The Truth On The Edge Of Vision Revealed

Have you ever felt that some critical aspect of your truth was right on the edge of your vision, just outside your view?  Or had a sense of knowing that you  just couldn’t quite define?  Then the world rotates and suddenly the view shifts and all is clear…or at least another piece is clear?  This is what I experienced – the percolation of awareness that had been rumbling inside the past several weeks bubbled to the surface today and I am thrilled to receive a new level of clarity!

I have been exploring the energies around my yoga in relation to sleep and ideals of yogic practice for a far amount of time, which I have shared in other posts.  The upshot is that the daily ideal expectation of rising in the early hours of the morning and doing a particular set of reading, yoga and meditations which lasts about 2-2 1/2 hours has not appealed to me.  Fine, I let the ideal go but was still searching for how to hold my daily yoga – did it have to look a specific way with a specific amount of time at a certain hour of the day?  I felt inside that it didn’t need a specific structure yet was still internally conflicted.  And why, if I truly know that yoga serves me so well, am do I have such resistance to holding not only the morning ideal and adding more lifestyle pieces?

Suddenly, in a flash of clarity that seems so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t see it before, I got it today.  One of the pieces that first attracted me to Kundalini Yoga in the first place was that it is designed for the householder to integrate into their already busy lives and so can work in small snippets.  I love the idea and reality that a three minute meditation completely shifted a deep rooted pattern for me and expanded my life powerfully.  I love this not only for myself but for my equally busy clients.  In my work as a BodyMind Coach, I am known for helping people discover tools and techniques that add value and create powerful shifts without adding further burdens of time or drains of energy.  I meet individuals whereever they are at and simply start with small, consistent steps forward.  The theme of my work and this energy is that it doesn’t have to be hard, time consuming, radically different or daunting but rather filled with ease, simple integration, effective yet time managable tools.  And this is why I have “resisted” the larger expectations of the yoga lifestyle…it doesn’t fit with who I am, the core truth of myself.   This core truth is that expansion doesn’t have to be life consuming to be effective.  That many paths lead to enlightenment.  That small, steady commitment is powerful.

At least this is my awareness and acceptance today.  Now that I’ve embraced this new awareness, it might open to the door to further expansion in a way that allows me to bring more pieces into my life with ease.  And if I look at what I already do daily, I have already integrated many lifestyle yogic pieces into my life, just not in the exact laid out look of the Kundalini tradition.  And that’s ok because it honors another critical part of my truth…I don’t feel the need to walk an exact path of religion, philosophy or culture…instead I revel in exploring the many faces of truth of different traditions. 

And as I become aware today of these aspects of my truth and how I am honoring them, not only do I have clarity but I also have a deep peace.  Aaah.

Self Acknowledgement

Self Acknowledgement is an important piece in celebrating each day’s successes, which I spoke about a couple of posts ago with the idea of “to-do” lists.  So today I want to take a moment and do just that.

In expanding my business alongside seeing my current clientele and taking care of needs at home, I often feel like I have more to do than I have time for.   And this happens day after day after day.  Sometimes pushing hard to get a specific project done is needed and worthwhile; however, because my tasks are more constant than isolated, living in the space of all work and no pause doesn’t serve me.  Yet, I find that I can often get stuck in that “doing all the time” mode.

Yesterday was a similar day.  I had two meetings and a class which took up a large chunk of my day leaving me feeling like I hadn’t had time to work on some other items that needed addressing.  Yet I also acknowledged that I hadn’t exercised the day before nor had I done the amount of yoga I was looking for.  So for today, I want to acknowledge that I was able to set aside my compulsion to keep going and instead made a different choice…a choice to nourish me inside and out.  After getting the kids moving towards bed and their reading space, I took the time to ride my exercise bike, do a set of yoga, enjoy two meditations and then deeply renewed with a long corpse pose while listening to yogic music.  Then, instead of acting on the inspiration I received in my meditation, I simply wrote down the threads of key thoughts and went to bed!  Which allowed me to rise this morning earlier and ground in with some morning rituals, office organization, and computer tasks before starting my day.  How refreshing.

I acknowledge myself for taking care of myself with nourishing activities that recharge not only my body but my spirit and allow me to move through life with greater balance and ease.

Pancha Karma Day Three – Gagging on Ghee but What Insights

What a difference 2 extra ounces of ghee makes.  One day it’s still tasting yummy, the next I have definitely reached the point of gagging as I’m trying to drink down my morning lubrication concoction…and staying nauseous most of the day.

Here is the point you may want to close your eyes or skip further down because I’m going to briefly share the nitty gritty cleansing effects. 

• While I have typically been feeling good in the mornings, as the day progresses my headache returns and my stomach doesn’t feel too good. 
•  Today my unquenchable thirst level hit a new high with my throat and lips feeling constantly dry…and yes, I’m drinking about 8 oz every 30-60 minutes.  I think it must be the ghee.
• Weird temperature changes off and on.  At one point I had a hot flash.  Then later in the evening, I became chilled and couldn’t warm up.  I would expect the lower temperature if I was fasting but because I’m eating food, although not huge amounts and very simple foods, I guess I’m somewhat surprised.
• My bowels have slowed down.  The first several days I was emptying out several times a day; today I had almost nothing and the stools are looser.
• My urine is always very clear, even in the early morning when I would expect a deeper color due to the length of time without water.  I am going frequently, not a surprise with all the water consumption, but the amounts are larger than normal.  This may be another factor with my thirst…I’m taking a lot in but my body, in the cleansing, just keeps taking it back out.
• For the most part my thoughts are clear and I’m functioning fine but I do notice occasional scattered moments and a slight fatigue.
• Some interesting body areas are sore.  In my gentle walk today I noticed my thighs feeling a low level ache/fatigue and during my yoga I did a particular arm position in which my upper back was quite affected and afterwards there was a huge flow of energy there…this is part of the heart chakra.  Lastly, in one of my meditations, excess mucous starting to come up in my throat.  As this was a mantra meditation with chanting, it made for some difficulty to chant smoothly.
• One of the most relaxing deep relaxations I’ve had in days.  My upper body felt so light that it was almost like it wasn’t there.  Such  a complete release…until my son started to ride his roller blades back and forth across the deck creating quite an annoying sound!
• My hunger has slowed.  I am not feeling so starving before the lunch and dinner though I’m still eating my dinner between 4-5 which is quite early for me.  One interesting piece is that usually I like to eat at night…it’s my highest snacking time.  No, not the greatest habit but where my body usually is.  Right now, even though I’m eating dinner earlier, I’m not bothered by not eating again until morning.

