If you've taken a yoga class, you've probably heard the instructor talk about finding your center. You may know what that means, you may not. It's kind of one of those things that they can talk and talk and talk about, but you won't get it until that first time you experience it. Finding center to me is the first time you feel your breath travel all the way down your spine and then back up; when you're focus is on you and no one else in the room; the time you come into tree pose and your balance is perfect and the pose is effortless; the calm, the ease, the love. I've learned to love my center in my yoga practice and have also come to love helping others find theirs as a teacher.
Oddly enough, I've spent the last year attempting to find center in my life. Like an enormous pendulum, I've been swinging from one extreme to the other: spending money like a fiend and then realizing there's none left; binging on food and then not wanting to eat anything for days; eating candy until I want to puke and then abstaining for a month; sleeping with anyone with legs and then donning my chastity belt for a month. Healing, healing, healing, working on myself, working on myself, working on myself, resting, resting...resting......please, just let me sleep.
I spent so many years letting my self go and living someone else's life that I spent a big chunk of 2013 splurging on myself and giving myself anything I wanted. In turn, I've spent a big chunk of 2014 denying myself many of those pleasures so that I could pay my bills and my debt from 2013. I worked for so long in corporate America that I refused for a long time to have anything to do with anything that even remotely resembled working for a corporation. I avoided teaching in yoga studios, because it meant that someone else would have control over my teaching, only to guide meditations in a small, locally owned business that encouraged me not to use terms in my meditations that would trigger the masses.
As I discussed in a previous post, I have had a bad habit of making myself super busy that I'm still working on breaking. Over the last year, I did the same thing, but it was with things that I wanted to do. Someone would tell me about something that sounded interesting, I would get excited about it, and I would add it to my calendar. Suddenly, reminders would start popping up to go to a yoga class at the same time I was supposed to be meeting my best friend for lunch, or I would be scheduled to work a job that was exciting to me on the same day I wanted to be in a tent near a waterfall. It's amazing how easy that is to do!
Suddenly, I remembered that I could say no, even to things I wanted to do. I made sure that I had gaps in my calendar so that I wasn't rushing from one thing to another. I made sure I had a day off to relax, even if it meant saying no to watching my adorable nephew. I made sure I had at least one day in my week that I could wake up and do whatever I wanted to do. I'm finding more and more odds and ends ways to make money where I earn a little closer to what I'm worth. I'm swinging a little lower every time, not going as far to the extremes, coming a little closer to center with each swing. It feels good. Life is feeling good - consistently good - not the extremes like before. I'm finding my center, and I know that I'll be there soon. I hope you are, too!
Much love,
Emily Rose
No comments:
Post a Comment