This past year, my hair was allowed to grow naturally, no highlights or colors. During that time, I had thought to be true to my yoga lifestyle it would be best to let my hair do its thing and not worry about it. So it grew and grew and since I am in mid-life (41), my hair was mostly gray with bits of red here and there. Yesterday, I followed my intution and decided to re-brand myself with fresh look and a bit of color. After three hours at the salon and a full hair make over, my new look has emerged. I love it!
How is it that this has immensely changed my behavior? With my new doo, I find myself so alive and brilliant, and will admit a bit sassy. Playful banter has been flowing from me whereever I go. My smile is on 24/7 and just feel so good.
I begin to wonder if my ego has been boosted up with my new look or if it is because I have been repressing my ego for the last year (through my yoga training) and finally it is been freed. As you begin to learn about yoga philosophy, there is much conversation about ego and you can began to form an opinion about it. Ego is bad. Ego is no good. Go Ego, go far away, you are a bad influence on me. Yet this is the only the Ego playing on the Ego.....think about it. What part of you forms opinions and judgements? I believe that would be the Ego.
Amazing what you can learn from one fabolus haircut! I realized it is important to understand and embrace your Ego and give it the recongnition it deserves. Just be real and always call it what it is. My thoughts are it is not that the Ego is good or bad, it's just mis-understood.
I am embracing my new source of sassy-ness, with my curly red locks with an understanding it is okay to feel good about looking good, engage in outer beauty without feeling guilty about it. Just call a spade a spade, there is no reason to try to beat up the spade for being a spade.
Make sense? Anyone out there have an experience with an Ego-Acknowleged moment in their life? Would love to hear about it.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Is there such thing as perfect posture?
Let us get straight to the point, NO! There is not a ‘perfect’ posture, although we may think there is. Why? Because perfection in the body does not exist! Each of us have experienced our own traumas (falling out of a tree, slipping on ice), activities (baseball pitcher, cross country runner, golfer), repetitive motions (truck driver, computer worker, guitar player). We are a mixture of our lifestyle choices and daily habits that create patterns in our bodies that result in our own specific postural alignment. For us to believe we can obtain a perfect posture and strive toward that goal will only bring frustration and discouragement.
Instead, let us begin to change our perspective from attaining a ‘perfect’ posture to ‘moving into balance’. By moving into balance we begin to understand ourselves as we are and we can unravel the mysteries of how we hold our habit patterns and begin to break through. We discover what is going on in our own life that is creating an imbalance and we work towards making the changes required to make us feel better.
There is a saying in the Yogic texts:
This is perfect,
That is perfect,
When perfection is taken away from perfect,
Perfect alone remains.
You are perfect the way you are, most of us just do not know this yet or believe it to be true. It is those good old egos of ours that think we need to strive to perfection. Perfection does not exist. Believe it!
So how do we move towards balance? Begin by taking a different approach in your yoga practice. Try not to strive towards a destination, like hands to floor in forward bend. Instead, begin to feel how your body moves from beginning and end, from start to finish, and then back again. Discover, explore and get curious versus pushing, forcing and striving. You may be surprised what you discover as well as find a sense of balance and well-being within.
This webinar ‘How is your spine doing?” hosted by Lucas at YogaBody is a fantastic clip to help you understand your posture and finding your balance within. It is approximately 58 minutes long but well worth the time:
Enjoy your exploration!
Namaste.
Why yoga?
Since my training began last October, many folks ask what is it about yoga that you like so much? Which led me to explore that question for myself and thought it might be good to share.
My personality is of the type of independence and resistance. Nobody could tell me what to do. In fact, if someone told me what to do, I would do the opposite. If I was told I could not do it, I would despite the fact if it was even was something I wanted to do.
As I grew older, my independence created many opportunities to expand in my environmental career, allowed me to gain great lengths in my athletic adventures, and led me to my husband who honors and understands that part of my personality.
However, my independence also brought separation and an attitude of the need to be better; constantly striving to be different and unique and pushing so hard to better myself at everything I did. If I did not do this, I was nobody, a failure. This is how strong this part of my personality is.
Enter yoga. Of course, like most, my yoga practice began because my body was sore and very unhappy. Long hours of running on pavement, created so much tension in my hips I would walk with a sight limp, my neck and shoulders where so tight I couldn’t look over my right or left shoulders. At first, I thought yoga would provide me with the tools to keep pushing through, to be bigger, better and stronger, and it did.
Then my practice grew into something more. Sometime, somehow, somewhere during my mat practice, my perspective changed. I began to listen to myself.
The biggest change in my life came when my focus switched from self-improvement to self-discovery. I was perfect the way I was, no need to strive to be any other way, the problem was I just did not see it nor understand it.
Why yoga? What I love about yoga is it allows me to keep my independence. Nobody told me do this, do that; believe this, believe that; you are this; you are that. Instead yoga said ‘listen to your own experience’. It is your own direct experience through which you learn and develop your depth of character. Nobody, NOBODY, will ever have the same exact experiences as you. It is up to you to know yourself, to trust yourself, to know what is good and bad for you.
There is an opportunity to learn about your self in every moment of every day. The trick is to be present in the moment to be open to that experience. For example, how often do you find yourself missing out on part of a conversation because you began to get lost in your own thoughts, going off on a mental tangent? That is you not being present, missing out on that present experience.
