Day 2 - Flexibility, Acceptance & Perseverance

So I didn't quite make it to Yoga on Saturday. At first I was upset a the realization that my schedule was not going to permit me to allot the 2.5 hours that were needed. Life is about balance and doing justice to our priorities - on saturday it was my best friends engagement meet and greet as well as my startups first charity giveway.  Both are exciting, exhilarating and oh so important!

I made peace with what appeared to be a failure on my part as far as time managment at first, and realized that in order to be successful at any goal you need to be flexible. You need to acknowledge where you are, accept it and progress from there. Life happens and circumstances happen, so long as you keep your eyes on the approaching horizon, you are making directional progress.  Perhaps not the time, day, month or even year in which you would like to get to that horizon, but you will get there. Perseverance is the name of the game.

We set our sights on these ideas and goals, achivements we would like to realize but we forget, the road to get there is often, unpredictable, winding and unknown to us.  It is precisely when venturing into this unknown, that you need to be flexible. Change can be difficult, and if no adjustments are made to the changing environment on your road of change, change can be painful.

Think of the oceans and the waves that bring the tide in and out again - life is meant to be lived with that ease.  Flow on, flow forward and be happy :)

And of course in theory this all makes sense, in practice it is what unlocks higher wisdom; fruits that come from laborious effort.


Love, love, love. <3

Day 1 - Sacrifice

So yesterday - was Day 1.  I was scheduled for you know the 6:30am 1.5 hour yoga class following a late Thursday night - BAD IDEA.

I had to be honest with myself in realizing, that a hangover and 1.5 hours of 105 degree heat was a recipe for disaster.  Mental discipline is a combination of being honest with yourself and knowing when your mind is just making excuses and let me tell you, that mind can be so damn convincing!  I felt fear tug me back while embarking upon this 60 day journey.  But what I realized, or rather remembered, you truly have to take it one day at a time, one moment at a time, you can't try to do it all at once. I can't take all 60 classes once! So one day, one class, one moment at a time...

I took the 6:30pm instead. I got there, I was ready, and boy did I sweat.  The point is that I made it, I had arrived, this wasn't going to be a just another commitment I blew off - I am tired of being unable to look at myself in the mirror stuck in a cycle of fear and shame. I am committed to the idea of bettering myself mentally, physically, and spiritually and I believe yoga will get me there.

As I sweltered in the heat, I was aware, or rather my mind made me fully aware of the fact that I couldn't do alot of the things I used to be able to do, that I was tight, tired, and out of sorts early on in class, but I was thankful for being there. Just showing up, is the least I could do, and I was there, attempting, making an effort, and fulfilling a commitment to myself.  I was slowly chiseling away at the sedentary block I have become, sedentary in so may ways, in ways that I cannot afford when going after my dreams.

I am sore today - and ecstatic that I am! In order to go after something important to you, you need to make room in your life...room because it matters, its a priority.  I had to create room yesterday based on my schedule with work, the business, and seeing friends, and I will do that today and so on.  In order to persevere, you must SACRIFICE.

There's always a guiding LIGHT!

It's time I exfoliate old habits and declutter this mind of mine. 

Rather than wallow in inability to take definitive action, I want to at least begin a journey that has been calling me time and again.  It is a single life line that has kept me grounded - FAITH.  Extended to me from the unknown, only to lead me back to it.

Starting tomorrow, I will commence a 60 day challenge of yoga practice for 1.5 hours everyday. I need these disciplined practice to do an inner and outter cleanse: Spiritiually, Emotionally, Mentally and Physically. I want to work on disciplining my mind, and letting go of patterns of thinking, feeling (and a few pounds) that are no longer useful to me especially at a time that I aspire to be better and rise above.
Day 1 is tomorrow and I can hardly wait. I promise to post each day a new revelation whilst on my road of self discovery. 

:) "who turned the lights on??" 

