Let the world press against you – not to criticize or judge you – but just to let you know where you are.
Category Archives: yoga therapy
D-E-F-E-N-S-E
Defense is establishing a boundary with clarity and confidence.
Defensive is lunging beyond the boundary with fear and doubt.
If you have a strong defense, you don’t need to be defensive.
This Treasured Vessel
My vehicle is a treasure to me. It gets me around and enables me to do things I otherwise couldn’t do. It is also an extension of me. When you see my vehicle, it tells you something about me – my style, my preferences, my level of meticulousness or ornateness.
I regularly repair and maintain this vehicle, tending to all the essential manufacturer guidelines and using my intuition to listen to the sounds it makes, to know its natural rhythm and flow. I can tell in an instant when something doesn’t seem quite right and I jump to repair it. I would never put anything in it to harm it – in fact all the spaces through which it can be fed are locked and need special access, ensuring awareness and alertness to the purity and quality of the nourishment it receives.
My vehicle is not me, but I value what it does and brings to me…the experiences it allows me to have, the places it takes me, the quality of what I can contribute to my work, to my family, to my life.
The care and effort I put into this vehicle ensures it’s reliability and longevity. It requires great patience and dedication to tend to this vehicle, but it is worth every effort for my return on investment is priceless and timeless.
This vehicle deserves the best from me always as it always gives its best for me.
Disintegration
I hold a piece of clay, cool, heavy, undefined.
As I push and pull upon it, a shape begins to form. The temperature, texture, and identity of that clay grow with me.
As my best efforts produce an uneven, imbalanced figure, one to which I have nonetheless become attached, I realize more work needs to be done.
To bring the work into balance requires undoing what I have created, detaching from what is currently there before me.
The chemical reaction in my brain, the visceral response in my body, and the tugging of my thoughts and emotions make reworking the clay painful.
To restore balance, I must pull the familiar apart. I must disintegrate the work. It is not without labor and discomfort that I destroy the familiar and let go of what I knew as my best work.
I tremble with fear and doubt – I cannot imagine a greater work than before.
And there it is. After the pain of disintegration comes release from what was…freedom from past bests.
Pleasure and pride arise as the new shape takes form, coming closer into balance.
With faith and perseverance, disintegration leads to evolution.
Dive In
When you feel you need to run, to get away, you really need to dive in, go deep, and just sit with the feelings. Let the feeling sit with you and in you. The feelings will change … nothing stays the same … all is impermanent.
Engage moon energy — calm, cool, still — to remain steady in the current of feelings.
It is then that you will hear the soft, easy voice of inner wisdom reminding you that you are OK.
Dive deeper in… calm, cool, serene.
Most grateful for your inspiration and collaboration, Theresa Tovey.
Thriving In My Humanity
In this skin, there is challenge.
In this skin, there is weakness.
In this skin, there is pain.
In this skin, I know the frailty of my humanity.
This skin, at times limiting and restricting, full of imperfections, is also the container that holds me, that cradles my every thought and feeling, the heart of my being.
In this skin, I know nourishment.
In this skin, I sense and feel fully.
In this skin, I explore edges and learn boundaries.
I know full contentment when I allow it, in this skin.
Turn Into the Wind
Can you turn your face to the wind and welcome it?
Does the air upon your face invite inquiry?
Opening all of your senses to each moment can be so freeing, exhilarating, curious, pleasantly undefinable.
Relaxing into the current of wind pulsing against my face, I need no answers, I need no direction.
Turning into the wind reminds me what it is to be alive in this body at this time.
Close your eyes, relax your cheeks, open wide and invite the winds of life to press into and delight you.
Outta my mind
There are times when I should say, “no.” There are times when what I need is to pause, breathe, and make room. There are times when I will give myself permission to let go of outcomes and expectations. Times when I am choosing not to make decisions emotionally or driven by ego…when I make decisions from my heart, where my inner knowing takes the lead.
In those times, it might seem as if I don’t care about what needs to get done as I slow down and slough off responsibilities. Rather, this decision-making is full of care. I’m not getting caught in the story of what this will look or feel like – I am dedicated to getting out of the thoughts in my mind and into the kindness of my heart.
It’s not that I don’t care…it’s just that I don’t mind.
Inspired Action
I breathe in…
inspire…
inspiration…
awakening inner wisdom with the breath.
Stress and agitation squeeze that breath. In the absence of breath, there is no action…
Stagnant…
Stagnation…
No connection …
Nothing flows.
I am stuck…until I exhale.
With the exhale, the dam of emotions is released…
tension dissipates.
The breath comes rushing back in. As if startled awake, I tune once more into my source.
Inspired action always takes me back to joy!
Photo credit:
Inspired by Jack Blackwell. So grateful, Jack, for your sharing your photography talents here!
The Snag
A stirring, an imbalance, an unthinkable happens and there I am…swirling in thoughts and emotions.
Although we seem unconnected, we are tethered undeniably to others’ experiences, their pain, their suffering, their anger. Their division and righteousness becomes mine, even when I don’t want it to be.
And then comes the arduous task of sifting. Sifting through the messages in all of this…not what it means to my community or the statement it makes about my society, but the fundamental lesson for me in the perceived tragedies and suffering that stand before me.
I dare not admit how my thoughts flow in circular motions…how I cannot point at the right or wrong…it all just seems to come back to me, to the fear I have that any one of them could be me.
…the “victim”…the “suffering”…the “perpetrator”…the “responsible one.”
These labels belong to my deepest shadows and like threads dancing on a loom, have long since been woven into the fabric of me.
So, I turn my anger to the scariest one in an attempt to cut that thread. And then the story unfolds, my experience is defined by calling out the grossest attributes of others although deep down inside I know they are still undeniably tethered to me, undeniably me.
It is then that I must fill with compassion, for each of them and for me. I must allow these situations and the contrast they provide to take me back to the center of my being, to turn inward and calm the swirling from the inside. Instead of needing the contrast to tug at the fabric from the outside as if separate from me, I turn inward to reweave the threads, to smooth the snag so that the fabric on the outside lays out more seamlessly.
Each time the contrast begins to pull and tug at me again, I slow the loom, treasure that thread, and remember that no matter what any of us have done or who any of us seem to be, the threads are the same – it is a complex fabric that tethers you and me.
Monday Mindfulness 