02/12/2022
My practice is changing again. It’s been a hard thing for me to admit lately, and this time feels harder than my last transition. More often than not, this is what my yoga practice looks like. Stillness, quiet, grounding. I find myself struggling to find creativity in movement— stressed when it doesn’t come naturally like it used to, grieving an identity I once clung to, mourning that I no longer resemble who I thought I was.
So in a surrender of mental fatigue, I simply crumble to the floor and lay there. Not trying to do or be anything. Just feeling each breath as it pushes itself away from the floor and returns back down. Sometimes it feels like my breath is it’s own living entity. As if each time my belly expands, it’s trying to escape, held captive by the confines of body. It’s telling me I’m too rigid— that it can’t easily move through me as it once did. And so I lay there. Listening to the conversation between my body and my breath, willing them to dance together effortlessly as they used to.
This transition of life has been overwhelming. A beautiful expansion of knowledge and growth that has left me simultaneously depleted and grateful. I am grateful for this new purpose my life has been given, but it is in these moments where I lay in stillness that I admit I am terrified. I am afraid of failing and not being good enough to help others. I am scared of unintentionally making someone worse than better. And most of all, I am terrified of being alone.
So these days, my practice is this. Accepting and allowing. Returning to those 2 lessons I have long forgotten. Laying on the floor and simply being a vessel for my breath and my organs. Those are truly what life means. I am nothing without them. I am nothing— And I am everything. I am the amazing, fit woman I see in pictures 7 years ago. And I am the amazing, exhausted, out-out-of-shape woman I am today. I am the same. I am not two women, but many facets of one. I am still learning to love that. But like the body, change and acceptance can’t be rushed. They must be savored and experienced, even when they are not what you would have chosen. But after, comes peace.
So for now, I will be still and just wait.