Today’s blog post is a repost from 3.28.2020.
The post can also be read, along with the other March 2020 posts, in the ebook: Something More. Connecting to the Pulse of a Shared Humanity.
I am currently editing Something More. You can access a rough copy of the ebook below. Save it to Kindle, Apple books, or as a pdf.
My content has grown.
Today is the final day of the 8-week content share on Sally & Sifer FB page. The share was a fusion of checkIN: 8 steps to more creativity, possibility, and inspiration, and The Story I Tell: How to make the Age of Disruption work for you. You can access it beginning on a 1.24.22 post at Sally & Sifer FB page. You can also join the next 8-week share beginning 4.4.22.
Here is the 3.28.20 repost:
I went to my first yoga class at a 24- hour fitness studio. Ellen. She was the teacher. Not that Ellen. Another Ellen. She had full classes on Sunday mornings. Thinking back, I’m surprised I kept going. I didn’t know anything about yoga. It was a Vinyasa class. Fortunately, the flow was somewhat similar each week.
I did not like yoga. I wanted to like yoga. Some weeks were better than others. Some classes I would want to leave within the first twenty minutes. I didn’t consider myself an inpatient person at the time, but the flow was not happening.
There was something about yoga. I wanted to not just like it, I wanted to love it. I wanted to look forward to attending class. I wanted to love it the same as I loved running. The concept of movement and breath made sense to me. I realize that sounds stupid, like ‘duh’ – movement and breath makes sense to most people. Again with the something more…there was something more about yoga.
When I moved up to the mountains the summer after I had turned forty, I was certain that this was going to be the summer I found my flow. I signed up for Hot Yoga. I went one or two times a week. Classes were long. Classes were hot. No flow.
It wasn’t just the physical flow of yoga that was difficult. It was the other people. People were too close. There were smells. There were sounds…breathing sounds, sighs that I’d notice and obsess about. And then there was the balance, or the new pose, the depth and the long holds that would burn my thighs. This was not the experience of yoga that I imagined.
Unfamiliar instructors, not knowing how to use props, not wanting to see myself in the mirror, the sanskrit terms, the heat. Yuck. I remember thinking that yoga must have been hard because I was so tall. A friend called me out on that one. ‘Really?’
When I made my way back down to Denver, I joined Kindness Yoga for the first of at least three times before I finally found my flow. I would basically donate to the studio until I would finally freeze my membership. And then do it again. Each time with hope that this time would be THE time.
The amount of personal growth ‘input’ I was paying attention to was huge. Books, blogs, YouTube videos, emails with links to meditations and life coaching programs. This started about eight years ago, and the availability of free content has only continued to grow. I was a sponge. I was taking it all in, and then I would tell people about it. I sounded like a book. I wasn’t integrating the new knowledge into my experience. I suppose that’s all part of the process of growth and positive, sustainable change.
At some point I realized that the tight grip I held on to for certain outcomes I wanted for myself, needed to be let go of. Most, if not all, of the personal growth content I was attracted to included the concept of allowing. The experience of allowing is basically the opposite experience of the ‘tight grip’.
I let go of the tight grip of ‘have to’ with not only this idea of yoga – and this isn’t about yoga and the practice of yoga being so life transforming, it’s about letting go of the tight grip. Letting go of all the rules and the ‘have to’s’ or ‘need to’s’ I was placing around ‘happiness’ and wellbeing.
I let go of the tight grip. When I would think of yoga and feel the resistance, I let go of the resistance by intentionally accessing the feeling state I had had with running – the desirable state. I would call this a feeling of positive expectancy – anticipating something ‘good’. I accessed the feeling and imagined myself matching the ‘frequency’ of the experience of what I wanted the desired outcome to be – eager anticipation of attending yoga class. I started doing this with everything that I had resistance, or negative (closed) responses to (money, work, body image, blog/writing, course creation, etc).
In the current situation of physical isolation, I find myself naturally shifting without much efforting – the same way I used to shift into negative, I now shift toward positive – the way it will feel to return to familiar routines…a giddy feeling, a ‘yay’.
If this sounds a bit too folksy, it’s simply the opposite of getting stuck in the negative thinking patterns (ie. hallmark of depression…which was what I cycled through for decades). It’s all energy. Our thoughts have an energetic frequency…a current…a vibration. Waves transmitting. Do you wonder how you connect to all the ‘mediums’ channeling content? A particular channel of energy is transmitted and then received at its matching frequency.
When you find yourself missing, or ‘longing’ for a return to more familiar and stable routines, see if you can catch the feeling of what it will be like when you do return. Stick with simple things – like a fun group, or uplifting atmosphere that isn’t available to you now. Access the energetic state of what you are missing, as if it is happening in real time. Now.
Wellbeing is not the absence of illness. Wellbeing is a state. A state of balance. In a balanced state is where you access the whole of who you are. That’s where you get creative – you create….new visions, new ideas, new outcomes, fun possibilities.
This is all difficult to explain. It’s the noticing and manipulating the experience of the inside world. I am attempting to interpret and share what I have found to get lasting, sustainable results. It works.
Self-Care. Care about yourself enough to notice limiting patterns. Practice skills, tools, and strategies to disrupt the limiting pattern and create new desirable outcomes. Match the state of what you desire. Intentionally create a state of Positive Expectancy. See what happens.
day. 