Tag: kindness

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One Year On.

With my hands planted at the top of my yoga mat, a genuine 90-degree angle at my wrist and elbow, I marveled at how normal I felt this morning balancing in Crow Pose. This normalcy evoked a deep sense of gratitude that I could not only make this shape but that I could hold it without grit or strain. I hovered there thinking, wow, the body is an amazing machine and one that can heal in the most remarkable ways.

One year ago today, I was struck by a car while riding my bike. What followed—the surgery, physical therapy, baby steps back into my active lifestyle, and eventually greater challenges to my rebuild strength (like a very humbling Rocket Yoga teacher training)—was tough stuff but helped me learn tools I now use on a regular basis to heal other areas of my life beyond just the physical.

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Looped up on narcotics in the days leading up to surgery. I can never thank my dear friend Caroline and her family enough for coming to my rescue that night and weekend. Love you!

Life has this funny way of throwing a whole lot of challenge your way all at once, doesn’t it? We’ve all been there. What’s so wonderful about these low points is that when we crumble we’re left with all these pieces of different size, weight and shape and we have to consciously figure out how we want to put them back together. We get this rare chance to build ourselves up better than before.

As Nikki Giovanni recently said on one of my favorite NPR podcasts, On Being with Krista Tippett, “ sometimes you must take the ingredients you’re given and make the best thing you can make.”

It wasn’t all roses. So many times over the last year I’ve felt angry, scared and frustrated at physical limitations and emotional land mines stemming from the accident and personal trials during the initial recovery period. When I learned to accept those emotions as part of the basket of ingredients I was given, the whole process got a whole lot easier. Let go, or be taken. Feeling broken and broken down brought me to this place where for the first time in my life it felt okay to lose control. Like I was allowed to be a bit of a hot mess for a while. To cry when I felt pain or hurt. To let others help me even when I wanted to do it all myself. To let little chores and tasks slide that would’ve normally irked me until they were complete. It was freeing.

It made things so simple. I knew that all I could do was tend to the ingredients I was given. I could not control the outcome of surgery. I could not make myself heal. I could not will my way to any ideal recovery. I could, however, take care of myself during the process, body and mind, and make for the best.

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My attempt to embrace the ingredients I was given. Work with what you’ve got!

 

This is tough for a goal-oriented person, as so many of us are. When we can relax our attachment to results, we open to the process and it becomes far less scary. Fear is a powerful thing so sometimes it helps to be forced to face your fears. For me that meant, getting back on my bike the day I was cleared; allowing myself to have a full-on, ugly cry break-down on a dirt road in upstate New York when skidding on a downhill pass brought me right back to that moment of impact; and acknowledging that my physical strength was not the only strength I possessed. What I lost in physical strength, I gained in inner fortitude.

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Today, I will take my bike, Bruiser, on a joy ride to celebrate our  journey together this past year. There has been so much change, so much challenge but all my sassy little bike and I can do is keep rolling and tending to the ingredients we’re given to make our world a safer, kinder, more compassionate place for ourselves and for others to live and love.

 

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Be Still to Be Strong: Awakening the Body from Within

As I lay there on my back, sweat drying on the back of my neck, gently cradled by the give of my mat, five simple words washed over me, triggering a moment of ineffable release…

“Awaken yourself from within first.”

I’m no stranger to a few tears in savasana. Moving muscles, honing mental focus, and getting lost in the rise and fall of breath have an uncanny ability to remove blockages, both physical and emotional. From time to time this release opens the flood gates, others it simply lets drips seep out one by one. Today was more of the latter for me, but my goodness did it feel good to crack.

No one ever told me I had to be strong while healing from my accident, but I resolved to stay positive, look at the glass half full, and find the proverbial silver lining. I’m not saying it was wrong to push myself in this way, but it was at times exhausting. I knew at some visceral level that if I let myself crumble emotionally while my body was broken against its will, I might slip down a darker path than if I steeled myself in certain ways. Fear of falling kept me from facing the true trauma of my experience. Part of me knew I would have to face the more emotional impact of the accident once my body started to mend, but it still surprised me when it began to surface.

For the past few weeks I’ve been tiptoeing back into my yoga practice: I’ve used more props than ever before (see below); I’ve gotten creative with hand placement and foot positions to allow for better balance; I’ve come to child’s pose when others have come into handstand; and I’ve even worked up the courage to leave my splint at home despite the fear that others won’t know I’m still healing and think I’m just being lazy (hello, ego!).