Universal Support & Faith

It’s funny after I wrote the entry about my three key words I intend to focus on, I started to hear them around me, people saying them during the activities I decided to pursue. "Mental discipline" and "Agility" and "Focus", all at various points of the day, the week,  and activity…

“Tina, Focus!” My yoga teacher says, as my gaze waivered during the second repetition of our posture, I knew where to gaze but my mind had just run away with itself…

In a boot camp I am grouped with the instructor and 2 other larger men to pass around a 20lb weight ball which for the petite woman I am, no small a feat…”Agility!” He says…

Another class, another instructor he puts us through the ringer of physical torment “Mental discipline! Its beyond physical” He says….

And each time I smiled knowing I was supported, and am supported so long as I stay dedicated to my cause, my cause being to better myself:)

Somehow, that support comes in moments when you feel like there is no one but you, yourself supporting you, hoisting you up, you are the poll, you are the flag, and the person you hoists the flag up to sway freely in the days wind…thought it is often exhausting as you fight against the grain, the negativity of your mind, the disbelief of others, circumstance. You fight to stay positive to keep your head above the water, gasping for air for fear that you might drown…but drown you will not! These are all the tests on the adventure you have embarked upon toward self discovery…

You must be constant, constant in your faith, your faith in yourself, in the goodness of others, and above all that universe is taking care of you – it always has, and always will

FAITH

Before you can achieve, before you can "do", before you can walk upon the path to success, you must have conviction, you must have faith that “I CAN”…too often do we succumb to our own negativity and own fears, and more often than that do we not listen to our voice, the voice of reason – our instincts

And in the end, all can be healed the heart, no matter what happens along our little journey :)

When I graduated from Yoga Teacher training, my teacher selected by “chance” the very sutra I chose to present:

Yoga Sutra 1.20: Sraddhaviryasmrtisamadhiprajna purvaka itaresam

“Trough faith, which will give sufficient energy to achieve success against all odds, direction will be maintained”

"Showing up" & Inter-connectivity

"Showing up"….

I’m here I’m doing this….I have showed up, they always say that just "showing up" is often the hardest thing to do.  I am scared, afraid…worried that I will fail but I am here thinking about trying rather than denying myself of the opportunity or rather the right I have to take that chance I owe myself to write…that is to be a writ ERrr

Life seems to surprise me, just when when I am ready to run away or call my bluff or be the coward that I want to be because its so much easier to collapse and whither away…somehow I escape from the cage my mind tries to build itself…

I am living I am truly living at this moment addressing my fears head on….or attempting to make that effort to unravel and face them full on…

Inter-connectivity

Today I heard a new yoga teacher teach her first class.  I say heard intentionally here, as she reminded me of something or rather validated a theory that I have known in my heart to be true (therefore the validation was for my mind rather than the intuitive knowingness of my heart), that once heard echoed aloud by another gave it all the validation I needed…that YES someone too thinks the way I do…

She talked about whether the small changes we make in our lives matter or impact not only us but others around us.  What good is it really if we make these changes if we don’t see the result or the good it does its effect…We sort of make changes like recycling verses being wasterful or cycling verses driving…but are we really making an impact, will this really make a difference?

And she said yes, the answer is yes! Her assuredness in the way she said yes struck me, or rather struck a chord, the tone of that yes was somewhere between knowing and not knowing but it was on its way to somewhere new, somehwere higher, an elevated place of thinking and feeling and doing…

I never thought about it, I never thought about truly the impact of my actions on others.  I understand direct impact like not hurting someone with my words but the indirect impact, the indirect impact of my actions… I have contemplated it but not wound up at a conclusion because of the very nature of the question, the impact the conclusion itself was just so indirect from me...

And the conclusion is yes! There is an impact of everything, we are interconnected! I have heard this idea proposed in the movie Before sunrise directed by Richard Linklater…each action has a rippling effect, like the rock that breaks a still waters surface, like the smile you smile at someone and they smiles at another and so on...

I think the air we breathe is a symbol of this, we are all on the same earth….I think about for example in my own life, the change of one thought can change the slope of the line of one’s whole life, the pace at which they move, the direction and ultimately where they wind up. And well if I could help another change the slope of their line then we are changed togther and thats two and if we all collectively changed together, the impact of our change is much larger…we are truly just drops part of the same ocean underneath it all becoming apart of a wave of change, the ocean, the river will flow different if we create a new current!  I look at whats happening with the riots in europe the middle east, the UK and now our own shores in New York. And while Occupy Wall Street may still be formulating and refining what it is that they hope to achieve, the point is they have shown up, and it started with just 1 rippling many into action.

