What is Practicing Perspective?

It’s The White Foamy Stuff That Can Snuff Out The Dumpster Fire In Your Body Set By Cortisol

Perspectives are not only seen with the eye, they are also held in the mind; they’re often even deeply rooted beliefs. So practicing perspective is an activity of regulating the mind consciousness muscle – a.k.a. Dumpster fire prevention.

Yoga, as my teachers have taught, is about the freedom and empowerment to change the lens by which we view our world, a situation, a relationship, problem, or person. We typically experience harmful stress – or suffering – from the action of just thinking. We can instead practice perspective by drawing focus of the mind away from narrative loops and stories to what is known; often that is just the breath as a known truth of the present moment. 

This has real impact on your nervous system, down-regulating the stress response of hormones, blood pressure and a whole host of other biological signals from something that only exists in the mind.

It’s similar to many other curious idioms we have in our cultural lexicon that we all know aren’t to be followed literally:

• Think outside the box
• Take a birds-eye view
• Take a step back
• Look at the big picture
• Get out of the weeds
• Walk a mile in their shoes
• Take a deep breath
• Weigh your options
• Sleep on it

And we want to be careful not to mistake practicing perspective with ‘analysis paralysis’. This process goes deeper.

Mind-Body-Spirit Is More Than Just a Tagline

When we perceive or believe something fearful that has not yet happened – something not currently rooted in reality, we suffer. When we constantly loop hurtful memories or replay unsettling situations in our mind that occurred in the past, we suffer. When you shift your perspective into the present moment, a sense of empowerment arises, empowerment to just be, take a beat, take a breath, loosen the grip of anticipation, just relax into the body. a.k.a. Chill.

Becoming aware of the narrative in our mind and freeing our perspective – even for just one minute of rapid fire alternative possibilities or fact-checking, is a powerful position to work from when managing fear, stress, anxiety, shame, anger and worry, as some of the more common unhealthy signals activated in the mind.

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and the author of Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), teaches us about that powerful position:

BOOM – mic drop. That space is the position from which to practice perspective.

What pulls us away from that choice is the influence of thoughts or stories looping in the mind, as we learn in the yoga sutras. When we live in a culture of ‘hurry up’ and social media soundbites and deadlines, we miss the opportunity to down-regulate our nervous system, to reduce stress, to find clarity.

PRACTICING PERSPECTIVE AS A LIFESTYLE REFLEX

Managing our mind/mindset is what happens when we change the lens in which we are currently using to view a situation or think outside the box. 

Often times, the lens we are using to view a situation was influenced by some pundit in the news, a TikTok influencer, that family member that likes conspiracy theories, or some other alleged ‘expert’ – some other source that is not you.

 

When we pause to practice perspective, we are activating the neuroplasticity of the mind, which is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections – and possibly new beliefs. 

• Cultural conditioning and emotional habits affect the neuron activity in the brain.
• Neurological wiring is simply how the brain develops, changes, and adapts over time, often in response to experiences, learning, and environmental or cultural factors.

Think of it like an app developer fixing bugs. We are empowered to react differently than usual, and over time we will feel differently, too – because of the brain’s response to the mind.

Sweetening your perspective practice with additional yoga tools, such as breath work and movement, will also help to activate the parasympathetic part of our nervous system. It reverses the body’s stress response by reducing cortisol – the stress hormone, and allows you to ‘feel’ your own perspective. This is building your intuitive muscle.  

Practicing awareness first is a sort of muscle of the mind that we learn from yoga. Just like bicep reps and lunges recondition muscles of the body, pausing to notice how your thoughts are making you feel is the first step of re-conditioning your mind. Practicing Perspective as a reflex to that awareness is one of many ways you can practice yoga without stepping onto the mat or taking an hour out of your day to attend a class (although, attending a group class with other yogis has its own delicious benefits!) The yoga sutras – especially sutra 1.8 – are a critical starting point to understanding how yoga is a direct path to reducing stress, strengthening relationships and experiencing more ease, or even better, more joy.