Practice.
I want to come clean about what it has been for me.
My body has humbled me when my head longed to go in another direction. My body has humbled me and taught me everything I have needed to learn and know.
But it was only because I listened.
If I was not listening to its pain and cries, I was not embodying or deepening or staying dedicated to my own practice. And I knew it.
When I couldn't walk, there was no where to move.
When I fell countless times from not listening to my inner pace, I knew I was not practicing, but instead, only pushing.
When I found a new language of quiet, so quiet that I could hear my body's instruction, I knew my practice had begun and it looked nothing like asana. It was about giving up an identity which I had only been firmly rooted in and deeply enlivened by muscle and action and activity and I knew that had to, needed to, change. The cost was too high.
I want to come clean about what it has been for me.
My body has humbled me when my head longed to go in another direction. My body has humbled me and taught me everything I have needed to learn and know.
But it was only because I listened.
If I was not listening to its pain and cries, I was not embodying or deepening or staying dedicated to my own practice. And I knew it.
When I couldn't walk, there was no where to move.
When I fell countless times from not listening to my inner pace, I knew I was not practicing, but instead, only pushing.
When I found a new language of quiet, so quiet that I could hear my body's instruction, I knew my practice had begun and it looked nothing like asana. It was about giving up an identity which I had only been firmly rooted in and deeply enlivened by muscle and action and activity and I knew that had to, needed to, change. The cost was too high.
There was a lot of grief in giving up that identity, but body wisdom is bone deep and it doesn't relent.
I have been in this practice for a long time now. Listening. Waiting. Facing various challenges. And I see there is a difference between daily pain and the alarming pain which grips you, the one that you know means something else. Another great disruption which may mean another long journey. That tethered road you have to look into and wonder life's big questions around.
I have been in this practice for a long time now. Listening. Waiting. Facing various challenges. And I see there is a difference between daily pain and the alarming pain which grips you, the one that you know means something else. Another great disruption which may mean another long journey. That tethered road you have to look into and wonder life's big questions around.
And then you breathe when you breathe, and you are grateful for all of the moments (my teacher Christina brilliantly refers to it as "the fine-print of practice") you experience in your daily life.
My desire is to stay humble. That is my practice. Bow to the the practice and sanctity of deep self-care in all of its evolution. Step by step. To stay faithful to my body's wisdom. To keep listening to all that it has to teach me without negotiating and resisting. To try to find ways to be a humble recipient as the process of renovation occurs again and again.
After the dissolution, renovation.
3.6.16
Jill Bacharach
Thank you for sharing your wisdom
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