One of the things that I noticed on my mat this morning that keeps coming up again and again these days is that we can’t really fully empathize and embrace life if we can’t really feel inside our own bodies.
After I had my hip replaced and finally got back on my mat I couldn’t feel anything in that hip and I just kind of, well to be honest, ignored it. During that time, my practice became something that I had to do. I was going through the motions and every time I came to that numbness in my hip, I just moved on. Nothing happening here, Next.
As I practice these days and I try to do the infamous pigeon pose with that hip, I embrace even the slightest bit of sensation. Some days I feel more than others, but every day I go for a feeling place inside my body, not in my mind.
And this brings me to my plea for embodiment. When we get stuck in our heads, all of the things that we “feel“ live in our heads and they become monsters. I picture emotions bouncing around my mind like in a hall of mirrors. Some big, some small, never knowing what’s around the corner. Catastrophizing or slinking away. Whatever form my neurosis needs to keep it all alive upstairs in my head, if that makes any sense.
When we decide to feel things in our bodies, it’s an entirely different way of being. When I’m sad I drag myself to my mat and I feel the sadness in my muscles. The heaviness, and when I do it allows me a deeper connection to myself and also to others. So when someone tells me they feel sad, I know what sadness feels like. Not exactly as they do, but I know enough so that I can offer them a measure of comfort that has meaning.
As I struggle with the fire storm of rhetoric around me, I know it’s cliché, but we all just need to do yoga. I don’t mean poses and bending and pretzels. I mean, stop, be and breathe. Notice what it feels like to be inside your body to feel your own pain instead of running from it in that hall of mirrors. Sit with it.
If there’s one thing I wish I could do in this lifetime is introduce everyone to the joys of embodying their lives. Yes, it’s scary. Yes it’s easier to live in the head and have that tug of war upstairs. It’s much easier, but that’s not how we survive. We live and thrive in this world by connecting, and it starts by connecting to ourselves. The fear one must overcome to decide to sit with the pain, the real pain of a broken heart. To sit with the ache of a loss so deep that your world has crumbled. To embrace a love so big or so small that it lights you up even though you know one day it must end.
My call is to embrace your fears, to step into your courage and step into your heart. Stand in that center, your center. Live in that place that allows you to feel the richness of life at every corner at every turn in the road at every stop sign. When we fearlessly embrace our own experience, that is when we truly connect. It’s through that connection that we shall overcome the darkest of days. Boots on the ground for me is my mat and all the subtly it brings up. All the little ways I can make a difference.
What does boots on the ground look like for you? I’m curious to know!
Keep the Faith + With so Much Love,
Kyra