Withholding Judgment: Breathing Kindness
Recently, my mom gifted me her electric bike. She wasn’t using it enough and thought I’d get more juice out of it living in the mountains of Pittsburgh (and she is right!). I’ve loved riding my bicycle as my main form of transportation in the warmer months for a long time now. To me, it’s just the superior method of getting around town because you
1. Save the environment by using 0 emissions,
2. Get a wicked exercise,
3. Get to experience the outdoors on your commute &
4. Skip the BS traffic of the city.
BUT, before I moved to Pittsburgh, I used to negatively comment in my head about people who ride electric bikes thinking “ what’s the point of bike riding if you’re gunna cheat code all the benefits by making it do all the work for you?” or, “why are people too lazy to just get the exercise by riding a normal bike?”. My judgmental self came through and hated on this new age technology that turned bike riding into less of a physical experience and more of a leisure activity.
But after having my first ride on the electric bike today since my mom gifted it to me, I was feeling really grateful to simply enjoy the 65 degree weather day without having to exert too much effort on my period as the trek was 8 miles (mostly uphill) and boy was I feeling mighty tired! And although I easily could’ve hopped in my car and drove to the yoga studio, I still wanted to get some sun on my skin and enjoy the outdoors, and thankfully, the electric bike allowed me to get the best of both worlds.
As I was riding my bike home after the class, I was thinking about how I once was the person that hated on electric bikers, thinking they were lazy and disconnected from the beautiful muscle burn that comes from biking hard, but then realized I was now one of these people that was loving the assist! The truth is, I didn’t have to hate on bikers that had a different method, we’re still all in it for the majority of the same reasons, even if 100% of the reasons don’t align perfectly, we still like to bike and be outside!
It’s the same in yoga. With so many different styles and strands of Yoga, Yoga is still Yoga. Ashtanga is still Yoga, Vinyasa is still Yoga, Hatha is still Yoga, and in this sense, we can learn to remind ourselves of the foundation of whatever it is we’re doing and be open to the idea that maybe we will try that other method one day and perhaps, really like it for a different reason than we like what it is we’re currently invested in. So this bike ride experience allowed me to reflect on this beautiful lesson of withholding judgment. Instead of judging others, I can respect that we still have the same foundation, remembering that maybe one day I’ll most likely try their style and potentially really love it, or I might never, and still, don’t need to judge them for it.
In Yoga/Sanksrit, judgement is called Nirṇaya (निर्णय):"judgment" or "decision." It involves forming opinions or making determinations based on one's assessment of a situation or individual. While nirṇaya can be constructive when done with discernment and wisdom, it can also lead to prejudice or bias if based on limited information or subjective perceptions.
Judgement polarizes us, we all know this, yet somehow we can’t seem to put it out of our minds 100% of the time. Little voices creep in and say stuff about other ways to live a life and then somehow, times passes and we find that we became the one we once critiqued. We’re not all perfect, we all still have a lot of work to do, but reminding ourselves to withhold judgment so that we may walk a path of more compassion and kindness is certainly always the goal.
“We do not actually know other people; we only know our judgments.”
~Bryant McGill
If you’d like to read more about this topic, here’s another great article on the topic of withholding judgment written by a sweet woman named Donna on her website “A Year of Living Kindly” - Withholding Judgment Puts Us on the Path to Kindness
Let me know what you think of this article in the comments below :)
Love,
Sam
