I have a friend Becky who went through a painful breakup. I spoke to her again a few weeks ago and asked how she was doing. She started talking ill about her ex, a relationship that had ended more than 2.5 years ago yet she was still in therapy trying to deal with the impact. I heard her do this on many occasions before and could not take it any longer. Intuitively, I knew what to do at that moment. I looked at her square in the eye and said with authority, STOP, you need to stop now! This spreading of negative energy needs to stop immediately.
She froze in her tracks as though a comet had hit her. She shook her head, put her head down acknowledging what I said and quietly walked away. I know from that day on she has realized how powerful her own thoughts were and how damaging they can be to her own healing if she repeatedly brings back bad memories of her ex and spreads negative energy about the person.
Like millions of others, what Becky did not realize is that we are all souls, humming with electromagnetic energy. We are literally batteries of power on the move. Our thoughts are super-powerful! We have mechanisms to receive others thoughts through our hearts. Holding negative feelings about any person will be picked up by the subconscious mind of the other person. So essentially, without having spoken a word, there could be a great exchange of negative energy between you and your ex,that can further stimulate mental and emotional confinement. It’s like encasing yourself by building a wall around your heart and putting yourself in deeper darkness.
If you are one amongst the millions like Becky: You just broke up from either a relationship or marriage, things are getting nasty. When you think it couldn’t get any worse, your ex is breaking new lows in negativity. You want to just get it over with and move on, but your ex wouldn’t let you. He/she is spreading rumors about you to your own friends. Maybe there are kids involved. The situation looks hopeless, you don’t know what to do. You feel helpless. You feel like yelling from the top of a mountain that you are not as bad as they all make you to be…
Is it utter darkness? Is there ANYTHING you can do?
Yes, there is a solution if you turn to Yoga wisdom, the ancient Indian Yoga scriptures talk about how to deal with different types of people. I’m sure your ex will fit into one of the categories.
By cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy,
compassion for the unhappy,
delight towards the virtuous,
and disregard or indifference toward the wicked,
the mind retains its undisturbed calmness.”– Yoga Sutras
The above verse is a how-to tool in handling difficult people. I believe that serenity of mind is the most prized possession in the world. It is therefore important to identify what it is that we are fighting for in a challenging situation such as a breakup. Let me explain how we can apply the great wisdom in this 2500+ year old verse to today’s relationship problems. The great Yoga master Patanjali essentially says that to gain, retain and not lose serenity of mind, it is wise to treat happy people with friendliness, to treat with compassion those who are suffering or in bad situations, to treat with delight the good and the virtuous, now for the kicker, to treat with indifference or disregard the bad, cruel and the wicked. I will let you decide in which category your ex belongs?
Why should you treat your ex with indifference?
After a break up things are going south, what is then your immediate goal? You want to get out with least amount of pain right? You just want to move on to a more exciting life, which would be the only sane thing to do. Getting out squeaky clean depends on a large extent on your understanding of the law of Karma and its workings and not adding more Karma to yourself. Operations of the Law of Karma is divided into two categories
- All actions and thoughts that bind or confine you
- All actions and thoughts that free or liberate you
Law of Karma is based on energy, amount of thought or reality you give a situation combined with your emotional involvement. Most times in situations such as a breakup, people tend to retaliate with predominately negative thoughts. The tendency is to talk back, strike back, hit back… Well my friends, that is the trap! You are locking yourself into deeper and deeper karma with your ex, which is far from your objective of detaching. This is what you need to extricate yourself from, your own negative energy and accompanying poisonous thoughts.
The karmic energy created because of negative exchange of thoughts and ill spoken words will create more uncomfortable situations that are incredibly confining and damaging to healing. People tend to do the very opposite of a squeaky clean escape. More bad thoughts about the person will create more bad blood. Before you know, you are in a vicious web of negative karma from which it is almost impossible to get out.
Yoga and Love: Three vows for a smooth breakup
Here are the three vows I have seen work wonders with my clients and advanced students going through a breakup. These minimize the generation of bad karma as you move into creating a beautiful space in your life.
- Vow not to talk ill of your ex to anybody
- Vow not to think negative thoughts about your ex
- Vow not to poison your kids against your ex, if you share children
Acknowledge, that one day in the past, you did share some beautiful moments together. Those moments are still beautiful, just abide in that peace. No man or woman is worth to gamble away the serenity of your mind.
"It is about learning to love from the inside out. Yes a big part of the book is about Yoga, but the core message of it , is learning to and how to love yourself on the inside. It emphasizes so much on focusing on yourself, that is such a refreshing perspective on relationships.” Paulina D, San Diego, CA
"The core message of the book is before you unite with someone try to unite with yourself. It is learning about yourself, finding yourself and then if you choose to you can find love on the outside . The book gives ways to do just that in simple step by step way.” 
"Yoga is a life long process and the goal of life is self exploration. The book inspires me to make myself whole, integrated, to feel complete unto myself. Once I do that , I will attract a holistic, integrated person who is a totality of himself, which is how a relationship is supposed to be.” 
"Yoga is love, love is Yoga. It is not a relationship book, it is not just a love book, it is a lifestyle book. It is educational, informative, a message that everybody can apply. It teaches you how to be a better person, so that you don’t just find the love of your life but learn to have better relationships with everyone.” 