Last night marked the beginning of my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training. Sparing you all the back story and all the vision and all the prayer, I will offer you this: I am nervous and feel gross about this because of how right it is. It is a part of a calling.
I am following.
I am praying.
There is so much I want to offer in this post. I want to tell you the examples I have of God’s timing. I want to tell you how I think chords are not just musical, but that life offers each individual chords of events that occur in a unique part of our lives that effect us, somehow, deep in our composite forever.
…I want to tell you jokes about how I am seriously bad at Wildtree freezer planning.
But I don’t have a ton of time and I should get straight to the point of why I am marking this moment in my life.
I am acknowledging in a very real way that I am living very bravely at my creative edge.
I am no longer afraid of my creative edge.
I have never surfed the wave of inspiration like I am now in my life. I feel like I am shooting light out of my fingers – praying for the spirit to guide me – seeing a network of people and LITERALLY seeing people illuminate as the exact people to help, offering their gifts, as I chase the visions God puts on my heart.
It’s insane.
Yoga training. Ok – so – each day of yoga training starts with an hour and a half of physical practice. As we were rolling our heads from left to right, in a quiet space – all listening – following cues from our teacher, I had this juvenile inner hilarious kid monster voice roar out in the inner 6th grade classroom of my body (thankfully not out of my mouth), “GUYS I THINK MY HEAD IS GOING TO FALL OFFA MY NECK!!!”
Upon this very distracting interruption of my stretch, my strong, healthy guiding self quickly recognized this inner child – the little girl who “blurted out in class” and said in the most loving and accepting of voices, “Now, now – surely we aren’t going to yell out to this yoga class that we think our head is going to roll onto the floor.”
But – in 6th grade? In art class? I would have done something like that. I would have really been obnoxious. My fear had no filter.
I explored this whole inner dialogue a little bit and the feelings that were associated with this outburst. And I recognized it quite distinctly as creative fear.
I recognized it as making myself seem less serious about what I was doing. I recognized being ridiculous and funny and without filter as a way to cushion the blow when I was serious and maybe – yikes – not perfect.
And I smile now thinking about this. Because I think it applies to everybody, somehow. Don’t we all preemptively prepare ourselves for failure? And does that method prevent you from being bold and allowing a quiet calm to settle into your bones as you take on your creative work? As you go closer to your edge?
So. Needless to say, yoga training is going to be interesting. I believe that we all have parts of ourselves that make up the whole of who we are. I believe that we have really great, loving, confident parts while we also have really timid, fearful, shadowy parts. I believe that it’s never a lost cause.
Even if where you are right now is a place where your scared parts are the stronger ones, it’s just a matter of strengthening the other muscle. You’ll know this is the case if you live a life that a small part of you doesn’t approve of.. you hear yourself saying “I know I shouldn’t be afraid” or “I know I should count my blessings” or “I know I shouldn’t worry” or “I know it shouldn’t matter” or “I know God has a plan for me” and all those sayings end with “But” or “It’s just that”.
These are the indicators that you have to be the parent of that little boy or little girl who wants you to yell in yoga class. Who tells you it doesn’t matter if you do this one detrimental thing one more time. Who tells you nobody will notice or it won’t be a loss to the world if you don’t take yourself seriously. Who tells you you have tomorrow so just put it off. That healthy part of you that knows there is a better way needs you to honor it – so you can be stronger and – in turn – strengthen others.
Ahh.. Self trust.
I am going to close with this last thought…
My teacher (Stacy) asked us all to “hold space for a lot of growth” as we proceed in training. Big truth here.
Never are you done. Always are you growing.
Namaste. Amen.
Frozen Spaghetti 