Size Matters…

…and not in the way you think. If you’re smirking already, I’m afraid I’m going to massively disappoint. (And no, I’m not just saying that to console myself. For once.) In fact, I’m not even talking about that at all. I’m talking about resolve – cue huffing and eye-rolling – which after a risqué opening probably goes down like a lead balloon in my dear reader’s mind. Kindly read on to permit me to lighten the load.

Januaries have traditionally been months swollen (forgive me) with a mass of new resolutions, with most of them ending up limp and lifeless by early February. April may be cruel, but January can be downright vicious. Personally, repeating this cycle of resolution-then-dissolution never seemed to get me any closer to the exciting new way of living that I always imagined at the start of each year. But for the last two years, living with a physicist has got me running some interesting experiments on myself – thought experiments, I hasten to add.

Drinking tea, picking my nose, and reflecting on the Big Bang at home one evening as one does, it struck me that its mass isn’t really what makes it such an incredible phenomenon; its mass, like that of the universe, wasn’t actually infinite. But it was infinitely dense. That’s to say, its teeny-tininess is what gave it its infinite quality, and thereby its mind-bending power. So, I got to wondering about whether I could apply this bewitching mixture of limitation and limitlessness to my own life.

What if, I began to ask myself, instead of painting the skies with immense plans every January, I instead reduced them down to something so incredibly, so painfully, so cringe-inducingly small, that I could cross some kind of threshold in my mind and create a sense of resolve that was – in relative terms for my little human life – infinitely strong? What if I made a commitment that was so small, so embarrassingly small, that the corresponding levels of embarrassment at not being able to keep it could become infinitely dense? Aha! I bristled with excitement at the thought of perhaps finally having run rings around the lazy, snooze-hitting, foot-dragging, nose-picking part of myself…

But the challenge lay in sticking to the plan, and making a resolution that really was too small to ignore. Of course, I’m talking specifically about my yoga practice, but it could be [insert perennially elusive generalisation here]. Naturally, my fuzzy little ego-monster started to creep in, coy and cuddly in its attempt to wheedle its way into my cunning plans… “But Andreas, this isn’t even going to do anything for you, you have to have at least one… no… maybe three, it’s a nicer number… maybe three Sun Salutations in there. Who’s ever done yoga without one of those and ever really felt they’ve done yoga? No one!” And so the plans grew.

Then later, the familiar little monster started to bristle and bare its sharp, shiny little teeth: “If you’re setting your alarm earlier, you might as well actually do something – in fact, Andreas, are you sure this whole idea isn’t just you being lazy? Yes, actually I think you’re confusing yourself with me deliberately, so you can avoid doing a proper, strenuous practice!” Naturally, the plans grew some more. Before I knew it, the sketch of my ‘minimum practice’, replete with kriya, asana, and meditation, was starting to stress me out, even in anticipation! It had become another hurdle to leap over in the circus of life. The familiar feelings of anxiety, judgement, imposition, and even resentment started to creep back in, piece by insidious piece.

With another flashback to my Big Bang theory about resolve, I suddenly realised I’d fallen at the very first hurdle. There was never meant to be a hurdle in the first place – in fact, the whole point was to reduce the size of this commitment to something so small that it was, to all intents and purposes, zero. Nada. Nothing at all. Not even a breeze. Zilch. Something the very minuteness of which gave it the infinite power of being unignorable. And so, in the spirit of this idea, the tiniest, but purest and most unshakable seed of commitment was finally planted: to take a single breath cycle with my undivided attention. This would be my singularity, my Big Bang to kick-start a healthy, happy, and relaxed relationship to my practice.

“Madness!” my now raging, razor-clawed and scimitar-toothed monster howled, foaming at the chops. “This is an embarrassment to yoga! What’s the point in that?! What will that gain you? Who will be impressed by that?!” Nothing, and no one, of course. That’s how I knew I was really onto something. Like the Big Bang itself, I knew that the very ‘pathetic-ness’ of this plan, at least according to the usual ways in which we measure and value things, was what gave it potency. Its very simplicity allowed it to be planted deep into my way of being, beyond the reach of the swirling negative and destructive feelings that generally gather around anything we feel burdened by. What could be lighter, or more effortless, than a single breath, lovingly taken and released? My monster was incandescent with rage, and I had to laugh. These days I sometimes also smile and sigh. Both count as breaths, of course.

Finally, unshakably, I had become a person with, as opposed to without, unshakable resolve. Furthermore, I realised that like the Big Bang, its potency was inversely proportional to its size: the smaller the commitment, the more powerful its potential. Of course, there are days when I do very little. Occasionally, there are days when I do a lot. But wherever I am on this spectrum in the ebb and flow of life, underlying it all is the empty-yet-overflowing gift from myself to myself: the promise that, at the very least, I will sit down, and first empty, then fill, then empty my lungs again, and really feel myself doing it. The magic, of course, is that I haven’t yet had a day where I stop at just one breath — things tend to sprout from that point on.

I dare you to plant the same single seed, and tell me if this whole size thing is all just a load of hot air. Why not leave all Januaries behind by taking one proper breath each day, with all your heart – you might be surprised by what blossoms forth.