I had a holistic epiphany during a particularly difficult Vinyasa Yoga class on Wednesday. Vinyasa is a completely new type of yoga for me and really challenges me in a way that I know will improve my normal hot or bikram yoga practices. This class was being taught by the most ridiculously talented instructor I have ever seen. The things Staci can do with her body are Cirque De Soliel quality...truly. Anyways, my life perspective was tweaked during triangle pose on a random wednesday thanks to this woman's expertise. She commented to me that because my backbends have gotten so deep lately, I am compensating by essentially collapsing my shoulders in alot of positions.
Over and over, people have told me "If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out". I have recently began to realize that you can be too flexible in yoga and in life if you ignore your body's subtle cues that tell you where your limits are. I have always been an odd combination of flexible and problematically stubborn so limits, deadlines, and structure have been constant enemies of mine. I went to a seminar yesterday on "mindfullness" as a healing practice. Mindfullness is a part of holistic healing that focuses on truly engaging in the moment. It's harder than it seems.
A quote that particularly resonated with me-
"Many people have learned to block out feelings, or never learned how to be aware of some, which means they often don't recognize an emotion in themselves until it's become extreme. This does not mean that one lacks emotional responses to things that can happen, just that one's emotions are mostly operating out of awareness and on autopilot."
It goes on to talk about how sometimes we do things either consciously or subconsciously to dull those emotions, so they tend to escalate. It makes sense, that we get addicted in a sense, to whatever type of person, substance, food, or situation we put ourselves into. These are my random ramblings of a busy mind, but sometimes putting things in writing makes them more clear. On my agenda for the week is preparing for a debate on psychoactive drugs, a research paper on meditation as a behavioral modification to manage stress disorders, preparing for a presentation on implications of head coverings for muslim women in france, a tab at the college delly with my volleyball team to celebrate winning moonball, my last meeting as an executive for Every 2 Minutes and of course, plenty of yoga!
My roomate Megan goes to yoga sometimes as well (Doug went once before he swore it off, and billy wants to go but he is too busy training to save lives as a military man) and made a comment one evening this week. "Oh, I think I'm going to go to yoga tomorrow." I enthusiastically said, "Oh, I'm going to go too!" and Billy and Doug laughed and said, "Are you also eating lunch tomorrow Kathleen?" The sad part of it is that my yoga practice is more crucial to my happiness than eating lunch would be.
