Tag Archives: yoga

The Spontaneous Joy Of Listening To My Body

Inspiration, Numerology, Wisdom from Within, , ,

I was on my way to do dishes, take an online class, write a blog post, pet the cats, make a green smoothie and take out the garbage  while I was fluttering around the house tidying…I was little unfocused obviously, not sure what to do next, because I want to do all the things before work today. Then, as I was passing through the kitchen, my body just called out to me and said Stretch right now!!!

I dropped into a forward bend facing my sink full of dirty dishes and it felt sooooo good. I continued on into a sun salutation and the heat came on from the floor vent and muscles all relaxed. It felt like they all sighed in relief in unison. Not surprising, since my whole body was brutalized by my Orange Theory class two days ago. Its a gym with personal group training, focused on high intensity intervals… I was the only one who showed up to the 11:15 class, so I had a my own private instructor (Drill Sargent) pushing me harder than I had ever worked before. It was great, but my everything hurt afterwards.

The yoga and the heat were so lovely, that I just continued on, and practiced right there, no mat, rolling around on my kitchen for a half and hour. It was perfect and joyful. My body and mind both relaxed and it felt so good to be focused on one thing after my scattered morning had been dividing my attention in a million pieces. The change in scenery felt like it was renewing my spirit in some way. I looked around and saw the beauty in my house from a different angle.

An unusual view of my dining room
An unusual view of my dining room

 

When I finished, I felt infinitely more grounded and present. I logged on to facebook for a quick break before moving on to a more productive task and I saw this post from Kari Samuels, intuitive counselor and happiness coach that explained everything I was feeling so far today:

Inspirations keeps coming in all directions and it may be hard to focus your intentions. Everything feels important right now, and you might not know where to start (or stop)! Take a deep breath. Calm yourself and know you don’t need to get everything done at once. Draw some boundaries around anything or anyone that’s stealing your attention. If it’s not necessary it can wait.

Our numerology for 4.11.14 brings us a multitude of 1 and 4 energy. (It’s also a 4 Universal Day). 1 is the number of inspiration and 4 is the number of grounding and practical matters. This is a wonderful combination of both. 1 and 4 are also numbers of authority. You need to be number 1 in your life. Don’t worry about what’s not yet done. The most important thing is that you take care of yourself and enjoy your life. Now go ahead and breathe. It feels good!

 

I am forever in awe of the wisdom contained within my body and spirit. It knows exactly what it needs in any given situation, in perfect relationship with all the energies of the universe.

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Revelations in Downward Dog: Changing My Inner Narrative

Wisdom from Within, , ,

I have had a regular morning movement practice for quite a few months now. Usually I just do some yoga, sometimes I’ll incorporate some dance, or hoop dance. I’ve noticed how much better I feel when I do this every day. My energy is up, my mood is better and my ability to handle frustration is WAY higher.  Sometimes though, like last week, I start slacking a bit.  I woke up too late to stretch  a couple times on busy days or I just didn’t put in enough time or effort and only did a few poses before I sat down with my tea at the computer. When I was stretching, I wasn’t really in the moment. I was listening to a Ted Talk or a book on tape. Basically I was being lazy and disengaged.

Unfortunately, that slacking for those two weeks or so really affected my body. I started to tighten up, especially after work or hoop class. My feet and hips started to hurt. My alignment was off and I was sore. Then I really didn’t want to stretch, it hurt! I was less flexible and it was discouraging, but I made myself go through a really thorough stretch a few days ago and like magic, my body felt so much better. I was melting away the fuzz!!

Today, there was still some lingering tightness (fuzz)  in the back of my legs especially, and I wasn’t really enjoying downward dog at all. I thought about skipping on to some other pose, forgetting sun salutations completely. I thought about how much it sucked that this hurt so bad. I thought about how annoying it was that my body felt fine two weeks ago and how stupid it was that slacking a bit could result in so much pain.

