aligning

Sometimes I am so precious about blogging, like everything has to be some kind of masterwork before i can post it. This one is not, it is very much about me, in process.

The last few weeks, or years, or lifetimes, i don't know yet, i have been caught in what feels like a whirlpool of thinking. that every time i sit to meditate, or go about my own life, these thoughts become so haunting, that i start to feel debilitated. I feel like I know what I should be doing, but instead get caught in patterns of self destruction, patterns of negative thought, patterns of over thinking. and what it feels like is a shadow of me flying in circles in my head, while another little me is hiding in the bottom of the closet.

I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. Not eliminate, but not live in this pattern. What I am slowly recognizing is that I have to learn how to love. Love all of it, fully and with the greatest compassion. Love the hiding girl and her voice of fear. Love the flying witch and her insane mutteringsings, love the driven Sagittarian/Capricorn and the double sided Gemini. I don't even fully know what it means to love all these bits. But I know that that love represents coming into wholeness and growing up, and then having the beautiful life that I want.

It's difficult to say these things publicly. Really difficult. They feel big, and right away i can hear the mind chattering saying, how dare you write that. What if people...
But that is part of it. Accepting my vulnerability, and letting you see it too.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about aligning.

The other day I was sitting at the beginning of a class, with my teacher Ana Forrest, when one of her assistants came and moved my body backwards in the simple sitting (meditative) pose. Ana's comment to me was, "What would it feel like to get your head in alignment with your power?". I suppose this echos something I have been told before, "you act with your head pointing." I think this means the same thing, that the head goes forward, sometimes too the chest and upper body into an ungrounded and over directed, unaligned place.

So I have been doing lots of abdominal work, a la Ana Forrest. I have been also chanting Har. Building the power in the navel centre for that energy to make change. But more than that, I am also learning the role and perhaps art of mental containment.

In yoga it is sort of obvious, a stage of the practice where the mind comes up with all kinds of reasons that you cannot hold this pose anymore, or you really need to repaint your fingernails instead of going to the mat or all kinds of stories that we put in front of actually doing. The class is too early, the class is too late, its too hot, its too crowded, i can't because this, that this that this that and the other. And then at some stage, or for a moment another part says, shhhhh. Go to the mat. Hold the pose, one more breath, just one.
which becomes two
which becomes another day when you woke up extra early
then another week
which becomes the practice.

For me, it goes in waves. There are moments when I feel so clearly and strongly the hushing presence. And there are other times when the mind wanders so completely on its own. And in those wanderings sometimes I forget that it is the other voice, the shhhh voice, the parent voice in the head, that must not hush the mind entirely, but look at it with the greatest love and say, no dear, you cannot have cake for dinner. no dear, you do have to go to school.

I feel like I have confused loving with a kind of self indulgence, really wallowing, that allowed sloppy thoughts, unfinished projects and self sabotage to become a habit.

This month I am working on forearm balances, in my practice and in my teaching. It is showing me many things -
the steadiness of practice needed to build up enough strength to improve
the steadiness of thought needed to maintain balance when it wavers,
the integrity of the body and mind needed to hold my sometimes floppy body as one unit
the sheer enjoyment of the challenge and how joyful it can be to grow.

So i am sitting with the intention of bringing my head heart and navel in line, the mind, the guiding heart and the power to work as one.
Here I am, work in progress.

We close the practice with three times Om to come into Harmony with each other, with all beings and with our own true nature which is divine.

Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Peace and that Greatest Love, ever expansive and also containing.