The other day one of my students was sharing all the awesome chakra stuff she’s been reading about. She discovered that the 3rd eye chakra, Ajna chakra, is magnetic and then gave me and her yoga partner bobby pins to stick to our foreheads. Everyone's stuck but mine. Apparently my 3rd eye chakra is wonky. Sometimes it really surprises people when I’m human with imbalances. We are all working to bring ourselves closer to equilibrium no matter how spiraled out certain areas are. We are all students. No one is immune to the ebbs and flows of life.
Most of you know this but my son Nebulas is now 16 months old. Carrying and delivering a baby is tough on the vessel. Then once they're here, you carry them around a lot on very little sleep, chores pile up, meals are rare. It’s a whirlwind. What some people don’t know about me is that 1 year prior to my son being conceived I was pregnant with our daughter Galadriel and she passed away when I was 24 weeks pregnant. My water broke on Christmas day and a few weeks later she had to be taken out of me or I would have died. I’m sorry if this is heavy. I’m sharing this because we are all human and we all experience pain and suffering. Coming back to my mat after any trauma or shift in life is absolutely necessary for me. Of course my chakras are wonky. Guess what? I can’t lift up, jump back or through right now either, along with a bunch of other things that I used to be able to do 4 years ago and I don’t particularly care. Asanas, physical postures, come and go. I’m on my mat to breathe. I have faith that practicing the Ashtanga system will balance me back out in time. I have 45 minutes a day to practice and I do it. I see my teacher (another human with life experiences) as often as I can and I work on what we go over. I feel good for the first time in a while. I’ll take having my microcosm jarred around and not being able to get into certain asanas in exchange for the short time I had with my daughter and getting to share the rest of my life with my son. I’m content, grateful and excited about my humble practice. I can feel that I’m gaining a deeper understanding of the practice and my foundation will be stronger than it was before my pregnancies.
Yoga is a lifelong practice. It’s a tool to keep us feeling our best for as long as possible. It doesn’t matter what it looks like because it is ever changing to meet us where we are. It’s super important to get in front of a qualified teacher to give you an outside perspective because the view from the inside is very deceiving. We do a lot of auto-correcting and it’s usually unhelpful and leads to a dead end (pain or stagnation).
Thank you Stacey for having me stick a bobby-pin on my face. You’ve made me aware of an imbalance that I will certainly be working on.
Keep practicing yogi's!
Sam,
This is a wonderful lesson about being human. Any trauma, injury, aging, or negative mindset can reek havoc on one's body. Being able to accept one's own present moment within the body can bring a sense of relief. Allowing tension and expectations to dissolve. Being able to understanding that what you once could do may not be achievable in the present moment, not to say that it'll never happen again, but there is a level of grace to accept what the body is presenting. Honor it. Flow with it. Namaste.