Then suddenly I thought to myself, “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. In fact, you’re making it rather unpleasant!”So I switched around my inner narrative to “Man, this feels amazing. Stretching feels so good” I tried to really relax and let my breath carry away the resistance and tension in my legs. I kept repeating to myself affirmations about how good it felt, and drawing my attention to what parts did feel good and suddenly, it did!

By piddleville cc by 2.0
By piddleville cc by 2.0

Hanging in an upside down V with my butt up in the air, heels flat on the ground suddenly felt amazing! It was a good pain, just a gentle burning, the kind that fills you with endorphins (like eating spicy food or other slightly masochistic pleasures). I started to really enjoy myself!

Do bear in mind that this wasn’t actual pain I was experiencing. Just tightness and discomfort that needed to be stretched out. Actual pain in your body is a signal that something is wrong, and you need to honor that, and be gentle with your body.

The rest of my practice was wonderful. I started to really appreciate and enjoy the strength and flexibility in my body that was buried underneath that mental resistance. Surrendering completely to the moment, I felt my power and energy coursing through my body. This was in sharp contrast to how I felt a few minutes before hand as I dragged myself out of bed, wishing I could just sleep for another 10 hours.

It was just another beautiful reminder as to the power of my thoughts. They shape my reality completely. I should know this by now, but it’s so easy to forget. To get swept away, feeling powerless, when really, we have complete control of our reaction in every moment. The moment we switch our thinking from ‘This is hard! This sucks!’ to ‘This is awesome! I can do this, this feels great!” we invite in a sense of ease and grace that actually makes it awesome.

Love and Resistance

Inspiration, Spirit, , , , ,

meditationdifferences

I was at a hot yoga vitality class on Monday and we were doing a bit of breath work to start. The teacher asked us to set an intention for our practice. As we inhaled we would focus on our intention, expanding it within our core, and contracting the energy as we released anything no longer serving us with our exhale.

I chose to breathe in love, which I visualize as a gold or white light. I began by  exhaling that which is not love but that seemed kind of long and clunky. After a few breaths, I began to release resistance to love on the exhale. Breathe in love, breathe out resistance to love. A few more breaths  I wound up shortening it to simply breathing out resistance.

I felt tension melt away from my body and I found myself relaxed completely. Once I had let go of all resistance, the pattern spontaneously changed to inhaling love and exhaling love. Once the resistance was gone, love was all that was left. It was beautiful. It’s a feeling of perfect peace, like being home.

Starting the practice was challenging in my bliss-ed out state, but I was able to bring myself back to the breathing pattern often. It was a fairly fast paced and innovative class which made it harder to focus on breath, but the added challenge made it more satisfying to eventually lay back in shivasana, and just breathe in love and breathe out love, dripping with sweat,  head swimming, blissed -out on pure love and buzzing on endorphins, what a rush.

Since it was so effective at yoga, I tried incorporating this meditation into my day whenever I feel myself resisting. It was typically a resistance to the present moment, which is an incredibly useless endeavor.

Resistance to whatever happens to be just creates tension, which is felt physically, mentally and emotionally as stress.

Releasing resistance creates acceptance. Acceptance allows us to be perfectly present. If you stop resisting the present moment, you find peace. That doesn’t mean that you sit back and never take action if things aren’t as you’d like them to be.  On the contrary, it’s a powerful tool for effecting change.

Accepting the present moment just as it is provides illumination of just exactly what ‘is’ in that moment. This knowledge is powerful. It puts us in direct contact with source energy, (which is the vibration of love) and allows us to work directly with it. Once you start working with this energy, everything becomes easier. Seriously, life just gets better.

Releasing resistance to love means that you stop holding on to anything that is holding you back. It might be a pattern of behavior, beliefs you hold, or perhaps it’s fear;  fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being hurt, fear of being wrong, fear of being right. Fear holds all of us back in so many ways…. But as I kept writing out the word fear, it seemed to lose all meaning.

Once you let go of whatever weighs you down, you become limitless! With no resistance, no fear, we are suddenly weightless and free! Love comes rushing in to fill the space once filled by resistance to love and then that’s all there is.