Stability in an unstable world

Events happen. People I love are experiencing pain. My pet ate something that will probably not agree with her. A flood has occurred and threatened my plans. And change is about to happen. I cannot make any of this go away as much as I may wish to. It is my reality right now.

I can't pretend it isn't happening, I can't make it go away. I can try to distract myself from it, with a glass of wine or binging on some cookies, but that is only a temporary fix and I will eventually be sitting right where I am in the middle of these unknowns and lack of control with the added guilt of indulgence and bodily disharmony. And if not these things, then I am sure before too long there will be other things that disrupt my plans and things I will not like.

Yesterday I heard about an experiment where subjects were put into two groups. One group could eat all the cookies the want, but not eat the radishes (which they most likely were okay with) and a second group could eat only radishes and despite the warmth and the odour of the cookies had to not eat them. After a period of exhibiting self-discipline, particularly for the radish eaters, the subjects were given a very challenging puzzle to work on. The result - radish eaters got angry, frustrated, very unhappy and usually gave up on the puzzle more quickly than the cookie eaters who could sustain a longer focus and effort more easily.

Given the circumstances of my current reality and the conclusions I can draw from the experiment, I think now might be a good time for a few things that will not require a great deal of discipline. Now is not the time to try to sit and get my book report done at all costs. Now is the time to relax into myself. To relax into a good book, warm and loving smiles and warm and nourishing yummy food, especially if it means I don't cook it myself.

Prompted

The room is busy with multiple climbers of different levels. All eager to learn how to be a little better, to gain knowledge. We begin. Trying to give the more experienced an opportunity to understand movement, what you look for, how you teach what balance is in someone else's body. The function of a movement, not just the form.

Then the time elapses and I need to go. I am leaving, not wanting to leave, not wanting the moment to end. Wanting to cover more ground, to get them to really feel it and understand what I am talking about.

As I hurry between the task of dropping my son off at hockey and getting back to the staff for a meeting it dawns on me that I really enjoyed what I was doing. I was lost in it. It was as if the person, Heather, no longer existed. What was happening, the information, the actions were bigger than me. The giving was spontaneous and essential. Their success was my goal.

I wonder how it felt for them, the participants. I wonder whether they felt the same connection I felt. Not a connection to them, but to something really big.

I need to do that more often.

Thankful for the beauty of life

This morning I read, "Two years ago today.... and I thought what was happening for me two years ago. Then what popped up was one year ago and not quite today... but around this time. Learning of cancer afflicting two people I love.

Then a fall many years ago presented itself. I was spinning a story about University bullshit, paying tuition and unrealistic expectations and not being understood, when, from out of now where, I felt the warmth of the sun on my face. Then saw all the amazing colours of the autumn leaves fluttering on the trees. In that moment I smiled and sighed. This was something no one could ever take from me. I connected to this powerful beauty and tenacity of nature. A feeling of complete safety and peace swept over me. It would all be okay, it already was okay.

Recognizing that even in the sad news, confusion and fear, there can still be beautiful fall colours and bright sunlight, today I will look around me for that freedom and peace, even if just for a moment. What an amazing remembrance going into the Thanksgiving weekend.

And I am very grateful to still have these two people I love in my life.

Gifts

What is your gift?
I am stealing this question from Stephen Cope, from Kirpalu.
This is what really got me interested in Yoga five or six years ago, this and a few very unexplainable moments in savasana.
I journeyed to Colorado, sat in a room with a practiced Yogi and committed myself to many journalling experiences that led me down a path of self understanding at one level deeper than I had prior to the experience. I have since continued to study and practice and realize that like the layers of sediment a geologist studies, there are many layers of self understanding.
And yet... it does always come back to the question of whether I feel I am living a fulfilling life. Am I using my gifts?

How does one know if something is ones gift? Often the gift isn't mastered when it is first being used. Even our greatest athletes and musicians put in ten's of thousands of hours of practice before being considered a great athlete.

I think you know because it is the thing you must do above all others things. It is the thing that you lose sight of time and space doing. So what is it you do that gets you lost?

Choose a smile

Stories, we all have them. These are the events in our past that we believe are true. It is true I was married and now I am not. But everything I tell myself about how that happened and why it happened and what it means are all up for the interpretation I choose. Life is full of these choices.

My life has been busy. And I find myself constantly choosing to believe I need to keep up with it all. I have to answer every complaint and try to fix all the situations and head off future troubles before they happen. But that is a choice.

Yesterday I chose to have tea with a friend. I could hear myself debating and defending my choice to step away from the busy work to have this purely selfish meeting. And when I left that tea, I was smiling more broadly than I have smiled in a number of days. The choice was a choice to support ME, rather than to DO more. Sometimes, less is more.

Now to remember that feeling and that choice more often.

Princes and ugly step sisters

Life has been busy. It has been full of things to do or more aptly described, expectations to be met. And I have to admit I have been feeling a fair amount of resentment. Closer examination revealed it wasn't real expectation placed on me by others, rather it was my own expectation that people would do what they are supposed to do, what is right, just get along, accept one another as they are, see the strengths and weaknesses they have and others have and just well.... get along.

But that's not the way it is most of the time.

Today, as I sat, I realized I was waiting for someone to come in and save me. Preferably a handsome man who makes a decent amount of money and wants me to be able to relax and do only the things that inspire me. That is when I saw Cinderella. Oh.. I know her pain so well. Being berated and belittled by those ugly step sisters! So unfair! And there I sat in my rags, on the floor, scrubbing away while the ugly step sisters laughed.

Then my good friend Dorothy's kind and generous words popped into my head, "I don't get it, I just see a vibrant, intelligent, loving woman." A reference to me in a moment of feeling just like this. Right! I thought, I choose whether I am the vibrant woman or the one carrying the heavy sack of others ideas around with me.

Sigh.... so putting that sack down, getting out of the rags and standing in the place of here's what is important to me and you can just figure it out people.

Oh and the prince... well, I'll take one if he comes along, but in the meantime, no need for one.

It's been a while

The months of summer have disappeared into the days of fall. Where did time go and what did I do with it? My week away with my Parayogis peeps seems so far in the past and yet it was only a few weeks ago.

Time. It seems illusive. And yet the reality is that my mind has been so quickly pulled from one task to another, one person to another, one expectation to another, that time seems to have speed past me. Time doesn't speed, it is the rpm's of my mind through these past months that has.

So what's the trick to slowing it down? Oh... I know about meditation and certainly use that tool frequently. But what about in the moment. The moment when there are 24 children gathering around one with a gash in her knee that will need stitches and you have four instructors looking to you for 'what's next.' What slows you down when the there are people betraying your trust or expecting you to take care of something immediate when you are 30 minutes away?

Breath. For me I don't think about breath first - though it is what I suggest to others to think about in those moments. For me it is the magic of the vastness of this Universe. I recall one fall day many years ago, recently mistreated and scolded by University officials for wanting to pay my tuition without penalty, but not being able to stand in line for a few hours without losing my job. The unfairness of it and the lack of compassion and understanding washing over me. And then my eyes caught the radiant light reflecting off the fall leaves. And I had the thought, "well, they can't take this away from me." The this in my mind was the beauty of nature and her continuation despite war, struggle, despair and destruction.

I have a new puppy now and one of the most grateful parts is the getting outside twice a day and walking, just appreciating the mist, the rain, the sun, the mud, the trees, the beauty and steadfastness of nature. It is just what brings me back to earth.