Ever since my college days, I’ve always been interested in fitness and how the body moves. (Despite the fact that my friend and I received awards for being Back Row Bums in P.E. because we didn’t want to participate.) I was interested for all the external reasons of looking good.
Forward through raising children and my reason to exercise became to feel good. (not to mention a few moments of quiet time) This is when I started practicing yoga consistently, until I didn’t. But I did start to snowshoe and cross country ski more, to hike more in the summer and started walking daily. This was all good.
Then I realized that I missed practicing yoga on a mat. I started a regular practice again that I looked forward to. Still staying grounded with all nature has to offer, I started the journey of looking inward. I didn’t have pain in my body, but I did have pain in my heart. I had feelings of despair, loneliness, anxiety, and well, all the icks. By the time I became a yoga teacher, I was really good at hiding behind the mask, at applying band-aids on what hurt. This was less good.
I told myself so many stories that my body began to store them up. Then they got mixed up with other past stories until they expressed as pain in my hip, my shoulder, my jaw, etc. My journey inward continued. I had to learn to meet my myself where I was at and not rush through to where I wanted to be. So I kept moving. I started meditating consistently, I began a gratitude practice, I became more aware of my surroundings when I walked and I started to learn even more about the how our bodies move. And more importantly, I began to understand the mind, heart, body connection. It is a beautiful thing.
And some days I do my own trust fall in the snow, create a snow angel, laugh out loud and gaze up at the vast blue sky. It reminds me to trust the process and it makes my heart smile.
With much love and gratitude,
deEtta
Forward through raising children and my reason to exercise became to feel good. (not to mention a few moments of quiet time) This is when I started practicing yoga consistently, until I didn’t. But I did start to snowshoe and cross country ski more, to hike more in the summer and started walking daily. This was all good.
Then I realized that I missed practicing yoga on a mat. I started a regular practice again that I looked forward to. Still staying grounded with all nature has to offer, I started the journey of looking inward. I didn’t have pain in my body, but I did have pain in my heart. I had feelings of despair, loneliness, anxiety, and well, all the icks. By the time I became a yoga teacher, I was really good at hiding behind the mask, at applying band-aids on what hurt. This was less good.
I told myself so many stories that my body began to store them up. Then they got mixed up with other past stories until they expressed as pain in my hip, my shoulder, my jaw, etc. My journey inward continued. I had to learn to meet my myself where I was at and not rush through to where I wanted to be. So I kept moving. I started meditating consistently, I began a gratitude practice, I became more aware of my surroundings when I walked and I started to learn even more about the how our bodies move. And more importantly, I began to understand the mind, heart, body connection. It is a beautiful thing.
And some days I do my own trust fall in the snow, create a snow angel, laugh out loud and gaze up at the vast blue sky. It reminds me to trust the process and it makes my heart smile.
With much love and gratitude,
deEtta
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