Daily Practice Journal
Five Minute Meditation
Fifteen Minutes of Asana (morning)
This morning, I practiced dirga (three part breath) as a foundation for my meditation. Breathing deeply into my body, and expanding it upward and out, helped quiet my mind and prepare my body for the more dynamic asana practice ahead today.
For this morning's postures, I practiced the foundational postures we dove into yesterday: mountain (tadasana), downward facing dog (adho mukha svasanana), warrior 1 (vibrhadrasana I), and warrior 2 (virabhadrasana 2). I successfully contained the urge to move through to a flow series, and instead rotated through mountain, warrior 1, warrior 2, dog, and then back to mountain again for the entirety of the practice.
I practiced a bit shorter of a time than I like, but this morning I'm struggling with focus and the desire to move forward quickly. Yoga helps us move into stillness, and stillness can be frightening when anxiety or self-doubt bubbles up. The funny thing is, I don't feel as much anxiety now than I usually do. It's almost as though my brain and my body are so accustomed to owning that part of my existence that the feeling reinforces itself in a determined, stubborn way. Feeling good? Feeling calm and energized? No need to hold onto it, it will go away. My default, for so long, was a heavily cloaked feeling of dread. A low hum beneath a calm exterior. We change daily, our cells replicate so rapidly that we're literally not the person we were the day before. Why hold onto something that doesn't fit anymore? We give away our clothing that's too big or too small, full of holes, and out of style? Why not our long-accepted notions of ourselves that may no longer be serving us either?
We've all grown accustomed to calling ourselves "messes," and owning our neuroses like badges of honor. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and now we are all those things. While it's healthy to be humble and self-aware, we damage ourselves by our labels of "anxious" or "depressed" or "awkward" or "a mess." We are, despite our best efforts to the contrary, pretty wonderful.What if we owned the good instead of only owning and broadcasting our faults so loudly? This doesn't mean that we're conceited or pompous, it means we recognize the Divine that made us, that flows through us, and within one another.
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