I was recently listening to an interview with Alison Armstrong, who’s endeavored in this life to learn to understand men, teach women, and help men understand women. Part of her discoveries have been that we often don’t understand ourselves, from her view, in our feminine or masculine energy and thus disharmony in relationships is created. (I can relate because through my lens as a body worker/yoga instructor, I see we often don’t understand our anatomy or how our thoughts and energy affect the body, thus causing disharmony and disease.) She spoke about the neurological wiring that lends to a woman’s predication to putter about as she goes about her tasks, less likely to accomplish tasks in a linear start to finish manner, but more so a little here and there, eventually completing through a flow state, biologically derived from multi-tasking home, children, gathering, etc.

   When I heard her say that I felt like I stepped from an unlit room into a fully lit space where I could see clearly – Yes! I’m like that, and happiest when I have the time and space to operate like that, even when socializing, teaching or grocery shopping, and most definitely in my home. Simultaneously I reveled, for not the first time, how many times what someone has said has given me permission to lean into my true nature, as insourced through my own make up and intuition. This is diametrically opposed to how much of my life I've been told what I'm supposed to do by some overarching system or organization which essentially could crush my inner compass and cause me to yield to standardized systems probably not governed by my biology, my energy, my gender or my own specific life circumstances.

  For example, let’s take the food pyramid, popularized in the 1980s. In actuality, the suggestions of the food pyramid wouldn’t be an advantageous diet for many humans. Nor does it teach us to develop an intimate relationship with our bodies' needs. It teaches us not to listen to our own bodies, but rather follow a diagram. Furthermore, it was developed by the food industry that had been bought by the cigarette industry, and inserted into our medical and educational systems through government corporate capture. So that top-down guidance resulted in a culture further divorced from an inner knowing of what is actually supportive of individuals' well-being and catapulted American culture into the epidemics of obesity, type 2 diabetes and so many other avoidable metabolic diseases.

   An older guidance system, Ayurveda, Yoga’s sister science, is focused on learning what's useful for the individual based or their specific constitution, where they live, what season it is, and what their health presents through physical cues. Ayurveda gives us permission to choose what’s relevant to our well being based on how we feel and what our body is communicating through symptoms and vitality. There’s no overarching organization that benefits from accessing these wisdoms – only our personal systems. Practicing Yoga has bestowed many gifts of personal clarity to me. However, it’s worth noting that the freedom of the permissions I’ve received through Ayurveda & Yoga are only possible through prudence.

   Prudence is wisely doing what’s best to do in avoidance of suffering. The opposite of prudence is following a notion that seems like a good idea because of an arbitrary suggestion from an outside source or choosing in denial of current potentials. For instance, sending in a credit card application when the family’s debt is already outweighing the income, just because the credit card company suggested more freedom based on increased spending power. Prudence requires a curiosity to learn what’s real and true for you based on your own intuition and evidence, not based on blanket statements taught to capture the obedience of a population for profit. Prudence is doing the dishes daily to avoid three hours of bending over a sink on a Saturday morning. Prudence is saving a little money as able so when a big-ticket item is wanted, or a big repair is needed, the resources are available. Prudence is making a point of moving the temple of the body because a moved body will feel more like a temple than a body that is stagnant. Prudence is having practices like Yoga asana (postures) meditation to preserve the functionality of the body and clarity of the mind.  

   Permission at it’s best teaches us to wisely, and ideally joyfully, live in harmony with our own selves, in our society and environment. Prudence gives us the structure to do so.