Day 42 of 90 straight days of hot yoga at Moksha Yoga LA and in yesterday’s post I talked about the idea of “granted” and today our teacher was Grant, funny, but an answered prayer. Grant really enforced again, the power of the breath, and really reminded our class today of the moments we stop breathing. I notice in my life off the mat I stop breathing when I forget to allow life to unfold. Grant has tremendous strength both inwardly and outwardly. It was wonderful to experience his teaching and I feel blessed for the opportunity.
In flow I have been having trouble with a certain pose. I discovered with the help from Grant, by inhaling into the pose it pulls the pressure from off my lower back and lets me into the pose in the correct way, I will tell you right now, “hallelujah”. I have been really working with this and today it clicked into place. I felt such power and inner strength in the pose as well. That same type of breath really helped in sustaining my other poses, I am beginning to experience the breath and pose as one movement.
Before today I didn’t realize that they appeared separate to my practice. Today they became one. I caught myself in the mirror and saw inner and outer strength. What I love is that by being gentle, kind, and patient with myself, and not pushing it, I have slowly developed a strong foundation that I can come too. That is very important to me.
In my life, when things fell apart, I didn’t have a healthy foundation to go to, true I had meditation and prayer and affirmations, but when things fell completely apart. I fell over. And would eat bad, punish myself, judge myself, and even experience lots of shame. What does that mean? It means that when life offered me a right hook, I caved in and fell down. And I didn’t want to get up. I would give up on myself. I felt worthless, and low.
So now I am noticing by doing yoga everyday I am developing a healthy way to handle life and its challenges. I am breathing with things, even when the answer doesn’t come. I am starting to work with life, not against it. I am understanding that “this to will pass” and if it does come back, it isn’t as strong as the first time. That my best friend is my breath. That this yoga journey and this blog is my saving grace.
That as I write this I can only think of each of you and how we inspire each other. Truly thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share and grow before you. I hope my journey can inspire you and allow you to see that as you pursue your dreams there are challenges but if you are patient, kind, and gentle with yourself in the process of it; that life will offer you support and love.
On to day 43….