Limitations

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable." 

(Helen Keller) 

Limitations. I've had my share this week. Or at the very least, my mind felt as if I was limited. You know how it is. With a sliced finger, a right shoulder issue (old injury), a strange lower abdomen pull (I blame it on the crazy platforms I wore last week), and would you believe, I stubbed my little left toe. Craziness. It's times like this when it feels absolutely wonderful to have a body, haha. 

Seriously though, at the beginning of the week I wasn't feeling great during my morning mat ritual. It's easy to slip into what's going wrong instead of what's going right. A reminder. Yoga practice is not a performance, but a dance of breath and movement. Healing synergy. When connecting breath and movement, adding nothing more, pretty cool things start to take shape. Our bodies melt like butter on bread with no added effort of our own. 

Yoga practice takes the entire body into a unified space. One reason why with injury we have no other option but to deal with the limitation. We don't work only one area of the body. Every cell, every part, come together completing the puzzle. Everything matters. Everything is connected. 

Once again, giving me the opportunity to feel my way through the practice versus just doing it. Everything opens, and all I had to do was shift my perspective.

Limitation into limitlessness.

Simply being open to the experience took me down a path of discovery - not sure what would even come of it. Forced to slow down, heightening my sensitivity. Lead into a intuitive space, no thinking, just feeling, breathing in each moment into the next. What I learned is the limitations were far from limiting, but an opportunity to expand into a broader perspective. To deepen. To unfold. To embrace whatever is here. Now.

In this space I experience the truth. I am more than this body that forever changes. I feel the greater energy that pervades every cell in the body, that pulsates through every being on the planet.  I am whole again, and anything is possible.

Tweaks

 I love Iceland!

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk."

(Doug Larson)

In the last couple days I've had the lovely gift of a tweaked back. The strange part is I'm able to do my practice with no problems. Almost as if I can bring mind over matter in a course of two hours or more. Then afterward, when my body cools down, the back doesn't feel so good. Not sure if it's the culmination of all the hiking coming into play or what. Guess it takes a while for it to settle in.

No matter. Life is full of tweaks. With a tweaked back, the lesson to be learned is in making an adjustment. Lately, I've had to address certain imbalances in my body and bring consciousness around them. With one leg slightly longer than the other, often I feel the imbalance in my sacrum. On side pinching. With that, I've had to find ways to lengthen through, and keep my right side more loose and fluid. Bringing in a sense of balance.

With various imbalances I can never take my vinyasa for granted. I must bring an extra amount mindfulness into the area of my low back with every upward facing dog. In the end, it a good thing, with tweaks I've learned an endless amount in regards to accessing a posture.

Ha! But for some reason I can't seem to get enough of hiking around Iceland. If anything the practice of yoga has allowed me commune with nature, and come to a place of vast inner appreciation of it. It's been awesome. Although, the beauty and energy of Iceland make it easy. Unspoiled. Pure. Geo-active. The list goes on, and the contrast of fire and ice has piqued my interest into the forces of nature. Definitely wasn't expecting this insight before I planned to come here. I welcome it.

Strain

As you free yourself from everything and everyone, every place and every time, every moment and every year, every planet and every star, you feel this incredible rush of ecstasy. In fact, you enter into another realm, an expanded realm, a realm of light, a realm of understanding. It is inside. Even though we feel it is an out-of-the-body experience, it is within this body. When you have this experience, you become award of how this body is not a barrier, not a obstacle. In this body, there is a ruby. Kabir describes his Beloved as a ruby, so brilliant, so beautiful. This ruby represents the Self within. This is why it is said, the wealth is inside. By detaching ourselves from everything and everyone, we get in touch with our own Self, and the Self within everybody and everything. This is called love. It is for this that you meditate. It is for this you live--to taste this beautiful life inside.

~Swami Chidvilasananda, also known as Grurumayi



Cool, damp, and deary has descended on Columbus...wonderful...yeah, I'm being sarcastic. Not one one of my better traits.

I reluctantly got up this morning to practice. I came pretty close to postponing the whole thing, however, I went ahead and went through with it. I've been feeling strange...and, my digestive system is out of wack. Ok, I won't go into detail. But, its true, when that area isn't functioning at top level it really can affect you...doing a number on me and my wellbeing. Yoga masters have always expressed the vast importance of it. Now I know why...

So, this knot in my back isn't a knot. It seems I've strained something back there...almost where the tip of my shoulder blade is. It hasn't prevented me from doing my practice, but I feel it nonetheless. I must have been in denial earlier because part of me knows why this stain came about. Ha! It came about through my quest for perfection in a posture...which is silly to begin with. Part of that lies with in me still after working through much of all that. Looks like there's a bit of it manifesting in my practice...well, it all starts with awareness. Its a good little red flag, because whenever my focus moves toward perfection, more times than not...I'm not having fun, or enjoying. I love the saying...Its about progress, not perfection...