, realizing how we behave and, more importantly, realizing the often invisible behaviors and mannerisms that may be hidden from us. This seemingly easy practice is Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Wisdom. The second practice is Karma Yoga, the Yoga of Action. In this case we make the effort to change the behavior. Often times it’s difficult to do so and, an observation of mine, requires an element of compulsiveness, which then must be met with an equal amount of detachment.
Something as innocuous as saying “ummmm” is not a big deal nor life altering habit but, as we’ve learned through yoga, it’s often the small changes that we make in our behavior that open the door to much more impactful changes in our lives and thus positively affecting our world.
What Small change can you make?
