Continuing To Connect To A Place Of Healing And Stillness
Today's practice was nice and dreamy. It was about 6:30 am when started moving through asanas with Adriene and connecting to a place of stillness, perhaps even more than in yesterday's time spent on the mat. Most of the day was quiet after I had to leave classes and my responsibilities behind for the moment to tend to myself. I tried to bite off more than I could and take on the world before I was fully healed, and was humbled by the limits of my physical body and taught lesson in self-care that was mine to take with grace and aplomb. Now I am so much better rested. We'll see what tomorrow brings. It seems like a promise of adventure hanging around the next corner. 😎
Today's yoga practice was all about stillness -- finding those authentic moments within yourself to be present and whole, even in your imperfections. My journaling and conscious reading materials are allowing the precious space for me to do just that. It's OK for me to move ahead even if everything in my life isn't perfect. I can just focus on the amazing things that are working more me right now and be grateful. I have a roof over my head, I have an amazing new guy in my life, I have a beautiful, loving cat named Fjord, and an abundance of friends and supporters. Life is great! Now I just have to ask the Universe for financial abundance and line up to get ready for it. I feel more like myself then I have in years.
I realize that it was my last yoga challenge that helped me to feel connected to my higher self. And that it was around that time that I moved to San Francisco with my late sister who at that time had recently been diagnosed with cancer. It was this move to San Francisco that set so many positive experiences in motion for me that changed my life. But when my sister asked me if I wanted to consolidate the failing business I was hanging onto and leave to the Big City, a place where I didn't know anyone, didn't have a job in, carrying a large amount of bills and debt in tow, I said yes. In retrospect I realize that I was fully committed to my yoga practice then and reading books like "Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More" by Ihaleakaia Hew Len and Joe Vitale -- a groundbreaking book about ho'opono'pono, the ancient Hawaiian practice of love and forgiveness. I noticed yoga was the thing that I took up again after my breakup with my long-term partner of almost a decade, as I was preparing to leave San Francisco after my sister passed the rents skyrocketed, and I was sleeping on a cot with my cats, most of stuff in storage and me spending some night drinking alcohol and crying. My yoga practice was there when I "miraculously" found a new place to live a few cities over in Richmond California, and spent days binge-watching TV shows and crying over romantic movies in my pillow while nursing an injured arm on Disability. And it was present to help me heal my arm, when I found a new job, a wonderful friend Claire to have an amazing trip to Mexico with (who sadly passed away in the summer of last year) and when that job not longer was serving me to help me find a new better job with equal pay. Now as I progress toward my goal of one year of yoga without missing a single day, and I get closer to my 100th day, I know that my practice will be here for me through thick or thin, no matter what. I have it as a constant companion forever. And that it is the physical practice of movement that represents the unique relationship between my mind, body and spirit.
I think it's highly appropriate that my three-card reading today happened to be photographed on the back of one of my favorite blankets -- a Christmas present I received in 2016 when I least expected it. It was a reminder that abundance is all around me if I choose to see it. My reading to day bolsters my inner-knowing that I am destined for a life of bounty and joy! The card "Man Holding A Coin" which came up in a previous reading shows me that I am set of achieving my best life against all odds -- that I am developing an millionaire mindset. "Magician In The Mirror" means that I'm coming into my own power and that I have the ability to make magic! "Blossoming Abundance is saying looking out world, here I come! All the joy and beauty that I have imagined and more are waiting for me me to reach out and grab them.
So It's time to introduce my readers to two books that I have recently started to peruse. One is called "Basic Psychic Development" by John Friedlander and Gloria Hemsher. This is a wonderful book for anyone who like me are exploring world of things unseen and have been using their intuition and third eye to see the Universe with. It is helping me to get my own back. I highly recommend it. Another book I am reading is called "Becoming Magic"" By Genevieve Davis. This book is a no-nonsense look at the Law of Attraction principles. It's groundbreaking. If you want to be the director of your own purpose and create magic for yourself get it now. I just downloaded it off Amazon yesterday evening and it is pure gold!
