Spiritual practice to dissociate?

“Open your eyes for a moment,” says my TRE (Tension/Trauma Release Exercises) Provider during one of our sessions. As a yoga practitioner and teacher, I’m so used to closing my eyes when I practice. “Experiment to see if you feel more present with your eyes open or closed,” she explains. I try. I realize that when I have my eyes open, I can both feel my body and be aware of what goes on in my surroundings.
 
This simple remark sparks my curiosity. “Some people need to close their eyes to be able to feel what is going on in their body. Others close their eyes and their mind drifts off into LaLaLand. They dissociate from reality,” she explains. It never occurred to me in all those years of teaching yoga that I might lead people into dissociation by asking them to close their eyes!

Dissociation is a term used in psychology to describe an experience of disconnection from reality. “Dissociation is the essence of trauma. The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own,” says Bessel van der Kolk in The Body keeps the score. After the traumatic event, the person might blank out or dissociate from reality whenever something reminds them of the traumatic event. Blank stares, absent minds and a sense of numbness may be symptoms of dissociation.

The issue with dissociation is that we are not fully in touch with life happening in the present. Those who experience more severe dissociation might feel numb, disconnected from emotions, a kind of internal “death”. The issue with numbness is that we cannot selectively numb one emotion. So although it may be a relief to numb out an overwhelming emotion of rage or panic, it also means that we are unable to feel joy, happiness and peace.
 
We have to remember that dissociation in the case of trauma can be useful. After all, it is an instinctual response meant to protect us when something overwhelming happens. In some cases, it saves our life.   

We don’t have to experience trauma to dissociate. Most of us experience a mild form of dissociation on a daily basis. We dissociate mildly when we daydream or detach from our surroundings. When I drive from my house to work on “automatic pilot”, I’m actually disconnected from reality. When I am going down a rabbit hole on my phone instead of being present to my children playing around me, I am dissociated. It happens when I am sitting in meditation and my mind thinks about what I am going to have for lunch. It also happens when I eat chocolate at night in front of a stupid movie to cover up my sense of emotional emptiness. 

"Reve d'enfant", from Isabelle Goormachtigh, my amazing mum

All of this opens a huge question for me: When am I really present and when am I spaced out, “blissed out” or simply gone? And are my so-called spiritual practices really connecting me to reality or am I seeking a form of escape from reality by practicing yoga and meditation? When I visualize myself through meditation on a deserted beach, or on a mountain top, am I being fully present to what is going on right now inside of me?
When I choose to take a fast-paced Vinyasa class, do I make that choice because it connects me to myself or because it allows me to not feel what is actually going on inside of me.
 
Through my studies of Yogic Philosophy, I realize that for the longest time yogis saw life as suffering (Dukha) and wanted to put an end to the cycle of birth and death (Samsara). 

The Bhagavad Gita (600 BCE) says in Chapter 14, verse 20: “The person who climbs beyond all three guna states is in essence transcending nature itself, and is thereby freed of the natural 

body, and thus liberated from the awful cycle of birth, decay, death, and rebirth”. (Jack Hawleys translation in The Bhagavad Gita, a walkthrough for Westerners).
​The three gunas -sattva, rajas and tamas- are the three main qualities present in nature. In essence, this verse encourages yogis to transcend the realm of this material world to merge with the Divine or Ultimate dimension.
 
In the Vedic period, around 1500 BCE and the next few centuries, ascetics saw the body as impure and did not attend to their physical needs. They practiced extreme forms of fasting, not sleeping for months, barely moving sometimes for years at a time.
Patanjali’s controversial Yoga Sutra 91 (Chapter 2, verse 40): “Through purity (he gains) distance towards his own limbs (and also) (the desire for) non-contamination by others.”
 
Those are just examples of how ancient yogis wanted to transcend reality, including their suffering. I wonder if somehow they practiced to consciously dissociate.
 
The Buddha was one of the first ones to criticize extreme forms of asceticism by promoting “the Middle Path” and introducing the concept of mindfulness. The arrival of Tantra also revolutionized spiritual practices from the 9th century onwards. Everything in this world was seen as an expression of the Divine. We need to take care of our body if we ever want to become even partly enlightened. The practice of mindfulness is spreading like bushfire in all spheres of society, which shows the massive change in the last few decades.
 
So how can we transform our habit of checking out and therefore missing out on life? My practice is to catch myself as soon as possible when I “leave” and to gently bring myself back. I then ask myself “What am I unwilling to feel?”, following Tara Brach’s advice, a wonderful dharma teacher from the US. I notice that often my mind runs off because what I am feeling is uncomfortable. If what I am feeling is overwhelming, mild dissociation or distraction might be exactly what I need in the short term. But I know that in the long run, if I want to digest the yucky feeling that is there, I need to fully feel what is there. I stay kind to myself, not forcing myself to feel what I am not able to hold comfortably. Like Peggy Rowe, another favorite dharma teachers of mine, once told me: “If it’s too strong to stay with, touch your suffering with a feather. And then back off.”

Laurence Gilliot facilitates transformational journeys in Asia and Europe. More about upcoming events and Yoga Teacher Trainings.

​Much gratitude to Isabelle Goormachtigh, my mum, for her powerful art work (see paintings above)