I also set out to address my mental attitude towards myself which carries over onto how I feel about others. For the past 7/8 months I have not liked myself in any way, I’ve been beating myself up about everything I don’t like how I’ve been interacting with the rest of the world. It’s been a time of me constantly tearing myself down. I just realized that this is due to me creating negative constructs about certain things and people and I ended up being one of those people and they were set in stone constructs so I pretty much broke that part of my mind open and it’s taking a minute to clean it out. To help like myself again I made a conscious effort to make my food with love (which makes everything taste better by the way) and think good loving things about myself, I repeated mantras like I am worthy of this or this is not above me. I also wrote every night as a way to have to face myself and my day and how I treated myself. In the mornings I did a meditation of inhale into the heart and exhaling staying centered there. That was a way for me to open up to myself more. I also ripped my room apart, the night we began the experiment. I went home and began going through everything and cleaning and rearranging. It took a couple of days to complete but by the end I curtained off a portion of my room for sadhana and asana practice, this sacred area is filled with loving objects, a quilt square my grandma made me a ring from a close friend I’ve learned more from then anyone, the Ganesh Yantra I painted will also be placed in there. This process initiated my experiment, set intention for it. I wish I had taken pictures of it all to see the process.
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Many things occurred to me during this process. Such as its ok to feel no matter how you’re feeling it’s ok to be mad or sad or lost or happy. Another realization made was this construct I project of someone watching me that is separate from me. This is probably some conditioning from growing up Christian, I stopped attending church when I was 14 though, and it surprises me that that idea is still present in me. I recognized that this ‘watcher’ is indeed me watching myself and there is no need to feel the need to impress this other watcher because it’s simply me. This made life seem rather surreal for a while, like I’m dreaming all the time, now I type that it does seem like a dream. Also occurred to me that Divinity and the Universe is all around me I am constantly shaking hands with the Divine Universe, constantly being enveloped by the all knowing and all creating. I’ve always enjoyed warrior II because of this idea that my fingers are reaching straight into Divine Essence and for me I can really feel that in my hands. Somewhere within the experiment my parakeet died suddenly, I was rather upset that weekend and I left the Yoga room for a moment to recollect my thoughts, sitting on the steps thinking about how odd death is and life and that my bird and my Sarajo dog (she died earlier this year) are around me all the time now just not in a physical way and they are a part of the Universe so really they aren’t ‘dead’ they’re just ‘invisible’ to me right now. Somewhere in these thoughts I found that I profoundly despised myself and I became determined to resolve my conflict with myself.
The results of my efforts have been rather odd. I feel that I am in a limbo and have been waking up wondering why I’m not excited and remembering the last time I was excited was when I was in Sri Lanka where I also underwent a time of having to drop everything I thought I thought and rewire how I think and feel.[ It’s interesting that throughout the experiment I would have perfectly clear and detailed scenes from moments in Sri Lanka where I learned something and that was significant for the present moment.] This morning I rather irritated by this lack of motivation and joy for life and sat pondering it for a moment and why it was so and how I could go about changing it when I thought, ‘I’m alive and I could die at any moment ‘ it’s rather morbid on the surface but it’s relieving and a bit funny for me, oh that’s right we’re going to die so let’s go with some puppies and the moose face dog (my brother’s chocolate lab) rather than stressing about anything or beating up on myself. Which brings me to my last point that I have not been myself at all lately and the clarity I have cultivated allowed me to see that the other day. I’m a usually looking for any opportunity to mess with my family or friends, I’m the one who puts flour on my hand and hugs you, no one suspects me except those who know me quite well, why would the quiet girl put flour on your shirt. I feel it is good and healthy to have acknowledged myself and what I’ve been doing to myself and go about changing it and seeing the lightness and Light in every moment rather than not knowing why I feel how I feel. Thank you for reading.
Like many students of Axis Yoga Teacher Trainings, this student came into the journey with multiple goals and found success in each of them. This journey is an example of the transformation that occurs in life when space is given to Yoga.
I came to Axis Yoga trainings for many reasons: to deepen my yoga practice, to connect with a local, community of like-minded individuals and to learn how to guide others on a path of self-exploration. However, underpinning all of those intentions was one core desire: to reclaim my yoga practice as my own.
As I began to envision my personal experiment, I first reflected on the many wonderful changes that have come into my life since beginning the YTT. I have stopped many of the painful and unhealthy habits I previously allowed to dictate my life: caffeine, alcohol and even sugar. I pushed myself to find a routine that balanced my dosha and helped me re-direct my energy into sustaining my life rather than my work. And most importantly, I have found a personal practice and succeeded in integrating that deeply into my daily life and intimate relationship.
As a testament to my transformation and to my ongoing commitment, I decided to create a sacred space in my home that would be dedicated to sacred practice. As I looked into the various spaces, I had only two real options: one was a room in the basement with no light, no air circulation and a long habit of being ignored. The other was my office – a place where I spend much of my life working and a space filled with ego-gratifying displays of success. I decided to transform my office and in doing so re-enforce my commitment to placing my Self at the center of my life and removing work from its previous central role.
There were many lessons in releasing my office and all of its associations from my home space and to be effective I worked closely with my partner who also lives with me. In this act of aparigraha, non-coveting, we came together to remove the furniture, books, and memories that had established themselves in our home. As the room emptied out so did our thoughts and feelings about the dreams and desires we held for our life together. We talked about our mutual desire to learn about and strive for harmony with the spirit that moves in all things and we talked about ways that we could support each other’s journey. We talked about some of the challenges we have had recently in our relationship and had an opportunity to honestly express the needs of hearts. By creating this space in our home, we also created a new space within our relationship – a space of deep mutual love and a space that supports our search for the divine.
With the space now open, I began to work on integrating my previous lessons on routine. Though I still struggle to get up at 6 AM sharp every morning, I have stayed consistent with my morning practice and have found great depth and joy in my ability to refine my asana and pranayama daily to fit my unique needs. Moreover, I have found the simple rituals that come with a sacred space, the lighting of a candle, the burning of incense, to be a pathway that drives me deeper into my sadhana and deeper into my peace.
Namaste
Each Axis Yoga Teacher Training student finishes the course with a personal experiment of their choosing. This student took a brave step towards emotional healing by choosing to address feelings about her daughter’s death through a return to healthy habits.
My personal experiment will be to write about my daughter also to start journaling again. I hope to get
back in the habit of expressing myself through my writing and to develop a healthy emotional habit. I
also hope to get back into a healthy lifestyle with my daily routine and to feel better overall. I feel like
I’ve gotten very far away from myself. I stopped doing sadhana and working out. So I hope to get back
in the habit of that as well. I will write in my journal every day and then start writing about my daughter.
I will also start working out on a daily basis again and I will do a daily meditation.
So journaling every day was hard for me. I did write a few times but not every day. When
Brittany died I was told by the attorney’s to keep a daily journal of how I felt, what I was thinking and
what I remembered being in the hospital. I hated writing. I was not ready to live my daughter’s death
over and over and deal with the pain of losing a child my child so with writing every day, I started to
hate writing. In that process I found out that people lie and I started to hate people a lot. The doctors
and nurses working on my daughter changed paper work and lied about it. They knew this was a
malpractice case and started covering things up. I was so angry at everyone and everything. I felt
helpless and lost. I realized when it was too late that I had hired an attorney who was way out of his
league. Still I would write and the more I did the more I hated it and the world. So the writing every day
will come with time for me again. It was good to write and begin healing but it also kept bringing up my
anger and emotions towards my daughter’s death.