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balance, coping, healing, inspiration, joy, love, self awareness, self expression
As I started to feel the pressure of publishing- the edits, the interviews, the press, I started looking for some inner balance. That’s what I do when I panic. I search for help. Intuitively a friend bought me a couple books on raw eating, which I happily devoured, and without thinking I fell back into my practice.
Yoga has been with me and inside me my entire life though I have practiced on and off over the years. From the very first moment I saw the mysterious little orange booklet in the checkout aisle at the grocery store I knew I had to have it.
At first glance the otherworldly figure on the cover sat peacefully in lotus with hands at the prayer position. For me it was as if the yogi’s hands were motioning to me. “Grab this book and never let go,” was what I heard. I started when I was only 5, but I spent the next couple years staring at that little book, desperately trying to stand on my head and twist my body to look like the illustrations. It was a godsend for a lonely child with countless hours on their hands. I became lost in my peaceful practice.
Now after all these years I have found a practice that brings back the wonder I felt when I was a child. Fresh. Focused. New. Alive. My favorite part is when the instructor reminds to simply sit and receive. Receive. Accept it all. The overwhelming love I feel spilling out like a fountain. The fear that rattles my core. The delight that crashes like waves. The pain like a noose around my neck. The words I’d like to take back. The tender moments I never want to forget and on and on and on. Whatever messages are coming through. Receive. It felt like an epiphany the first time I heard it.
Even my meditation felt like more like quieting my mind, rather than opening my mind. Like a librarian telling a chatty student to “Shhhhh!” complete with finger tightly pressed to an exhaling mouth. My practice now feels like I am becoming a more beautiful part of the universe. Connected. Strong. Fierce. Whole.
Another step on the journey. Another awareness of love and comfort.
While reading your post I was listening to Jimmy Buffett’s “Bring Back the Magic” while importing vinyl albums into my Mac for export to CD and iTunes (the former for me and the latter for a friend’s music project cataloging and getting all the US songs from the 1970′s and 1980′s into iTunes for your music production). But that said, I’ve always had a hard time doing yoga or meditation, but did some of the latter listening to Indian Ragas and practicing Taoism, which has similar ways.
The first is when you’re out and about, or anywhere really, to open all your sense without filters. Let it all come in and don’t make think or try to make sense of it, but just absorb. The second is to empty. Similar to Yoga and Zen Buddhism, during meditation you focus completely on your breathing where everything else disappears and then that disaappears where you are totally empty.
But more so I get it from running, walking or hiking, just focusing on the body moving in the world around you. Don’t think or even react, just move and let the world happen, quietly absorbing all of it for the moment, and then the next. It’s always amazing how much letting go and abosrbing so much restores and renews the mind and body.
These are the times that help me find an answer to a question, find a soltuion to a problem, get through an emotion, or find a new idea without thinking about it. It appears as everything else where the heart and mind agree without anything being said (within yourself) and you know it’s right without knowing why. It just is as you just are, as you note, whole.
I always found the right Indian Raga was amazing. Just sitting and listening, and then you’re aware it’s over and you don’t remember anything except feeling totally rested. Somewhere in 7 boxes of records are those Ragas.