As I continue to simply observe the process, I had two lovely insights today.  One is that I need to focus more on the flow in any given moment to help me stay present and keep me grounded in a space of being rather than doing.  My pitta nature thrives on lots of busyness, which is OK but sometimes it pulls me into manic pressure which takes me out of a space of ease.  I received a very clear message today that the key to balancing my doing and being is by connecting into the actual flow of my internal energies in each moment.  To do this I’m simply going to gently remind myself with the question, “How can I flow with this freer and easier?”

The second insight is about the power of simplicity.  I recognized that I have a small, residual belief lurking in the background that surfaces occasionally that says anything powerful must come from something big or intense.   On one level I know this isn’t true, yet I must react off of this older mindset at times because that what’s show up in my actions.  Today I received the reminder several times that something that appears so gentle, light and simple on the outside can still create deeply powerful results.  This cleansing is a good example.  I still get to eat food (though since I tend towards a whole foods diet the food for this cleanse doesn’t feel overly restrictive or punitive for me) so I don’t feel like the cleanse process itself is overly challenging.  All I’m doing is eating these specific foods, taking ghee and doing some extra simple body treatments like brushing and oil self massage.  Yet obviously deep things are happening…it amazes me!  Secondly, the yoga set I’m doing this week, called Basic Spinal Series, is a very gentle, short set yet awakens and balances the entire chakra system.  The postures aren’t overly taxing yet I feel major shifts occurring. 

For today I’m going to not only claim that powerful transformation and growth can be light and easy…I’m going to welcome this ease with open arms!!

An Aha Moment in Clarifying Challenges and Oopportunities

I had a session with my coach today.  Yes, I too, use coaching to support myself and my expansion.  Currently I am doing mentor coaching as part of a coaching accreditation process.  Today, however, I needed a personal moment.

I have been feeling a little frazzled this week.  My heater went out.  My office is in transition.  I have several projects underway.  And I am exploring technology options for my business, a process that sometimes makes my head spin!  Part of the coaching process is to clear whatever might be up that needs to be released before starting the actual coaching…and boy was I clearing these current challenges.  Amidst the clearing, the opportunity arose to focus the session on what was happening for me rather than on the mentor coaching process…and I took it.

My focus to explore today became: how to balance staying in the positive and connected with my flowing energy of my truth and still acknowledge, hear, and clear what shows up in life…these challenges that somehow keep appearing.  Along today’s journey, I realized several important beliefs.  The first is that I do expect life to have ripples, bumps in the road, challenges.  I don’t expect life to flow smooth in a continuous line.  My first choice was whether that belief is true for the nature of life and true for me.  And my answer for today is that I do expect life to have some interesting twists and turns.  However, I made the decision to hold them as “interesting twists and turns” instead of “bumps, ripples, and challenges.”  A subtle word difference but big in how the energy of it feels to me. 

The second belief that came up was that expanding, growing and learning need to have a stretching and challenging component to them.  I had accepted that not only was life full of learning opportunities but they existed within  the challenges (old wording).  That to make a diamond, there needs to be pressure.  That life’s biggest lessons come through our darkest times.  Although I do know that I have the strength, caliber and grace to deal with the challenges and have been holding the positive and powerful space to go through these challenges, I was given the pause today to see if I really wanted to continue to hold the belief  that it has to be a challenge.   Do I want to hold that I need constant challenges, bumps, and ripples in order to learn and expand?  NO! 

I realized that the above statements about growth and challenges are part of a cultural expectation and authority expectation that was taught to me and I had unconsciously agreed to…but I don’t have to hold that belief.  Even as recently as this past year, I was hearing from a marketing mentor that the idea of being in a flow state involves a space of discomfort, of stretching.  That being an entrepreneur means being constantly in the state of discomfort because we are reaching up and above in order to grow.  This is very different than how I feel about flow.  For me, flow is being in intimate connection with my infinite self and alignment and it is so easy, I’m so on, life is flowing.  I am not stretching or feeling discomfort.

These pauses and realizations provided the perfect space to reframe these beliefs that aren’t serving me.  I’m a big believer of creating belief statements which express the energy that I value and is in alignment with my truth.  I use these statements to reframe an old idea and look at it and read it daily to create a new pathway of thinking until it becomes an autonomic belief.  For today, the new statement I came up with is “I am open to expanding my life and living my fullest truth while accepting the opportunities and exploring the interesting twist and turns as they arise with comfort and ease.”

I’ll let you know how it feels over the next days and weeks.  However, I can tell you now, that simply having the Aha and creating the new statement made me feel light, lifted a load off my chest, and put a smile on my face.  And for today, which is all I have right now, it’s perfect!

What do you need to clarify in a moment of pause?