Yoga Off the Mat: A Personal and Tender Reframing

A Personal and Tender Reframing:

As I write, I have to ease up on myself and understand that I’m not wallowing in self pity but that I’ve been through some of life’s most profound experiences of parental loss, illness (my own and with those that I love), deep love and heartache in a relatively short period of time. All of which include immense inner landscape changes. I also have to acknowledge that these experiences are life-defining, soul-shaping experiences. And yet…

I’m still standing

I’m still painting

I’m still writing

I’m still getting out of bed

I’m still making my bed, opening the blinds, and greeting each day with a smile, hope and possibility.

I’m still getting dressed and showing up to life

I’m still checking in and showing up for my kids

I am showing up with deep awareness.

Does this reflect my inner strength, of my will to keep going, to keep healing even in the unclear messiness of life? I think so.

Walking Barefoot with Yoga:

I’m not breaking down,

I’m breaking open.

These feelings of a frozen numbness, irritability, and the intolerance isn’t about something being wrong with me, it means that I’m human and these feelings are a natural response from my body, my mind, and my heart of what I’ve been holding in consciously and unconsciously. A protective shield from the inner intelligence of my body, from the love of my Soul.

I’ve gone quiet, gone inward, become still… just to survive. This is a protective mechanism, a wisdom of my body, not a dysfunction.

In reference to my yoga and trauma studies, I’m in a a space of emotional shut down. A trauma freeze response as a place of safety and rest, while my Soul keeps returning to a flow state of painting, of writing, of music, diving into my consulting projects, allowing me to feel, to process without trying to articulate emotions that I’m just trying to understand, without having to emotional spill on those that I love. This internal world, my safe spaces allows me to be quiet, to “thaw” in my own time.

Perhaps this emotional breaking open is the quiet in between space of change, of transformation. A reframing, of who I am after spending years working until burnt out, of worrying about my child’s mental health and her place in the world, thinking and caring and saying goodbye to my parents, and then suddenly being asked to tend to my own life, my own mortality in ways that I have never considered. As tough as it feels I think that my own awareness of emotional head and heart space is a good thing…my awareness is sharp, I’m not avoiding, I’m writing, I’m talking it through, creating from it, even question my own state of being… in healthy ways. Doing my inner shadow work if I may.

LOL, HA! Does this mean that my older wiser self is fully awake and watching, guiding?

A return, a consistent return to yoga, to meditation would be ideal, but even a daily practice of yoga and meditation feels to much, and exhausting, yet it is something that my body, mind, heart and Spirit needs like breathing. Even in this, I understand that I’m at a “sacred pause”. While I feel disconnected from yoga I am still in yoga, I am still yoked, or in union with myself. I am practicing yoga off the mat. This is yoga of self study, of Svadhyaya, this is yoga of trustful surrender, this is tapas, of perseverance and self discipline, though raw and non performative, this is my yoga from my heart live and in color. I’m trying to understand, to be clear that where I am right now is not a failing at yoga, but that I’m living yoga.

Yoga, writing, and now painting are my true north, but I cannot show up for them all, perhaps writing is leading the way right now, perhaps yoga shows up in simpler ways – Breath awareness before bed and upon waking up. Perhaps it shows up in the silence of legs up the wall. Perhaps yoga shows up as a reminder to myself, that yoga should feel good, yoga should show up as whisper not a demand.

As I write this, I’m considering gentle ways to bring my practice back into place, a soft, no pressure vision of aligning my practice back into my life as a healing, loving and guiding presence for the love of my own healing, creativity, and presence.

A Soft Vision & Gentle Monthlong Guide

This guide should include the following