RESILIENCY

As the saying goes, "Starting a new business is like having a baby."  Well, come to find out, it is so very true. In the beginning, there is a spark. Ideas explode into the ether, sperm and egg meet to begin new life. A gestation period. Where the energy of impatience can be re-routed to preparations. Waiting. Preparing. Waiting, as it grows into fullness.  The stars align just so and the pulse of contractions begins, and you have to dig deep into the reserves of personal will to match Divine will and push hard. Then one day, its done. The baby is born. You get the permit and are ready for business. 

Nurturing the new "baby" requires a lot of attention, endurance, and resiliency.

Attention to stay focused on the task at hand, details, decision making. Endurance to keep on keeping on when the going gets rough and bumpy. Resiliency, because things don't always (actually rarely) go as planned and the ability to be flexible and bounce back to center is necessary to stay focused. This is where yoga helps a ton! Well...about that.

My practice was next to nothing over the summer. And I suffered because of it. The broken buddha in my weed infested garden was certainly a metaphor and a message from the universe.

At one point, I was laying in a heaping mess on the couch. All curled up into myself. Thinking about how much I suck. Completely and freakishly depressed. I've been here before. Many times. Sometimes I enough awareness to remember I've got my tool belt on and can pull out any number of tools (yoga, run, hike, write) and pull myself from the depths of despair. Sometimes I forget that I have my tool belt on and down I go. And every so often, I outgrow the tools and desperately need to add new ones to the ol' tool belt. 

Laying there in a heaping mess of self-doubt and utter despair, I really wanted to give up. On everything. It would be heck of a lot easier to numb out, eat crappy food, watch TV all day, stay in my cave, swallowed whole by own shadow.

But here's the thing with being a yogi, or/and spiritual practitioner, once you have been shown the light, there is no going back. There is no giving up. The universe will not let you. You've been tagged as a light house and being a light house means the light is always on (in varying degrees of brightness, but its never out). 

It was my ever so loving, compassionate rock solid husband that got me off the couch. He's a lighthouse after all. It was the look in his eyes. He reflected back to me how pathetic I must have looked. That did it! I got up, put on my tool belt, because it was apparently not on at all. I took my notebook and went to the rose garden, basked in the sun, journaled and called a therapist. I set some intentions, said some prayers. Including a full embodied prayer of letting go to my attachment of how I think I should be, look, do. All of it. I cut the cord of attachment to outcomes to the one thing I love the most, yoga. 

As I got up and left the park, I caught eye of this big beautiful tree. I couldn't help but notice the huge gnarly knot in its trunk, where a significant limb was once attached. It was shaped like a heart. I took a moment to admire its beauty. Seeing how it is a wound, totally open and vulnerable to the elements, yet the tree stands healthy and strong, unaffected. Resilient. 

The same day, I got calls. The universe, Divine will, does not forget about Dharma. I got calls pulling my attention back to yoga. Back to where I am needed and where I am able to serve in the world. I was pulled back to my center. 

Resiliency.