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Beautiful Warrior, Stay

This was how I related to moving my body in my twenties...

I join a gym with the goal of skinny

I go religiously every day for about a year.

I miss 5 days.

I don’t go back for 3 years.

Repeat cycle.

In my thirties….

Maturity and kids brought a slightly new outlook and new workouts.

Love this new idea that body, mind, and soul have a connection.

The goal? Even with my new awarenesses? Still all about the skinny.

Got trained and became fitness instructor.

Thought finally found the answer to staying thin.

Had another baby. Didn't stay thin.

Stopped teaching.

4 years go by.

Onto a new decade. I'm forty now. I like to throw this around apparently. I have found myself saying this very sentence way more than anyone would deem appropriate. I have used it when it’s actually being asked for and, honestly, at totally awkward moments when it was so not called for. Like when I told the guy changing my oil. I will not even begin to give you the context for this. Just know it was totally uncalled for and he smiled politely and I left quickly. All I can say is that I am proud to be a forty year old woman who feels like she has only just begun.

That said, here I am at forty. In more ways than one the pendulum has swung my friends. For example.... I went from a vegan, green juice drinkin’, jogging, fitness mama to a coffee craving, chocolate eating, I need a freaking break people, tired mama. After much contemplatin, I have decided this was precicely what needed to happen. Functioning at a rigid level of never good enough was wearing me down. I needed to learn what it meant to let go and the true art of chilling out. I've always been a go big or go home gal so, after a eureka like hot minute, I took the laid back vibe to a pretty sloth like groove.

Recently I have had a slow build and percolating desire to move but a hesitation to “work out”. My motives for doing this in the past have been so skewed that I cautiously questioned my own intentions. I know that exercise is an intelligent, healthy life choice but I am just not willing to sacrafice my head space for good abs. Yet that pendulum was clearly and slowly easing it's way back to some sort of middle ground.

On a recent Saturday, I was up early and eager to get to a yoga class that I had been looking forward to all week. It is rare that I get to go. I mostly get on my mat in the privacy of my own home. I have a couple of reasons for my solo yoga. For one, yoga classes can get pretty pricey and at anywhere from $15-$25 a pop, this frugal chick would rather find her OM in her HOME. Then there is the whole instructor thing. I am straight up picky when it comes to my yoga teachers. This is mostly due to the ever-present judgment trait of mine. When the yoga instructor starts to get all breathy and drags out their oh so spiritual words in a way that feels oh so totally dis-genuine, I end up spending the majority of the class doing massive internal eye rolls rather than breathing deep and finding any sort of zen-like peace. Calling myself out here..... I am very clear that this has way more to do with my insecure and unable to sit still butt then it does with the person in the front of the room who has been trained and schooled in this beautiful ancient practice but….. it drives me completely nuts none the less.

When it’s good though, when the yoga instructor and myself are not taking ourselves too seriously, then it’s nothing short of Divine. In a yoga studio, I can feel strangely at home and oddly out of place all at the same time. It’s just this sort of juxtaposition that leaves me bright and alive and with a crunchy vibed sense of peace. Which I must say, for a chick with an incredibly frightening ability to numb out and take herself way too seriously, this sort of feeling is coveted. Big time.

On this particular morning, the instructor, with a strong, sweet, very un-breathy voice, began class by asking us to close our eyes and place our right hand over our heart with our left hand over our belly. Right away the resistance kicked in. My heart and belly? At the same time? Juxtaposition numero dos.

Let me explain. I see my heart as representing my spirit, the "me" of who me really is. The good stuff. I like the heart. My belly, on the other hand, represents my fleshy body which, I have spent most of my life doing whatever I could to disconnect from. It's the "me" of me that I am not fond of. So yeah, I have done a lot of work around this and made massive strides and all that good stuff. Yet, let’s face it, it’s still a sore subject sometimes. Life fluctuates and, at this very moment in my life, the belly is not my BFF. That’s why when being asked to consciously hold my heart and belly at the same time, it felt both irritatingly uncomfortable and powerful at the same time.

We began focusing on our breath. Inhaling, belly rising, slowly filling up our lungs, then our collar bones, top of the head tall. Exhaling, slowly emptying out the lungs and squeezing our abs until every drop of stale air is flowing out of our bodies.

As we began to fall into a rhythm and inch by inhale sink into the class, the instructor began to talk about the focus of this morning’s practice. She used some word that, for the life of me I can’t find no matter how many times I google it. Whatever the word was, she explained it translates to “trust in God” or Universe. And as much as I crave this sort of thing….. I still fight it tooth and nail.

