Tag Archives: yoga

I shall be released

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Did I have a breakthrough at a yoga retreat? Maybe. Did I have an epiphany at a yoga retreat? Perhaps. Did I have a release from heavy thoughts and negative vibrations and deeply angry feelings and sad emotions that I’ve been holding onto and suffering with for the past five years at a yoga retreat? Yes. Yes I did.

The last day of the retreat I stood in the warm sun, in a big open field where they have outdoor weddings, in a valley of the mountains of south western Pennsylvania under a reclaimed wood arch and I did sun salutations, Surya Namaskar A, if I’m being specific, and I played the live version of RELEASE by Pearl Jam over and over, while I moved and flowed, and I didn’t stop until I felt like it worked…and I got free…will it last? I have no idea. I don’t care, but it made me feel better than I have felt in a long time…Open your mind, reset your nervous system, breathe mindfully and deeply, and move your body with intention and strength…all of those things were part of the retreat I attended. I drove hours from home with very little certainty as to what the next four days were going to bring me, but I drove with the belief that I HAD to get myself rebooted…And I did. I rebooted. When your computer or your phone stops working efficiently or correctly, sometimes you just have to unplug it and let it start over, and it turns out you might have to do that to yourself sometimes.

The summer of 2021 was the saddest summer of my life, and it ended with heartache and disappointment that is nearly impossible now, looking back, for me to comprehend…and circumstances were what they were later in that autumn of 2021 that my healing paused at that time, the healing came to a grinding halt that October, after the summer that must not be named, and I got into a habit loop of sadness and anger, just a cycle of “ick” if I’m being honest…Forgive and Forget they say, Move On they suggest, Let It Go they encourage…but when bad things happen to you, or to someone close to you and you are thusly negatively impacted, and you do not process your feelings about any of it, and just keep quashing them down and not addressing them, what builds up inside of you is poison and it eats you alive…and so for the last five years I have been sad and mad and I felt like I had enough of that, and so I committed myself to some healing, some resetting, and some restoring, and I believe that it was successful…I left western Pennsylvania after four full days of yoga, breathwork, meditation, aromatherapy, friendship, conversation, woods walks, and laughter, and my conclusion as I got back in my truck was this; holding onto those feelings of anger and sadness were doing me no good. They were just recirculating mad and bad emotions season after season and keeping me from feeling like my true self. I have been working for quite some time to become a better version of myself and she can’t BE better if she does not THINK better…these were my conclusions.

I have been so disappointed by so many things, and so many people, over the last 42 years of my adult life that to think of going into my last chapters of aliveness, feeling dragged down by my negative emotions, was overwhelming me. I had been saying it and writing it for months and months, that I was tired of being mad and sad…like hitting my thumb with a hammer over and over and over…JUST STOP DOING THAT. I am nearing 60 and that feels like very much the start of the last quarter of my life, and I am not interested in any more wrinkles of angst in my forehead. I want more smile lines, more laugh creases, more positive parts of this vessel…and it had to start with my mind…free your mind and the rest will follow…how you gonna win if you ain’t right within…Live your life with arms wide open today is where your book begins…there are so many lyrics that guide us to ENLIGHTEN ourselves, we know all the words, we know that for things to change WE HAVE TO CHANGE.

Have I been making changes of some sort or another for the last 41ish years? Yes, Yes I have. Do I feel like a total loser that I keep having to reevaluate and reboot myself???? Sure, sometimes, but that kind of “beating yourself up” talk does no good…WHAT DID ME GOOD was the sweat starting to glisten on my arms, as the afternoon sun beat down on my skin, with the gentle buzzing in my ears of hundreds of bees in the goldenrod and wild aster surrounding me, my fingers gripping in the grass and clover with each Chaturanga, hearing Eddie sing “release me” over and over…it might be too hippy-dippy-acid-trippy for you to understand what happened to me, what I did for myself last week, and that’s okay…nobody needs to know if or how it worked, I just feel like it did, and for that I am glad, and really isn’t that always better than mad and sad, even if just for a while???

Kick A Stick

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When you are enjoying a walk, maybe on a forest path, and a log or limb or branch is in your way, you step or jump over it, or maybe walk or run around it & if it’s only a stick, you might just kick it aside as you pass by. I’ve had such clear images lately of myself and my path, and the sticks and branches, limbs and logs, that have been in my way specifically over the last couple years but perhaps really for all of my adult life, and I’ve seen myself smoothly and seamlessly navigating my path forward. Sometimes when I was very strong, or much younger, or simply exceptionally determined for a particular point in time, I could hurdle with ease over the biggest hazards, and my pace never slowed, but I have felt, if I’m being honest, (AND there is no point in NOT being honest, in a blog no less,) much weaker and far less determined these last months, and feeling a bit like trees and obstacles are just piling up in front of me and I don’t like that feeling, of feeling trapped, and the more I think about it the worse I feel. AND I definitely don’t like that!

This morning at yoga our teacher was guiding us in a meditation before we began to move; “may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, and may I be free from suffering” it sounds much lovelier in sanskrit, and when it is sung, but for me this morning on my mat it was just the words going in and out of my brain when I had one of those stop in my tracks moments. Suffering at this moment is simply self inflicted negative thoughts. Suffering at this moment for me is just sticks, branches, limbs, and logs that I have to kick or skip over because there is nothing “bad” or “wrong” or worth suffering over, for real, in my life at this time, but MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS, NOT THE THINGS THEMSELVES ARE THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING. Yogi Kevin might read this and think, “well duh?!” but for me in a split second I felt 100 times better than I had been feeling for months. It’s very easy to get in a rut of negative self talk and negative thinking and that heaviness I had been feeling for a while just “poof” disappeared. I know it may not last, but then again, maybe it will.

I know people who have had far more difficult experiences in life than I have. I know people who have had true suffering, whose paths have been rocky with sickness, divorce, death, financial ruin, physical and mental health challenges, abuse, addiction, fraud, failure, and losses and pains of all kinds…real ones, not *checks her notes* made up in your own head kind of pains. I feel like even the strongest of us will stumble and trip and get jammed up on our paths when there is perpetual suffering but for somebody like me, for the most part, the suffering is not real, it’s all in my head. It’s like imaginary trees and logs and branches on an otherwise smooth journey. It got me thinking all day today ABOUT WHY I SOMETIMES DWELL ON THE STUMBLES AND STICKS and not just gaze delightedly and gratefully at the clear path ahead. I mean seriously, how lucky??!!

That expression, ‘for the most part,’ is funny but effective because it’s true if nothing else. My life is pretty great for the most part. Period. That can end the sentence and the expression. Why am I, for quite some time now, too long, WAY too long, still thinking about the rough roads when, for the most part, my travels have been rather clear?? I suppose a person far more educated than I would suggest it is a form of self sabotage and she, or maybe he, would probably be right. BUT WHY? Why do it? Why hurt your own self with your own brain and the words you let in it?

I have no answers today & I guess as per usual I am just thinking out loud, through my fingers, on my keyboard. My conclusion, if it were, is that the obstacles, the sticks in my path, the sufferings, are, for the most part, all in my mind. Not figuratively as an expression, literally all in my mind. My thoughts about things are more troublesome than the things themselves. Period. “Kick a Stick” is what I have been thinking all morning. If like me your mind is getting jammed up with obstacles and barriers and negative-Nelly kinds of thoughts, just kick a stick! AND like yogi Kevin sometimes sings to us “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” which means may all beings be happy and free from suffering. I wonder how to say “kick a stick” in sanskrit?