Happy Tuesday Friends!

I have been on a journey of self-healing and found myself needing significant attention and deep quiet time. I do appreciate the mundane tasks of everyday life I also crave quiet time to reflect and digest my experiences. This has been such an odd time for me. I like to go, go, go and see people and be ever so cheerful but after peeling off my top layer I found I needed some more work to build up my other layers. This is where a dose of meditation and yoga steps in.

I am a curious being. I have been exploring headstands and back bends. I’m not sure which instance it was but, in my headstand, I would engage my arms and shoulders more in my asana and may have strained a neck muscle. While in my back bend I might have pushed myself too far by straining into my shoulders in a jarring maneuver that may have injured my shoulder. I may have hurt a tendon in my arm when I pushed myself up from a sitting position on the couch which I heard my left shoulder pop. Whatever it was I hurt and stopped doing yoga for a week. I was literally a walking nothing. I didn’t feel connected to anything, and it was really sad.

I have been busy with my day job and my weekend job and planning has been even more time consuming for me. I found myself planning over and over to be busy but no time to reflect, so talk about information overload! I’m very grateful for the knowledge of myself to know when it’s time to step away. I needed to re-ground myself before I created a new problem. I sat for a few days meditating 20 min each morning and listened to nothing. I heard everything from my quiet room, my quiet experience began to round my sharp corners and blurry images became clear. I was becoming clearer and what I needed was staring me in my face. I needed yoga and meditation more than ever.

I began slowly to get back into yoga. I decided one morning I was over failure and ready to get back to my yoga basics. I pulled up YouTube and did a 20-minute yoga practice. I was alive! Every chaturanga gave me newfound energy and the twists excited my organs. I was pulling and receiving life in every pose. Ok, I’m not broken. I decided to do a 40-minute yoga session the next morning. Whoa! My shoulder, my neck…. nothing hurt. Am I back?

I feel connected. I feel playful and ready to explore more. Maybe I was bored? I do like change and love to be challenged. I do love my local yoga studio, but I need more challenges in my asanas to force myself to face who I am and who I want to be. Yes, life offers these as well, but I feel safer on my mat than ever before. I feel it’s my guide and homebase. I am signing up for Iyengar yoga. This yoga focuses on precision and alignment of your asana. If you’re correctly in the pose the likelihood of injury goes down, I hope.

I know I wanted to practice Ashtanga yoga but in time I’ll get there. I’m still in the primary phase and mostly working on sun salutations. There are a few movements that get me. I’m working on shooting back into plank quietly and chaturanga is helping me build up my shoulder strength again. If you don’t use it, you lose it. I don’t want to lose it again.

I guess the lesson this time around is for me to listen to my body. My mind has all these plans, and my body needs respect. I cannot expect to drag my body into these plans without sitting in silence and getting all parties aligned. If my body needs a rest day, then I will honor that with the best day off and lots of self-care and love. How can you go wrong with such a loving dynamic within yourself?

Please remember to take care of yourself. You and your body have a lifetime of uphill battles and to-do lists. Just sit and breathe. Answers will come and healing will begin. Enjoy the silence and invite in the breath of fresh air.

Namaste!

All pictures by Lenape Spiritual Yogi Awakened.