"I Believe In Miracles" Performed By Hot Chocolate
Even though I woke up groggy on Jay's futon, still reeling from my flu, but on the road to recovery thanks to his caring and healing ministrations during the weekend. I felt grateful, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, being roused gently, given a long loving hug, and sent home with two containers of the homemade soup he made me for dinner the evening before and a crisp apple, and greeting the brightness of the morning sun that shone down on me through as he drove me home in his electric powered car.
Of course as life often does, when I got home, I had discovered that my roommate had finally rented out the spare room, I had to navigate the territory of one of my neighbor's moving, tackle the ongoing problem of organizing my room, try and put out a fire at the my college newspaper paper over text and email, get a memory card for a camera I don't know how to use so that I can shoot three pictures for my photojournalism class and wash my cat. It's all in a day's work.
Somewhere between all the chores and errands, I realized that these things aren't going to magically disappear for me to live out my true purpose, but I'm going to have to navigate around them and zero in on the things that are of the most importance to me. It's like today's lesson in my "Rituals For Transformation" journal says. I have to choose where I put my energies, because what I put my energy on will grow and thrive. I choose to put my energies on my goals and dreams from now on! It's as simple as that. From that rich focused soil, my life will take on greater meaning and passion. From there, my spirit will grow.
As I head closer to the 90 day mark on my yoga journey, I am learning so much about myself because of the valuable inner work that I have done. Today I'm still recovering from being sick and I am taking it nice and easy. Just like Yoga With Adriene's "Be Kind" practice which focuses on being loving and compassionate with yourself. Today was about nurturing and self-care and today. And I received TLC from myself and others.
It's important to find balance in your life. And that is what today's practice was all about and what today was all about for me. I caught a bad cold which started yesterday and just sort of blindsided me the way colds can often do with the swiftness at which the symptoms became full-blown. So for me day 23 of the "True" challenge on the "Yoga With Adriene" Youtube channel, gave me just what I needed. It was the perfect mix of a little fire and sweat with mostly calming, thoughtful poses. Now it's time for my body to experience some hard-core rest and rejuvenation!
Today I decided to let whatever feelings I had just bubble up to the surface and hang out. It all started with the Adriene's "Release" yoga practice and then flowed into my morning journaling and out into my day. I'm continuing the theme of releasing resistance -- letting go of the emotions that I've been so desperately hanging onto. I met a poet named Gregory Pond today at a potluck to support artists and other creative individuals. I read the poems in his book, appropriately titled "After Moon" just 2 days after the last triple full moon/blood moon/eclipse. Much of his poetry struck a chord with me, including one entitled "boxed in".
i found myself
trapped in a box
too tired
to fold back the flaps
too weak
to break the seal
I felt like this once I thought. When I left the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses. The feelings of that time in my life emerged. One musician at the party started playing an exotic stringed instrument, and singing. One man in starting half singing, half chanting. A woman began striking various singing bowls that were lined up on a table adjacent some tea, a large jar of honey and some chips and a small dish of guacamole. I sat there spilling my guts to the poet with a vintage 1970's songbook in my lap, nursing a teacup and the beginnings of a fever and a bad cold. Yes. It was that kind of party.
Yoga today was all about not forcing, about surrendering to the challenge and not fighting it, fighting the process of change and growth. Things must be lining up in the Universe because I feel so connected to the ley lines of the earth, to the cosmos -- so in tune with life's synchronicities. In Tori Hartman's workbook "Chakra Wisdom Oracle Toolkit: A 52-Week Journey of Self-Discovery With The Lost Fables", I explored the fable of "Crimson Dreams" and examined how much of my life is passing me by because of complacency. I meditated and wrote in my journal about what that means for me. I realized that I could rejoice about a lot of things that I have become active about, like being more on time, conquering goals like learning to swim, creating a daily yoga and meditation practice and so forth. But there are dreams that I have been neglecting out of fear. Traveling aspirations, musical aspirations, wealth building, de-cluttering my living space, etc. There are areas of my life that I am still resisting change in. In "Rituals of Transformation, I explored this concept and was able to link my complacency directly to my resistance to what is. I feel as if I can use what I learned from the wise and gentle techniques of "The Sedona Method" By Hale Dwoskin and from "The Emotional Freedom Technique" pioneered by Gary Craig. I have all the tools necessary to create the life of my dreams. All these things and even better things to come!