This is yoga for me: A full on throw down between me and my thoughts. I spend the majority of the time internally comparing, whining, and throwing personal temper tantrums all the while trying with all my might to remember to breathe, look very still and flowy, and not give into the urge to scream “Are you f@$%*&# kidding me?!”. The reason I keep practicing is bc of those few and far between moments where the stillness or nothingness or everything-ness breaks through. For fleeting moments I am somewhere else and 100% present. It is (momentary) bliss. It is a mostly love with a little bit of “man, this is hard and I don’t know if I can/want to do it stuff” relationship. Pretty much like any relationship worth having.

While I am doing yoga I can’t run from myself. I love when an instructor uses the term "Root to Rise”. (This is my next tattoo) When in any standing pose, I need to pay close attention to the grounding and placement of my feet, legs, and hips if I am going to be able to lengthen through opening my arms and heart while standing tall. Like a beautiful warrior.

This holds true on and off the mat. We have no choice but to root ourselves in the moment if we have any hopes of rising up into that everything-ness, connected feeling we are after. Beautiful warriors.

Even with the all the heart & belly, rooting & rising, and trust in God....the familiar throw down of frustration still followed. The rumble was in full effect that morning. I moved in and out each pose and in and out of each moment. I found myself drifting off to the land of doubt frequently. I questioned "why I even like this crap" more than once. At one point when I was in Warrior II for what I felt was way too long …..and my legs were shaking …..and my mind was telling me I am the absolute worst at yoga…. and I was looking at the petite pretzel-like, strong as an ox lulu lemon cutie in front of me…and I totally wanted to totally bail and run for the hills....

.... a voice pierced through my temper tantrum.

That not too breathy yoga teacher used one word.

“Stay.”

She totally did a dramatic pause after this one word. Just dramatic enough. Even me and my judgemental butt loves some good theatrical pauses. She went on coaching us to use our breath to STAY. That word! Hitting me upside my scrambled thought head. So simple.

I cried. Right there in a packed yoga class. Right next to the lulu lemon, clueless to my blubbering cutie. As I allowed the tears to come and spill over onto my flushed cheeks, I knew this was what I was here for. I was here to hear.....

STAY

I have "stayed" in many places that were not cool for me. No joke, I have what you could call an inappropriate loyalty to shit. I will remain true to what is not good for me until I can't breathe. Relationships, jobs, ways of thinking, habits, you name it. Yet in all that staying for everyone and everything else, I have managed to bail on myself quite frenquently.

The truth is, if I was practicing at home that morning the chances of me bailing on myself would be pretty darn high. I would have gotten out of that pose before I needed to. I would convince myself that I was too weak or too bored when in reality it would be about wanting to get out of having to do the hard part. I would have cut short that uncomfortable yet powerfully beautiful moment of being present for myself because I wouldn't stay. I would have missed out on discovering the strength that waits patiently within me for the opportunity to ground itself. The chance to breathe deep and literally feel my soul light up with gratitude would have passed me by.

Stay. God never promised easy, but He did promise that I would have all I need in Him. My job is to trust. Root, breathe, feel the strength that is within, expand, rise. This sort of moving is exactly what my soul has been craving. This is prayer in motion.

Recently my beautiful friend sent me this excerpt from a book by Richard Rohr. I am taken back by the connected timing of it all.

Rest and lean into the Body of Christ already within you rather than trying to pull an Infinite God into your finite world. Your body itself receives and knows God: it is indeed a temple where God’s Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)

Life can be so stinkin' uncomfortable. Right? This shit is hard. It's no wonder we have created a kajillion ways to escape and distract ourselves from all the blanant broken-ness. The easier softer way just looks so much more intriguing. I am a huge culprit of using whatever I possibly can to avoid the guts of what is real. The kicker is, even though we are all doing it and we are encouraged to do it and we easily can make it look like we aren't doing it and we can even convince ourselves that doing it is the "right" thing to do......bailing on uncomfortable present moment only robs us of the very thing our souls are craving.

Stay, beautiful warriors

Stay with yourself through the discomfort

Stay with yourself through the doubt

Stay with yourself through the tired

Stay with yourself through the legs shaking and breath quickening

Stay for YOU

Stay so you can be there when that very moment you are in literally cracks open your heart while you rise to meet yourself. It's here that we are given all we need to move into what comes next.


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