......reconnecting

Dear Yogis,

Buckle up……….   The doctor’s words as he diagnosed my pain as pinched nerves radiating out from the neck.  This – he said – may take some time. Ugh. 

It’s been two weeks now of my ‘forced stop’ and I assumed by now I would be back in action. Not.  Mind you I am tremendously better than I was, but if I make any attempt to act as if nothing happened, my body doesn’t hesitate to let me know that right now, it is the one in charge. I have no choice but to listen. Less doing and more letting go.  A lot more letting go.

In classes we are on the chakra journey once more, starting at the beginning.  Earth.  Staying low to the ground as we bend our knees and root our feet downward.  Connecting like the tree to the life source below.  Exhaling to empty.  Stopping so that we can notice where we are, because if you don’t know where you are, how can you possibly draw the map to where you want to be?  But as I have been leading – with voice only – I have come to realize that somewhere along the way I have completely lost my own grounding.  First thinking it must be the pain that severed the tie, but then recognizing that it was lost before all of this and was likely one of the sources of this ‘dis-ease’.   Earth has always been my connection, home base, but right now I have gotten lost. 

So……time to find my way back home. 

Nature is one of the best antidotes to being uprooted, unsettled and scattered.  Earth Medicine.  And wouldn’t you know it was Earth Day this week!  An article in the Post caught my eye as it provided the list of ways to “Nurture a Love of Nature”.  Hey, wait a minute!  This sure sounds like I am the one that wrote it. 

See if any of this sounds familiar:

·         Simply be in Nature (Oh garden I have missed lying in you)

·         Sleep Outside (Time to air out the tent and my bedroom window has already been opened for sleeping)

·         Be Inspired by showing awe and enthusiasm for it (I love you trees!)

·         Look to the Skies (The moon is always there for me but I haven’t listened)

·         Plant Something (All of my seed packs have been sitting on my table just waiting for me to able to dig and my nails cannot wait to have dirt under them again)

·         Go Barefoot!  (Mid-week I finally began removing my shoes as I saw the new family from CA taking their evening walk…all barefoot)

But then I realized the article was written for adults to teach their children how to learn to love nature.  What??????  First – we now have to teach children how to play outside?  My most vivid childhood memories are me and my friends spending hours alone down at the creek or in the woods. No published ‘to do list’ or training required.   Second – why the children and not us adults?  Everything above is for each and every one of us. When we forget, we live up in our head – always going but never quite sure where.

This article, although it certainly could have been written by me…. was written for me this time.  To help me remember. To help us all remember. 

So today I have been out here all day. Not a cloud in the sky as I look up.  Picking one plant at a time to sit next to, trim, clean up, touch and talk to.  Barefoot. And as I write this I am back on my rocks, a small spider resting on the tip of my big toe. Ever so slowly finding my way home.

I am buckled in….but will also be rooting down. Somehow I know that at the other end of this I will be wiser. Aaaahhhhhhh……………………

Getting dirty again,

SARAH

....don't hold back

Yogis,

Recently someone sent me a passage on mindfulness.  It described a practice to use when you encounter a moment so beautiful that you want to savor it. Slowing down. Noticing where you are.  Listening to the breath and opening the senses. 

Then it went on to say -

‘Allow the experience to be as full as possible.  Don’t hold back’

Wow.  Imagine living life without holding back…………………

Oh, why do we hold back so much? 

This life is amazing and is meant to be lived to its fullest. To be tasted, smelled, touched, seen and heard, beyond the obvious and below the surface.  It calls out to us to dive deep but I often sense I am staying in the shallow end. 

Why don’t I dance wildly under the stars, laugh until my stomach hurts and skip down the street through the first spring rain? Lie on the grass under the full moon and eat oysters on the beach at sunset.  Love my body unconditionally, feel the mud between my toes and bear hug the stranger that just lent a hand. 

Our souls yearn for the aliveness of it all.  We can sense its presence, but it so often seems out of reach. Not supposed to. Not adult like. No time. Trapped in the thinking mind looking for distraction and  believing that stimulation may satisfy.  But it falls short in the end. 

‘Allow the experience to be as full as possible.  Don’t hold back’

When leaning in to smell the lavender bush do I dive in with my being. Sinking into my tub, do I close my eyes to allow every cell in my body to receive. Can I shout with joy even when others may hear. Can I be quiet enough to see the soul of another.  Can I ‘lean in’ to life. Every day. Every moment. 

Even the pain I have been experiencing…..can I lean in. Yes, even pain.  Feeling completely what life has placed in my path.  Moving toward healing but not distancing myself from discomfort.  Allowing the experience without holding back. 

I am reading a book of letters by Etty Hillesum and in the foreword they describe Etty’s view on living a full life. Her sense of “………….a majestic stream of life, which includes within itself pain and suffering as well as happiness and joy, and which has to accepted in all of its encompassing depths” 

‘Allow the experience to be as full as possible.  Don’t hold back’

All of this takes letting go.

