Karma yoga is one of the four pillars of Yoga: it is the yoga of action as described by Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. It supposes righteous adherence to duty (dharma) whilst remaining detached from the fruits of the labour.
Since becoming a mother 21 months ago, my Hatha yoga practice has suffered grave insults. Rarely do I practice asanas more than twice a week and frequent are the weeks when I don’t practise at all. However, since the beginning, I have retained in my head the concept that I am actually practising Karma yoga in the raising of my child. In the week in which Karen Matthews was convicted of kidnapping her own daughter in order to secure reward money, it emerged that she was deemed to be unable “…to successfully place the children’s needs above her own”. This inability is the manifestation of a juvenile mindset; unable to delay gratification, unable to empathise. Children are born egotists – they have no concept of a parent’s desire to sleep late, or skip dinner, or not go out for a walk on a rainy day. Children…want…now. And our role, as parents, is to both satisfy their needs whilst teaching them slowly to recognise that their needs and desires don’t always coincide with everybody else’s.
And so, parenting, I practice Karma Yoga. When my daughter needs me, I give. Love, hugs, food, attention, play, education. Whether I achieve the objective of detachment from the results of my labour, I do not yet know. Perhaps, perhaps not. I suppose it’s natural that in teaching her to speak I hope to create an articulate, polite, well-spoken human being, and that in teaching her to eat I hope to develop a balanced palate, open to new flavours and textures, alive to the possibilities of healthy food and not numbed by doses of salt and sugar. How to detach from the outcome then? I know that it will create less anxiety at mealtimes if I detach from the desire to raise a healthy eater and instead focus on the action itself: the feeding, the nourishing. But, man, it’s difficult for me that she’s already choosing bread and jam over porridge and flax seeds, or pasta with tomato sauce over vegetable and barley soup. Yes, the options should not even be available, but her rejection of lovingly prepared foods means that she goes hungry, and so I fail on both counts: neither do I feed nor do I nourish. And we all go to bed hungry: she physically and I spiritually.
And so I practice daily the yoga of devotion and action. My karma yoga as a parent stretches my limits in a way that other things have not. I believe that parenting actually makes us better people. I love the quote “adults don’t make children, children make adults”. The ancient yogis had firm respect for the phases of life: they far from believed that all of us are made to sit alone on a mountaintop in meditation until we reach Enlightenment. In fact, one yogi in a city makes more positive change in the everyday world than do ten yogis in retreats. And of course, the later phases of life, the renouncement, the time for contemplation, come after the family is grown and the career realised.
And so, I try not to stress about missing my hatha practice. For today, too, I will detach from the fruits of my labour and love an cherish my daughter without thinking of her eventual adulthood and whatever surprises it may hold. Om shanti peace.
