Yoga as Coaching: Personality, temperament, samskaras and change

Are we innately inclined to certain temperaments? Am I “Just the way I am” or is there choice in change, discernment in action and impulse? Both Yoga and Science explore these questions and arrive at similar conclusions. The persistent nature and nurture interplay continues to evolve in our understanding. A recent article in Psychotherapy Networker discusses personality, temperament and a 20 year study begun in 1988 by Jerome Kagan into the biological drives for key personality traits like extroversion, introversion and other forms of sociability.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you
something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Emerson

“It is better to strive in ones own dharma (duty, work, calling) than to succeed in the dharma of another”
~ Bhagavad Gita III:35

Yoga is a field delving into attentiveness, discernment or viveka in relation to our mind’s tendencies and behaviors, our body’s cravings and impulses. In particular the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita go into some depth around our intrinsic nature, and our moving through our environments adapting and responding to nurture.

The Yogic Model
Prakruti:
The Yogic and Ayurvedic model refer to one’s individual nature as prakruti, one’s own constitution and proclivities. The dance in yoga is to bring balance to that nature through work with a teacher or practitioner to help us understand that nature, its qualities and thus practices to bring balance to that nature.

Samskara:
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali also teach about samskara or tendencies, imprints left by experience. Samskara are also then personality traits, things we tend to do again and again. Again, bringing balance is the richness of practice, learning through discernment which samskara are to be reinforced, and which to be curtailed, held in our control. Not being controlled or controlling, or repressing, but having tendencies and temperament well in hand. Heart and Mind are not separate in the yogic model, each in constant interplay.

Karma:
There is a rich model and vocabulary in Yoga providing tools for change and self-care and balance through attentiveness of heart/mind. One more term for the purposes this article is karma, an oft misunderstood term in western circles, and a concept I seek to understand with ongoing study and inquiry. One’s Karma is all wrapped up in one’s prakruti. Karma is a collection of laws of action and reaction, action and results of action. The key point being we only have authority over our actions, we do not have a say in the results of our actions (Bhagavad Gita II.47), and some results are coming from actions long ago, even past lifetimes, inherited in our makeup to unfold in our life based on our discernment and choices.

Taking prakruti, samskara and karma together we see a rich complex interplay of predisposition, or ‘one’s make-up’ alongside strong practices for discernment, attention and value based living. We also see the malleability of the human animal, the adaptability, the resilience and ability to change and choose.

Yoga is Whole Person Coaching
Yoga is a practice of change over time. As students of yoga, as teachers coaching students through the mirror of themselves, understanding the interplay between what is nature, what is choice and discernment and the practices that bringing balance mentally, physiologically, emotionally and physically is key. As a practitioner, I seek to collaborate with nutritionists, expressive arts therapists, life coaches and others to offer long term Whole Person Wellness programs bring various aspects of our makeup into the mix to find our calling, or as the Gita says “To do our OWN work, not seeking to do the work of others.” Or finding a home for our temperament, walking in balance.

Personality and Temperament
In Marian Sandmaier’s article in the Psychotherapy Networker, “Do our personalities Pilot the Way We Live Our Lives?” she explores the rising role temperament is having in psychotherapy and the interplay for the project of human change.

The field of temperament is dramatically enlarging in scope. The new science of behavioral molecular genetics, which seeks to identify genes associated with particular human traits has lately exploded with reports suggesting that our very cells may be imbued with tendencies toward extroversion or shyness or novelty seeking or distractibility.

She asks what I ask in relation to yoga: “What does it mean for the human project of change?”

Studies in the 70′s unhooked the biological proclivities from any notions or pathology or inferiority, as yoga also does not imply judgement or better than when discussion constitution or one’s nature. The key is knowing enough about one’s own temperament to find the best niche to be, what Emerson celebrated as does the Gita as ones “true calling.”

So come 1988 and Jerome Kagan seeking to map brain markers, variations in amygdala excitability in response to various stimuli for different temperaments seeking to come closer to solvign the predisposition puzzle. He followed 100 healthy 4 month olds in to adolescence monitoring how some strayed or did not from their temperaments seen as infants. By age 7 roughly half were responding the same way, thus roughly half had in some way morphed their temperament. By teen years many who were excitable remained so, prone to anxiety, while some had adapted socialization skills; nonetheless when interviewed the underlying temperament remained.

Part of temperament is physiological response. Some had “more reactive sympathetic nervous system, higher levels of muscle tension and greater cortical arousal.” Thus managing one’s physiology is part of understanding one’s own temperament. Hmm… what does that make you think of? Yoga Asana, meditation, pranayama all are tools requiring consistent training and practice to manage and keep at equilibrium.

“An individual develops a persona over time,”
says Kagan. “But time doesn’t change the anima.”
Sandmaier’s article goes on to state in her article that

“… we do, in fact inherit distinctive neurobiological profiles that contribute to particular, relatively enduring emotional and behavioral predispositions.”

Sandmaier interviewed Kagan recently and found how the long term research has settled into his worldview. Says Kagan today:

“Temperament is never the whole story, [Kagan] says now. “But if you don’t take it into account, you won’t understand what it is to be human.”

Thus the biochemical roots of temperament are more and more seen and accepted as part of the story of being human. This is not as deterministic as it may sound, and in fact many genetic researchers havae aken pains to explain that no gene causes a behavior or emotional state. Temperament, Kagan believes is a bit like birdsong, in a quote I find quite beautiful and true as a passionate lover of birds, their nature and their wondrous diversity.

Kagan says “Knowing that a bird is a finch rather than a meadowlark allows one to predict with great confidence the songs it will not sing,” he wrote in his 2004 book, the Long Shadow of Temperament “but permits a far less certain prediction of the particular song it will sing.”

Finally, Marian Sandmaier, a shy, awkward person in teens and twenties asked Kagan what he would have told the despairing 21 year old college student to offer a bit of hope he replied “I would have told you the world needs all kinds of people, I would have encouraged you to find a life niche in which your temperament would be a good thing.” He paused for a moment thinking it over, “Then I would have urged you to find a good therapist.” We all need a guide in this unpredictable road where even our own steps are not predictable or understandable, and often others see our path more clearly than we can ourselves.

Sandmaier says:

“As individuals thrash about in their own temperamental thickets, therapists can serve as wilderness guides, following rough cleared paths and pointing out elements of nature that are usually hidden from view.”

She adds a more personal note : “To understand that there things about me that can’t be undone or transformed by any amount of psychic digging or repair work — that a part of me is simply pre-psychological — has come as a profound relief.”

The Yoga Guide through our private wilderness
The Yoga Teacher, when yoga is taught in the whole person practice, beyond just asana, is such a wilderness guide. Texts alone cannot be such a guide as we filter them through our nature. To see Samskaras, Prakruti and Karma parts of the landscape to learn to navigate, not as limitations, or immutable forces is key to delving into the practices of yoga. We do need guides

From Emerson’s imperative to “find one’s true calling” to the Bhagavad Gita’s verse on “Do your own work, not seeking to do that of others” we find ongoing validation to find a niche for our temperament, and not be in situations that raise to much friction, allowing each to manage the prakruti towards balance and equanimity, let this be a relief.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 1st, 2010 at 1:50 pm. It is filed under All posts, Featured, Mindful Living and tagged with psychology, Yoga Sutras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.