I want to be in the stream and not watching from the banks,
SARAH

.....heal thyself

Yogis,

The body knows.  Mine has been telling me something isn’t quite right, but I haven’t been listening. 

It all began about a month ago with a small pain in my upper back. First it felt like a strained muscle.  I rubbed some healing balm into it and got a massage. It felt better for a while but came right back.  Some days it would sit quietly in the background and other days it had much more to say. I was acknowledging it but honestly not giving it a whole lot of my attention. It will go away.

I would ‘do less’ when I practiced yoga, and didn’t run ‘as far’ in the mornings. Not listening. My typical attitude that I would just work my way through it. Nothing stops me!

Well…..it has finally stopped me.

As you know, I have had a month with emotional highs and lows and what happens in the mind will also be felt in the body.  Interesting how this physical pain began right along with the natural upheaval that occurs with making life decisions.  The ‘dis-ease’. Where life this past week caused me hurt, my body now aches. Something is stuck and I must get quiet to hear. 

Injuries, pain, illness are all symptoms of what is happening within. Signals to let us know that life has gotten stuck inside and our job is to listen.  But often, like I have been doing, we treat the symptoms without attending to the root of the problem.  Indigestion, we pop Tums where the real cure may be found in leaving an unfulfilling job .  A chronic sore throat has us running for antibiotics when saying what needs to be said will set us free.  Nightly sleeping pills for insomnia where a toxic relationship or media overload could be the true culprit.  Catch a bug and run to the doctor to get fixed when all our body is shouting is for us to slow down…………

We all want the quick fix.  Why try a meditation practice when we can so easily begin blood pressure medication.  But treating symptoms and rationalizing them away does not heal us.  They only muffle the inner voice.  But that voice will get louder and louder until eventually we no longer have a choice but to listen. That is where I am right now.  A forced stop. 

Last weekend I thought that by the release of crying I was done with it all.  Being my practical productive self I believed I had let the whole situation pass through over one tidy weekend–ready to move along in the new week.  Not allowing myself to be inconvenienced by the need for longer term self-care.  But perhaps it isn’t as simple as I would like it to be.  Looks like perhaps there is more buried in there and I have to look deeper.  Ouch.

What has your body been telling you?  Are you listening?

The body knows…….and now I am the ready student.

Taking the time to heal inside and out,
SARAH

.......a hurdle

Yogis,

Tuesday afternoon and Phoebe is having her daily playdate with her doggie boyfriend.  Blue sky with that unmistakable feeling of spring in the air.  The dogs are wildly chasing each other through the large fenced yard, her with her body crouched low like a greyhound to reach maximum speed, when a large lounge chair is suddenly in her path.

Without hesitation she lifts high into the air with the grace of a gazelle landing lightly on the other side, not missing a beat.  It was beautiful to see.  As if the chair wasn’t even there.  She cleared it with ease, ears blown back by the wind and her nose pointed with purpose.

I was trying to describe it the next day to a neighbor and I said it was as if she had jumped a…………. I couldn’t think of the word.  You know, the things those runners jump over.  The word escaped me.   Yeah, he said, I know what you mean but I can’t think of it either.  A…….a………

It finally came to me.   A hurdle.

Little did I know that a large one was about to be plunked down directly in my own path.

For this past month life’s curtain was drawn back to show me new possibilities.  A peek into what could be and I liked what I saw.  The potential for change.  For letting go and moving forward.  Scary, exciting, unknown, freeing and messy all mashed together on a plate laid on my table.  It appeared that one of my visions was about to manifest and I was ready.

But Friday the curtain was abruptly pulled shut.  A lumpy, heavy, unmovable life hurdle was put in its place. 

We all have them and they so often come out of nowhere, with little to no warning.  We are making our way around the track with grace and ease, feeling in control of the race until…..we aren’t.    So what do we do when we turn that corner and find one right at our feet?

Well first I cried.  A lot.  I would stop and get myself together until only moments later it would all come rushing back in.  Like waves.  I spent the day letting them flow when they arrived, since trying to hold a wave back is like asking to be knocked to the ground and you end up with a nose full of water.  My nose was full enough with tears, thank you very much.  And when I finally felt cleared, I stood up and shook myself off.  And went to yoga.

This is a moment in time we have a choice to make.  We can remain a puddle on the floor, we can get angry, we can turn around and go backward, we can blame the hurdle/someone/the world/all of the above, or we can root down to lift off and clear the hurdle with forward momentum.  I am choosing forward.

I write a lot on trusting the Universe completely.  That everything happens for a reason.  While I am making my way over this hurdle I am having an extremely difficult time seeing the reason, but that is where faith is put to the test.  Can I let go and continue following my heart. Continue seeing my vision.  Not allowing the actions of the outside world to determine the state of my inner world.  Am I able to do what I teach.

This hurdle is not life threatening and I know I will land on the other side – although perhaps not quite as gracefully as Phoebe.  But I have now glimpsed what is behind the curtain.  I have tasted it.  Now it is up to me to find my own way there.  And I will. 

Continuing to step forward and watch for guidance………………and keeping the tissue handy.

Seeing what I want,
SARAH