Moving into Term 2 with Optimism
The last few weeks of school holidays have been blessed with sunshine, peace and spaciousness, between cloudy wet days. While some families have been able to travel and see loved ones, others have been doing a week, or more, of isolation. Life is still more unpredictable than it was remembered.
When everything is different, from how each breath feels in the chest and how the body feels after Covid, to days forced indoors by rain, our beaches eroded by dirty waters..not to mention the costs of living rising in 2022 while those of us running small businesses come to terms with clients travelling, isolating and managing recovery..we need to connect more deeply.
Disturbances can happen on any level of our human existence. Inside the body, as tight muscles and digestion and sleep issues, inside our breath as sighing or shallow breathing, inside our minds as anxiety and unease and in our hearts as loneliness and collectively as concern and sadness for our world.
Every one of us is a multifaceted, connected being.
Disturbances can lead us to yoga, if we listen to them. Even unusual and unpleasant experiences offer us a framework. They wake us up, most abruptly, from habits and expectations, and make us feel what is really going on in ourselves at any present moment.
The act of noticing is a step to accepting the messages from the body, breath, mind or heart. As you practice yoga, you’re invited to listen to your own information, and ask yourself what the safe parameters are in any movement in any moment. In a yoga practice, you can still move towards your goals. Perhaps in movement, you might experience quite opposing feelings, relieving and easing in one moment and tender and sore in the next. These are all very human experiences that invite us to live with more connection to breath, body mind and heart. Inhale, you expand and presence moves in. Exhale, you let be and let pass. Yoga is not easy through challenging times but is does give us a process for relaxing into what is, re-discovering truth of our creative ability to change our tension, body sense and our capacity for optimism and hope.
We’re taking a little break from classes tomorrow for Anzac day, and our classes will resume for Term 2 on April 26th.
