Feeding Your Demons
1/22/23
Hello family!
Does anyone else experience waves in their commitment to practice? I know I do! Sometimes I feel my sails are full of wind, and I can be steady in my routines. Other times, I slip into overwhelm with life, and my practice falters. But underneath of the fluctuations, there is an understanding that can't be swayed. I know that I am constantly connected to nature in every moment. I may forget it and drift in my awareness, but it is always there waiting for me to return.
Lately, I've been surfing a wave of reconnecting to practice in a strong and nourishing way. So I thought I'd share some of my recent reflections from the mat.
When I am in my practice, I really celebrate finding my restrictions, losing my balance, etc. It shows me where my system is at any given moment. By being consistent, I can see how certain choices and situations in my day-to-day life influence my system (like how eating more/less sugar leads to having more/less desire to practice or how sitting and driving for hours reveals the hard-to-find restrictions in my feet and ankles that have been affecting my knees and hips for years).
It's also beautiful to see how the mat practice affects life off the mat. When I take time to practice, the internal hygiene that results leads to me making healthier choices about how to sit, stand, eat, etc. I yell less while driving and I'm able to feel when my posture is leading to pain instead of just collapsing into a comfortable shape and then feeling pain later when I go to move.
Simply put, my practice keeps me present. When I can be fully tapped in, I feel that so much possibility for myself and for each of my students. I'm not sure where the possibilities end if we can find the willingness to come back to presence consistently; to bravely sit quietly with our fears as they surface and thereby cleanse what's blocked up in our system.
Sometimes I refer to this practice as "feeding your demons." This is because on the mat we let our dark, sad, broken, forgotten, dusty parts be felt. We sit and feel, and fundamentally change our relationship to our entire system over time. We learn how to nourish each piece by applying the pressures that nature used to provide us. Only we do it through postures, props, transitions, and holds instead of roots, rocks, branches, and dirt.
To hear more, check out this week’s free talk about Applying Stress to Relieve Stress —> https://vimeo.com/791224319/50fe9da734