Daily Meditation (12 minutes) - Guided Self-Compassion Meditation (Tara Brach, PhD)
At the urging of my dear friend Cat, I've been reading Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance. I knew that there is a multitude of her guided meditations on her YouTube channel, so I picked one that sounded lovely and sat quietly to listen.
Another tender, somewhat uncomfortable meditation. Tara urges us to go to the sticking place and rest there, accepting and loving of any hurt or shame that lives within us. Any part of us that doesn't feel loved. She asks us to talk to that hurt in a compassionate way. It's very, very easy for me to send love to the world and to the people in my life. It is not easy to send love to myself. Very powerful.Very raw. I need practice and patience with myself on this.
Daily Yoga (70 minutes) - Hybrid Vinyasa/ Slow Flow/ Strength with Caitlin at Blue Ridge
Caitlin led us on a challenging flow, with lots of balance poses (tree, warrior 3), side planks, standing splits, regular planks, and other postures to support core strength. I need to start bringing my notebook to class, so I can jot down the postures and flow offered...once I get home and there's some space between practice and journaling I forget so much of what we did.
She offered something new to me: instead of regular savasana with arms at the sides, she suggested starfish with our arms, even high above our heads. She wanted us to see what it felt like to "take up space" after building our strength. Then, her guided meditation for us was all about letting go of old systems and patterns, and instead allowing ourselves to float, take up space, be space, instead of holding on to the hard work we just did. A powerful message after an hour of extremely challenging asana.
Here's a quote from Tara Brach about Radical Acceptance that resonates:
“Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.”
Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida, 1947. Photo by Toni Frissell.
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