Today’s article was written by Change Coach Alex Linares
Today I managed to make it to hot yoga despite all my mind’s protest regarding all the other things I should do.
The last few weeks at work have been testing my ability to remember this understanding, the universe asking like a toddler: how grounded are you when I do this? Drop this? Say this? Take this away? You know those weeks…
Once I got in there, it was one of those sessions where nothing hurt and I didn’t even have the energy to overdo it so it felt like a nice, slow dance in a 100 F degree room.
At the end when we settled for the breathing exercise I realized something. It was so simple and obvious it couldn’t be ignored.
In that moment as I inhaled the warm air the soft animal of my body (as Mary Oliver would say) just existed for a few moments not as me but as life… not only did my lungs know exactly how much air to breathe in and when to stop…this room, this world, this planet, contains readily available, as air, the chemicals that feed every cell in this body.
The ground made of infinitesimal particles and then mostly empty space appears rigid enough to hold the quantum collapsed particles I call “me” so I don’t fall through to the other side of the earth.
The moon perfectly orchestrating the tides so the beach and the surge remain 4 miles away somewhat reliably (I do live in Florida so +\-).
For what seemed like an eternity but was probably an inhale and exhale long there were no problems. There was nothing separate from anything and therefore nothing came before or after. Because isn’t that the premise of ALL problems? A before and an after, a me vs. that.
There was no hero.
There was no journey.
And then the wave of thought and memory crashed on me and I was there again looking at my watch during Savasana so I could rush out and drive home (I can’t even relax in corpse pose, go figure).
But this one thing I can’t shake even if I wanted to: something deep in me has no doubt of what it is.
And instead of seeking it, I am just glad it beckons and it whispers in unexpected ways. It seems as the more chairs I pull up to the table of being fully human: jealousy, anger, regret, shame…the more room there is for this inexplicable joy.
Because joy can be as terrifying as misery when we believe ourselves to be the cause, effect, or stewards of our experience.
So I’ll keep making room and see who shows up.
“Everything in the natural world knows how to be itself” -Boyd Varty
See more about Alex here: https://canaimacoaching.com
