No Room for The Haters

There are those people in our lives who just cannot send us appreciative thoughts. No matter what you do or how hard you try, they have to point out your failings and make you feel somehow small. And sometimes the biggest hater is you. It's a little voice in your head that just tells you are can't have it this good, you don't deserve it, you could have, should have done it better. It could be better.

But just like the real people who say things that hurt, this little voice in your own head is just a thought born from the mood, the energy surrounding you. This is why it is so very important to surround yourself with the energy that fills your cup. To feed the body with whole, natural foods prepared with love. To feed your mind with pleasant text, images and sensory experiences. To feed the heart, the emotions with joy and gratitude, appreciation and love.

Freedom

This morning as I sit here contemplating what to write, the word freedom pops into my head. In this moment I do not feel very free. I feel very busy and committed to a number of responsibilities. But am I really committed? I mean if I was hit by the proverbial bus, all those commitments and responsibilities would vanish. Everyone involved would continue to breath, except maybe me. Time would continue to tick on. And within a short period of ticking time, someone else would be doing those things or they would no longer need to be done.

Freedom then is something we just feel in the midst of all those responsibilities and commitments, challenges. This must be what Viktor Frankl felt when he choose to live for the book he wanted to write when he was being held in a concentration camp. Freedom came when he let go of whether he could survive the experience and the challenges he faced moment by moment and held onto the dream, the goal. That takes a lot of faith.

Loving What Is

Listening to audiobooks as I drive and hearing from yet another source of the importance of loving yourself, having a sense of self worth and knowing full well it is so very hard to achieve. Years ago, I recall Dan milkman walking me through an exercise that showed me in no uncertain terms I had a way to go in this department.

Self worth is a sort of sense of scarcity about our own self. At least for me the big feeling of not enough are all linked to a thought that replies with, 'if I had... ' The had is everything from time and money to relationships and physical improvements.

I don't know I will ever feel completely content with me, love me for all my flaws and imperfections, but I do know that I can practice everyday. I can practice gratitude for my health and my well being, my desire to continue to grow and move and know myself even more. I can be grateful for the opportunities, even the ones I am not so pleased to be confronted with. And mostly I can be grateful for the amazing relationships I have in whatever level of connection or disfunction they exist, for every relationship is another opportunity.

And this kid is pretty lovable in my books!

Rules to Live By

As the summer moves closer to fall and there are some potentially some tough decisions to be made, I find myself remembering these words daily. It is challenging when we feel pushed in directions we are not yet prepared to go. And yet, it is really the only way to live with integrity. I have to admit, I am not always doing the best that I can, nor am I always open in my communication, and I certainly have been known to take a few things personally. But at the very least my intention is not to harming myself or others. That should perhaps be the fifth rule to live by.

In the grey

I recall many years ago a conversation with someone who said, "the world is not just black or white, there is grey in-between." That quote came back to me this morning after watching this video:


I feel that one of the many gifts of Yoga is that it teaches how to live in the grey. We think of ourselves as perfect or imperfect, tall or short, good looking or not, male or female, black or white. But in truth, we are both. When I look in the mirror, I often can look with judgement at my face, the fine lines, the freckles, the redness of my nose. And sometimes I look and feel it doesn't look so bad. What makes the difference is not my age or whether I am wearing make up. What makes the difference is how I feel. When I am arrive at the mirror feeling content, peaceful, I know I have beauty that is skin deep. When I arrive feeling sad or lonely, I see the flaws. It is as if a laser beam shines on each flaw.

To be sure, there are societal pressures, and it is our responsibility to determine how much of it we carry. When we eat poorly, sleep poorly, watch TV shows whose plot is to exacerbate the weight of flaws around us, when we sit in a chair and don't get up and move, life seems very depressing. What are we living for anyway? We carry this momentum into each experience and it is the dull fray lens through which we decide what the world looks like. Conversely, when we move the body and get the heart rate up, we play, we eat healthy food, we enjoy nature around us, we see love between two people, we take that momentum into the next experience, viewing it through rose coloured lenses and everything seems brighter.

Even if the experience is the same.

Stillness and steadiness

Five days of paddle boarding, kayaking, mountain biking and climbing. Each of the last few days, I did not do asana practice. I did spend those days getting into my body. And if I were to speak of it on a physical level, the physical benefits of all that fun is no different than the benefits of an asana practice or two. In fact, the three hours paddling, and swimming, might have even been better.

Each morning I would awake and attempt to do my morning meditation practice. And each morning I was distracted by the sounds of nature, the droplets falling from the leaves, the birds chirping or the other campers slowly arising. My mind would wander from the practice and I would attempt to draw it back to my mantra, the stillness I was attempting to rest in.

It is this lack of stillness that I cannot get from paddle boarding, from kayaking, climbing or mountain biking. It is the sukham and sthira; the steadiness and stillness that I cultivate in my asana practice, that enables me to sit and hear the whispers of my heart.

When enough is enough

As we roll into July, the level of chaos in my life is becoming more and more dynamic. Between the preparation for Youth Summer Camps, the ongoing teaching schedule and getting the chores like gutters repaired around my house and the joyful things like planning a vacation, I am exhausted. Not just a little tired. I am deeply tired. I come home on a beautiful sunny summer eve and do not want to move from my comfy reclining chair. I could go out and move that pile of dirt I have so I can put new sod down and repair my lawn. Or weed the garden or do an asana practice. I could even do a nidra - though even this vata girl falls asleep doing that these days. But I don't do any of that. I sit in a chair and try to relax so I can get up and do it all again tomorrow.

This morning as I reflected on what to write before I dash off to teach a private, before I head into staff training, I realized I am the one who is allowing this chaos. I said yes to the private. I said yes to my role in the staff training - albeit if I said no I may find myself unemployed. The point is that we do make choices in every moment about what our days, our weeks and our future will look like. This week a friend said, "I don't do the things I don't like to do." As I put the final shingles up on my porch addition and tackled the starlings nesting in my soffit, bird poop falling on me as I stood on a ladder pushing the soffit back, I thought... "I really don't want to do this."

I challenge you as you move through your busy summer to slow the chaos down and take a moment to appreciate the deep state of relaxation within yourself. As Panditji says in this article,"Relaxation is not merely the physical act of lying down. Something very profound is happening. Your body is being reunited with your breath and mind."

To read the whole article, click the link and have yourself a calm day.