ease and strength
Post Yoga Processing ...
Damn, that was hard...and also there was some east to it.
My words/ intentions for this year are...
"ease" & get strong/ strength.”
I experience these polarities most acutely during yoga.
Specifically Angie’s class on Saturday mornings…Core Flow.
Its a hot class and we are packed in there and it’s amazing.
I go in w/ a mindset of " just do what I can and listen to my body + stay in it."
The last 3 weeks of consistency with this class has introduced me a new/old level of strength and ease I haven’t felt in a while.
When I started practicing Bikram in NYC back in 2013 I felt it. It was like " hello new muscles I have never known about."
also "hello mental strength I also did not know about.”
I don’t kmow if you have done Hot or Bikram Yoga before but it’s a wild ride.
Staying in my body and in the room is hard sometimes... but w/ the work I’ve done muse past years... a decade plus I often feel the ease in the hard.
I chose “Ease” because I know this year will not be easy.
Not in a projecting negative outcomes way, but in a realistic way.
We are on an intentional fertility journey. We are consciously partnering with each other and intentionally trying to consciously parent a 12 year old boy who is navigating life between two homes.
I don’t anticipate parenting, parenting, or the road to / pregnancy to be easy. I know enough now to know that.
But I want to enter into these things with intention. Even if its just a reminder to unclench my jaw and lower my shoulders and trust and deepen my breath as I enter into or notice hard things.
If I go in bracing for hard, I am already in a mobilized nervous system started. Anticipating threat.
Ready to fight, fly, freeze, or fawn.
My idea is that if I can remind my body of the feeling of “EASE” then maybe it will soften me while in the hard.
As for “strength” or “get strong”…
This message came to me from a meditation I did where I was guided to as my future self for a piece of wisdom. I engaged with the the version of me 1 year from now. Pregnant. Calm. and she gently and firmly said to me
“ get strong.”
Even with the intention of “Ease” it will be challenging and I will need my strength or body and core and spirit and mind.
So I am taking my body, mind, spirit, and core to core class on Saturdays.
Today, Angie helped me in a pose that I traditionally would shy away from. She cued me to engage here and lengthen there and I felt something new. Something familiar and yet fresh A new level of engaged strength in my core.
I was like “whoooooaaaa.” I want more of that, and at this time in my life it is accessible to me.
The week after I was having a flare of neck pain that has been plaguing me for months. I had to say “no” to class on Saturday. The way I chose “ease and strength” that day was by listening to what my body needed and it was actually rest. And that is also strength.
So I will keep showing up for “ease and strength” and as I do this…everyone benefits. my body, mind, spirit, future self, future child. My current partner and current kid. My community, clients, and family.
We don’t do this work selfishly. We do it for the all… because its all connected.