Every week that goes by I am physically stronger, but at times more mentally and emotionally frustrated. An agitation shakes and stirs inside me fueled by impatience and expectation. Why am I not yet back to where I was before? When will this pose or that pose be within reach? Where did my stamina go? While all the answers to these questions are clear to my most rational self, in the moment these questions gnaw and nag at my inner fabric.

Here’s the thing—that inner struggle is the exact reason why I love yoga so much, so much that I became a teacher. Yoga illuminates the limits, boundaries, and blockages we all wrestle with. It sheds light on them and allows you the time and space to truly see, acknowledge, and slowly and steadily ease through them. It’s not an fast process, and you cannot rush it. The more you force yourself towards resolution or change, the harder it becomes to achieve.

When that single tear found its way through the crack in the walls I’d thrown up, rolled its way down into the well of my ear, and drew a smile across my face I knew my struggle with this trauma had begun in earnest. My gratitude for this beginning is unbounded. I know that as I start to reconnect with my inner self, awakening from within first, I will have the unique and rare opportunity to reignite my spark with yoga. I get to rediscover the magic of connecting breath to movement. I get to realize anew that stillness creates inner and outer strength. And I get to watch as my body invites me back in, little by little as it becomes ready.

As I lay there on my back, in tranquility and stillness, only then could I notice that when you are still there are no boundaries and no limits to what is possible, only potential.

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Slow It Down, Take a Bubble Bath

Sometimes I feel like I’m always on the go. Whether I’m jetting all over the place for my day job or making moves to get my yoga career off the ground, my days are jammed from the minute my eyes flutter open to the moment I turn down the sheets at night. My commitments blur the line between work and personal time and weekends have been desecrated, no longer prioritizing socializing with friends and R&R.

Like a lot of 20-somethings, this go go lifestyle is self-inflicted. True, I’m a bit of a masochist when it comes to what I set out to accomplish in any given day, week or month, but I love being busy. At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m vibrating after my third cup of coffee and hustling from the yoga studio to meet up with a friend I almost never get to see and back home to get a unit of my nutrition studies done before catching a flight out of Dulles for five days of meetings. Inhale. Exhale. Yes, all the yoga I do helps lower my stress levels but that too takes time and my asana practice can be more (physically) draining some days than I’d like to admit.

The truth is, this pace is stressful and is taking its toll. Spread yourself too thin and you’ll inevitably hit a wall. I hit mini walls all the time. Usually it’s just a few hours of being utterly knackered, feeling overwhelmed, and involuntarily surrendering to tears of fatigue as they flow across my temples in reclining half pigeon. Yep, that happens on a somewhat regular basis. And, you know what, I embrace it as my release and my body’s way of sending self-kindness with the message slow it down.

Here’s the thing: it’s hard to slow down without feeling like I’ve dropped the ball. I don’t sleep in on weekends or go spend an afternoon at the museum because I feel like I am wasting precious time when I could be devising a new recipe for my blog or working on a new killer ab sequence for an upcoming yoga class. And I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. In fact, I’d say the majority of my peers share my fear of losing momentum or missing an opportunity to advance our careers or beings. We’re all driven, ambitious, and slightly insane.

While goals and dreams take hard work, long hours, and persistence in the face of adversity, I know I will not succeed if I don’t give myself a break from time to time. Burn out is no joke kids. And news flash, not one of us is invincible. The key is to know where your edge is and cut back before you’re tumbling ass backwards into a total breakdown. Been there, done that and it ain’t pretty. As it turns out I’m an ugly crier…

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So before you end up a hot mess, here’s my prescription: take a bubble bath. Seriously, if you haven’t taken one in a while they’re mind-blowing. Or do whatever it is that will make you slow it down for at least one hour once a week. The key is to unplug and unwind. I like taking an Epsom salt bath because it forces me to put down my cell and computer (water & technology don’t mix), while simultaneously giving my weary muscles a rare chance to rest and recoup. For you it might mean slowly sipping a beer while sitting on your front stoop people watching. Or, maybe you go for a run or a long bike ride. Whatever it is, let me make a suggestion: no technology. Technology takes us out of the present moment, inhibits our awareness, and distracts us from listening to what our body and mind truly need.

We all need to recharge our batteries from time to time. Believe me, we’ll be better as a human race if we work to eliminate some of the stress and chaos that gets us all wound so tight. And I’m telling you, here and now, it’s okay to drop the ball. Because guess what? You will pick it right back up, just with renewed energy and resolve that only comes from sending yourself a little loving kindness.