How can Yoga help you through difficult and challenging times? With a tool you may not even know you have: Titiksha, your own inner strength.
Our ability to endure through difficult life events is something we think we have no choice in. Something happens—a breakup, job loss, divorce, death, illness, money issues, what have you—and we feel pain. We suffer. We endure all the emotions that come with the event, such as anger, guilt, and confusion.
Yet this very ability to endure is the key to getting through the trouble.
Titiksha (tih-TEEK-shah) is Sanskrit for endurance. While pain is inevitable, we forget, or don’t even know, that our ability to endure this pain can be viewed as strength. That’s right: Endurance is strength.
Remembering that we have within us a vast reserve of strength makes pain bearable. When we think of ourselves as strong, we go from thinking the pain will never end to knowing that it will, and we will be the better for having endured it.
Recall times when you’ve been in hell, yet now you’re sitting here, whole, complete, and beautiful. You got through those challenges with Titiksha, your own ability to endure and come back with resilience. Titiksha is a Yoga Tool you can use whenever you think you can’t make it through something. Know that you can.
In difficult times, practice Maitri (kindness) toward yourself. Meditate on your own Titiksha, and your strength will carry you through. When we feel at our weakest, that can be when we are truly at our strongest.