yoga lesson

Deep Sustenance

/ embracingspirit / Leave a comment

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom

you have studied, 

I want to know what sustains, 

from the inside, 

when all else falls away.

Tell me of a time when hope and faith wasn’t enough.  Tell me what sustains you when all that you have known, or relied on, falls away.  Tell me what you do to find your way back when you are lost?

When all that we have relied on falls away we have nothing to do but wait. How we wait is up to us.  Whether we wait with openness, or we close off, the choice is ours.  We either choose to LIVE or we move towards a death.

To choose life, we have to be willing to wait.  To ride the waves of life even when it seems impossible.  To wait for the waves to subside.

What sustains us when all else falls away are the things that we do that make waiting and staying open to life possible. These things are our practices that fill up the space when hope and faith are waiting to find us again.

For me, my practices are my foundation.  Without them, I am lost in life.  I know that these are the rituals that I must do while I lean towards faith and hope with anticipation that they are around the corner during the hard times of my life.  Without these practices, I know I would not be able to show up in life the way that I do.

  • daily power hour; setting my intention for the day, journal meditation, plan my day and review my commitments, create tasks to complete that support my dreams, read a motivational/spiritual passage.
  • walk in nature; rain, snow, shine.  No matter what I get at least one 30 minute walk each and everyday.   No matter the temperature because after all that is what hats and gloves are for.
  • bubble bath; beyond the practical reasons, I self-care soak at least once per day to get grounded and connected, to wash off the day’s experiences and energy, and to savor my body.

These daily practices sustain me and keep me from being lost in a big world with often big experiences while I wait for hope and faith to find me.

This week we will explore this on the mat (or chair) as we dive into our practices of movement and breath with the idea of deep sustenance.  We will wait out postures by following our breath and coming back into the moment of now.

Join me!

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The Commitment

/ embracingspirit / Leave a comment

It doesn’t interest me 

to know where you live or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up,

after a night of grief and despair, 

weary and bruised to the bone, 

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

Do you have it in you? Can you dig deep even on the days when you are exhausted, riddled with grief and despair and do what needs to be done?

Life cries out in its needs whether we feel good or not.  It cries out whether we are rich or poor, filled with excitement or anguish.

To take care of life and all its children; mother earth, animals, plants, our babies we must fall back onto our commitment to simply show up and do what needs to be done.  It may not always be our best, or the prettiest, but we must.

It is actually in the moments when surrender to what IS and we stop fighting with life when she calls us, we actually become lifted and often inspired.  It is in that inspiration that we find strength.  And it is there we go back to our commitment. It is often when whatever we are facing seems impossible, we let go of the grips of trying and instead just buckle under and do what needs to be done.

When we eventually move out of the troubling situation, the exhaustion, the anguish we can see that we actually did so with great strength, and at times even nobility.

Each of us has a commitment to feed “children”.  It is the way you care for your home, your community, your earth, and how you go about your life.

See the world and all the millions of people who are weary and tired and yet, somehow get up and do what needs to be done.  See yourself as the little child and someone in your life cared for you, whether it was a parent, grandparent, teacher or neighbor, see the times when your little body felt loved. See those in our world who are not able to feed their children; refugees, starving places of war and horror, a momma waiting for her boy who is lost in drugs and violence.  Feel their dreams coupled with desperation. See yourself now. See who you feed now.  Be aware of how everyone is so deserving of love and care.

Take a breath of willingness to commit. Commit your body into the pose.  Commit your thoughts to be in alignment with your vision. Commit your heart to be of love.

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