One of the most important visionarys of our time Steve Jobs captured the power behind one individual in this quote  "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world… Are the ones who do." I mean Steve did it!  It starts with one and then two and then...He revolutionized computing, its accessibility and created a subculture of Apple users, he created a community.

While playing soccer I watched a group of people playing Quiddictch (the outdoor game played in Harry Potter using broom sticks), and I watched these people in awe and a slight air of ridicule as we all did on that soccer field.  But in the few moments of clarity I did have in between my juding, I thought - so this is is how change occurs, someone dares to be different and it seems to catch on...like fire! 

I mean look at the effect of a single yoga teacher's quotes on me, which has lead me to contemplate and write this piece, which you are now reading and may spark you to speak, think or do...

I wonder when I will consider myself wise enough to be the yoga teacher and writer I am within.  But I can say this for now, I am working at it. I have mustered up the courage, the courage that fuels me forward to dare to endeavor to go after something I truly want and while I may possibly experiece the pangs of failure -but oh the taste of triumph…now that is something fighting for!!

Bed bugs & Excess Baggage

(Written on September 3rd...up until now I was too scared, too ashamed to publish...soo much for that! *poof*)

I am sort of in the middle of this idea, again an idea that’s been introduced by you know the elders that I am trying to try on for size to see if it makes sense you know.

For starters the lights have been turned on and I’ve realized I’ve been the one who’s in the dark…imagine that..me the introspective "so in touch with myself"..self.

Its hard or rather its, I’m finding this difficult.  Really looking at myself and figuring this out. So I’ve had bed bugs, yes the age old “city” problem and its forced me to examine quite a bit aside from clothes and the apartment and where they f’ing came from:  My mind, the power of my thinking that is to say my perspective and most of all my attachment to my worldly possessions I’ve come to hoard over my financially prosperous years.

I have, or rather…currently, in the present at this very moment, I take things for granted! Surprise, surprise..I thought I was this virtuous, saint who was not used to a certain kind of cushy lifestyle.  And yes while I was the one who affordeds myself with this lifestyle, I suppose the ease with which I was able to do so, I somwhere along the way started to just take it all for granted, as an expectation, rather than a privilege or something to be gratuitous for…

This is just a minor revelation of the major ones that I’m sure are to follow from my shattering cushy world I have designed.  Yes, yes I see the cosmic reason for all this, yadda yadda…It seems I descended down to the material plane of life and became very very comfortable…

“See what happens when you stop paying attention for a bit?”

What amazes me is the level of my attachment to my physical appearance, to the textiles and metals with which I adorn myself with…and truly adorn myself.  I’ve come to worship myself, become full of myself…

The remedy to this vanity that I’ve been lugging around that has manifested itself into “stuff” that I “deserve”…INTROSPECTION plenty plenty kind of it like water ;)

The Road to Spring - Change

Life comes at you in peaks and troughs...I have had one BIG trough with my writing. The confidence seems to come and go. But when I read my works in progress, I have faith. I see things and themes, and phrases and colors in them I never saw before.

My latest regiment has been to be
Agile
Focused
Disciplined.

These are the key characteristics I need to accomplish anything meaningful. I am simply strengthening these weakened mental muscles of mine.

As I declutter my life both internally and externally this is my mantra.  I found that I would create these impossible workout regiments (for that matter, anything I loved, I would make it impossible to accomplish) and with the changes that come with say breathing or living or life's general circumstantial unpredictability my schedule would be upset because I was not agile and therefore I lost focus. You see discipline only took me so far...so these are the 3 things I am zeroing in on at the moment, the building blocks of my self.

I have been writing on and off these past months since May, my last entry. I plan to put together another mosaic so please be on the look out! The fall is here, and I too mimic this seasons happenings...life remains but all things unecessary or unsustainable whither away, as they should, as is life...the process of moving forward and making way for spring!

:)