What’s Right Here? (Season 7, Episode 21)

What’s right here? What’s actually right here? In today’s episode we dig into this and how it’s showing up both in these challenging times and on our yoga mats.

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Transcript

(00:06):
Welcome to Love, Curvy Yoga, the podcast where we’re doing our best to let things shift and change. Now let’s get into it.

(00:14):
[MUSIC]

(00:20):
Hi Anna here. Okay. I feel like you know what’s coming now. So let’s do our check-in. How are you feeling . . . And what do you need in your body?

(00:42):
I have been asking myself these questions each morning during my yoga practice and one thing that came to me the other day was HOW am I feeling? Like how am I making space or time to feel? How am I doing it? And the answer was that I’m not doing it that much. So it was helpful to kind of reframe or recenter the process more than any one given answer to how I’m feeling. In terms of what I need in my body, I really feel tighter than ever. And it’s interesting because I am actually doing a fair amount of movement, so it’s not that exactly, although it certainly seems like I could use more.

(01:38):
I think it’s really a lot, just the stresses of these times, both the ones that I am more and less aware of in a conscious way. So in a conscious way I’ll think like, Oh I’m doing okay and then I check in with my body and it’s like my whole body is like CLENCH and I realize, Oh there’s some messages that my body has for me that my mind is not receiving or letting through or whatever. So I am working a lot with softening both on and off of the mat. Okay. So we’re going to kind of explore this a little bit more in our main segment coming up next

(02:24):
[MUSIC]

(02:29):
If you have listened to the last couple episodes of this podcast, you know that my family and I recently moved and that we’re now in an Airbnb type of situation for the foreseeable future while we look for a house. So the day after we closed on our old house, which was about a week and a half ago when you’re listening, I found myself both really happy to be done with that part of the process and really anxious to move on to the next part. It’s like let’s just wrap this all up and get it over with.

(03:12):
And Nic and I had talked about taking a break because we’ve been doing moving related things already for several months. And I agreed in theory, emphasis on in theory, but found it so hard to downshift. I remember this one morning, so we get emails when new houses are listed and this house came through and it had a kitchen that I thought was funny. It was just laid out in a way that I found strange, and I was like, “look at this house, look at this kitchen.” And he was just like, um, no, thank you. So I kept trying to show him houses and he kept politely declining, but the message was pretty clear.

(03:59):
So I realized I needed to give him some more space. So I did give him more space and as a result of that I had space myself, but I didn’t really want it as much as he did. So I found myself vacillating between letting myself be and doing, which is certainly the nature of life for everyone and certainly not something that I’m unfamiliar with. But yeah, while that unfolded, an idea landed with me and that is that this is not a time to tune out of, to treat as not real, to just see as temporary. It really sunk in with me that this is also my life, that I am living my life right now and if I’m not careful, I’ll miss it. So quarantine and pandemic is my life. Being in this house that’s ours for this moment, but not long term is my life. This stage in our daughter’s development and our marriage and in our family is my life. And that’s not to say that I want to stay here in this moment forever, but it is to say that I am here. And it’s so easy for me to gloss over it, ignore it, choose not to feel it. Let’s just harken back to a few minutes ago when I talked about how tight my body is, clearly that’s happening, and to really live in the future in my mind as much as possible, all I want. But none of that makes it any less true. It’s like trying to ignore it, but it’s still there and all it does is make the whole experience much less pleasant and it makes me feel like my life is on hold in a way that isn’t true and causes stress. So I think the question is: what’s right here? What is actually here in this very moment?

(06:26):
Because we are in the process of moving, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to settle somewhere and I think the idea of settling has such a bad rap in our society, but when I think about something like a lake settling, it causes my breath to deepen. It really feels like a, Oh yeah, kind of an exhale. There’s a relaxing quality to it. And I’m sure you know, if you’ve ever listened to this podcast before or know anything about me that this is something that I have resisted in so many ways throughout my life, but whether it is my yoga practice, becoming more embodied, getting older, having more peace with my body or something else (more likely it’s all of those things combined), I am just feeling more able to do that — more ready, um, to land, to root, to stay, to settle.

(07:34):
Now I have of course also been practicing this on my mat for many years and I think as is true for many people, when I first came to yoga, my practice was much more physically challenging than it tends to be these days. I tried to go for all of the harder poses, quote unquote, to prove something to others, but honestly, mostly to myself, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But over time, my practice has definitely slowed down. So I hold poses longer. I use faster movement as a tool sometimes when I want to move my energy in a particular way, I find it really helpful, but it is no longer my main focus. Things have gotten a lot more internal and I’ve become less resistant to staying in a pose, whether a long hold and a more challenging pose or sinking into a restorative pose — sometimes that’s even harder for me.

(08:39):
In Anne Cushman’s book, Moving into Meditation, she writes, quote, “remember that life is not an interruption of practice?” Oh my gosh. Isn’t that so true? It’s so easy to feel that way. Even though a lot of times it just, yeah, it just does not feel that way at all. A lot of times it feels like I don’t have time to make it to an in person class. I mean obviously no one’s doing that right now, but or Hazel woke up early and now I don’t have time to do my practice. Or now maybe I’m doing a class on zoom and our dog is barking and there’s a lot of distraction. So when I move through that, what I’ve really observed is that over time they tend to melt into each other in lots of ways. So practice informs life and life informs practice and practice is a chance to practice for life and life is a chance to bring your practice deeper. It’s really never either/or. It’s almost always both/and. Including right now.

(09:52):
Okay. Up next a few reminders and invitations.

(10:07):
All right, reminders. Yup. Your life is your practice and your practice is your life, too — even and especially if your on the mat time is nonexistent, not what you think is should be, et cetera. So a couple of invitations to reflect on this week. First is our opening questions. So like I mentioned, you can ask yourself this at the start of your yoga practice. I’m doing that, but you can also do it anytime of day, anytime you think about it. So how are you feeling and what do you need in your body? And then the other invitation question to explore is the one we talked about in our main segment, which is what is right here. So if those are useful, I hope that you will bring them into your practice and your life; as we know they’re one in the same.

(11:09):
Couple logistical reminders now. So in May we are exploring inner and outer strength and flexibility. And in my emails we are digging into the yoga sutras that are informing each day’s area of focus. So on this coming Sunday, if you’re listening in real time, I will be talking about Yoga Sutra 1.3 which is guiding us on Wednesdays where our theme is practice. So if you are a member, you can keep your eye out for that, and if you’re not, you’re very welcome to join us at curvyyoga.studio and use the curvy C U R V Y to save 50% off of your first month.

(11:59):
Okay. If you have questions, comments, ideas, I would love to hear it. Please send that my way at podcast@curvyyoga.com.

(12:10):
Okay. Let’s take one breath together to close. We’ll inhale and exhale. The light in me honors the light in you. Namaste.

(12:24):
[MUSIC]

(12:30):
Stay tuned next week where we’ll discover together what is right here.