So I do yoga, I allow myself to be present in my practice and it carries with me through the rest of the day. If you give yourself an opportunity to learn from each experience, then there will be no other option but to grow in depth and character, to really understand who you are, not who others perceive you to be.
Explore the experiment, the experiment of the self discovery of you. Let yoga be an opportunity to discover who you are, for your own self. Yoga will never tell you who you are, or what to believe in. It is only a tool, a tool to figure it out for yourself. That is why I love yoga.
Namaste.
Why start a blog?
This past year there have been multiple changes in my life. Not necessarily physical changes, like losing weight or life changes, like getting married; something more radical, more revolutionary. It is as if the world has opened it's brilliance to me, however I am beginning to realize it is me who has become open to seeing the brilliance of the world, which was always there.
My childhood was typical, with the standard issues that go along with being a teenage girl. I was a bit on the heavy side, so of course, at that time in my life, I tormented myself and lacked a positive self image. Into my twenties, as I moved on to college, my life ran rampant as my choices were of indulgence and self destruction, again affecting my self confidence. As my thirties came about, it was time I made amends amd tried to become the best possible person I could be, in all ways considered to be good. However in doing so I was never enough, not good enough, not healthy enough, not giving enough. Another decade of self-abuse and confusion.
This past year I decided to pursue yoga teacher training at Yoga North in Duluth, MN. It felt like something that I had to do. At the time I did not have plans to become a yoga teacher, something else encouraged my enrollment.
During my year training, something happened, something unexpected. Not like I thought would happen, like being able complete full wheel or find perfect balance in my handstand. It was deeper, something so big that it needed a blog.
All my life was a struggle with myself. I never understood how or why this struggle created such conflict in my life. My girl years of not being pretty enough, my adolescent years of not knowing my sense of self and my early adult years of pushing myself to be the best I could be, it all spurred from a place of selfishness and misunderstanding. My life was all about me, and I had no clue what that meant.
During my teaching training, I began a new direction in my life. Instead of a path of self-improvement, I began my exploration of self-discovery. Things become clear to me, it is not about a destination or achievement, it is about exploring and being curious of how and why you are the way you are.
My entire life has changed, it is calm, easy and sensational. I feel more alive then ever before, there is less stress and guilt. I do not look for answers any more, I just look for the experience. Also, there is the understanding that everyone has their own experience just as unique as mine and I have come to respect that as well.
So that is what this blog is all about. Sharing experiences in our journey of life. Experiencing everything in our own body, minds and souls without expectations or attachments. By doing so, we begin to grow. To be able to grow, we need to be open to something new and this is difficult when we are clouded in our own judgements, opinions and preconceived notions.
I invite you to explore with me and discover things about yourself and the world just as they are. Please comment and share anything that has been revealed to you through this process. My way of life is not one of telling someone to do this or that, to believe this or that, to be this or that; instead it is one to encourage each and every person to be present in their own life and make those decisions for themselves.
Enjoy the experience!
My childhood was typical, with the standard issues that go along with being a teenage girl. I was a bit on the heavy side, so of course, at that time in my life, I tormented myself and lacked a positive self image. Into my twenties, as I moved on to college, my life ran rampant as my choices were of indulgence and self destruction, again affecting my self confidence. As my thirties came about, it was time I made amends amd tried to become the best possible person I could be, in all ways considered to be good. However in doing so I was never enough, not good enough, not healthy enough, not giving enough. Another decade of self-abuse and confusion.
This past year I decided to pursue yoga teacher training at Yoga North in Duluth, MN. It felt like something that I had to do. At the time I did not have plans to become a yoga teacher, something else encouraged my enrollment.
During my year training, something happened, something unexpected. Not like I thought would happen, like being able complete full wheel or find perfect balance in my handstand. It was deeper, something so big that it needed a blog.
All my life was a struggle with myself. I never understood how or why this struggle created such conflict in my life. My girl years of not being pretty enough, my adolescent years of not knowing my sense of self and my early adult years of pushing myself to be the best I could be, it all spurred from a place of selfishness and misunderstanding. My life was all about me, and I had no clue what that meant.
During my teaching training, I began a new direction in my life. Instead of a path of self-improvement, I began my exploration of self-discovery. Things become clear to me, it is not about a destination or achievement, it is about exploring and being curious of how and why you are the way you are.
My entire life has changed, it is calm, easy and sensational. I feel more alive then ever before, there is less stress and guilt. I do not look for answers any more, I just look for the experience. Also, there is the understanding that everyone has their own experience just as unique as mine and I have come to respect that as well.
So that is what this blog is all about. Sharing experiences in our journey of life. Experiencing everything in our own body, minds and souls without expectations or attachments. By doing so, we begin to grow. To be able to grow, we need to be open to something new and this is difficult when we are clouded in our own judgements, opinions and preconceived notions.
I invite you to explore with me and discover things about yourself and the world just as they are. Please comment and share anything that has been revealed to you through this process. My way of life is not one of telling someone to do this or that, to believe this or that, to be this or that; instead it is one to encourage each and every person to be present in their own life and make those decisions for themselves.
Enjoy the experience!
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