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. 

Freedom

The concept of freedom can strangely be controversial.

As I explore freedom and what it means to me, I have tried to let go of any predetermined definitions or ideals that have been imparted into American culture. Which perhaps is something like this: freedom is only possible as a result of fighting for it through acts of violence against a real or made-up oppressor. Freedom is what we get from the high cost of our military. And we better damn well be proud of it. 

Maybe there is some truth to the above. And if so, it is severely outdated. Are we not highly intelligent, evolved human beings, that we can come up with better solutions to resolve conflict?

The concept that we must fight violently hard for freedom, has led us to become a culture of over-consumptive, apathetic, perpetrators of violence against each other. Americans have abused freedom.

We are not as free as we think we are. Fear has got a strong hold on us. With fear we build walls, gated communities, judgement of race, age, gender, and thus creating a strong separation between us and them. In some cases fear is a necessary response to real danger. However, the challenge lies in our perception of what is real and not real. 

The mind is powerful. One individual mind has the capacity to develop a strong conviction about something, that may or may not be dangerous and threatening to life itself. Those same stories told to each other, to a group of people, to a culture of people, the stories take on a whole new level of power. The stories become a condition, a belief system, passed on from generation to generation. We are not born violent and racist, that is learned programmed behavior. Nowadays, the media giant can feed a system of people more and more stories (whether real and/or dramatized) based on fear so that the people stay convicted and continue to buy into whatever it is they want to sell. 

This imprisonment is mind-control. We are being fed what corporate-media wants us to eat, believe, and do with our lives. It is us, the people, who have fallen prey to the system and gave up our freedom to make our own intelligent choices when it comes to what we eat, how we raise our children, healthcare, how we vote, what we buy, ect. Believing otherwise is abandoning our own intelligence and wisdom to choose. With that said, there is still a great deal of healing (personally and collectively) that must happen. 

We are more free than we think. When comparing our country to others on the globe, we are not bound by religion, we are not bound by class, we are not bound by gender, we are not bound by political party, we are not bound by lack of resources...that is, unless you choose to be. And than there is real freedom that our country was founded on and continues to thrive on. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom of assembly to name a few.  

We have the freedom to create the life we want, to dream it into being. We have the resources, and the opportunity be true leaders of the world. It starts at the individual level. 

What can you do to embody freedom?

I feel free when I have overcome the harmful thoughts in my mind. I feel free when I am running in the foothills. I feel free when I am traveling a different country. I feel free when I choose non-gmo organic food. I feel free choosing my daughters education. I feel free when I fully love and embrace differences. I feel free when I speak truth. I feel free when I'm deep in nature, in silence, and peace.

I will not take these freedoms for granted. 

May I have the courage to face fear, and live up to these freedoms in service of humanity.