Finding My Elephant.
We read it all the time, live in the now, or as a very close friend said to me today carpe diem, but how many of us actually do it. Over the last two years, I've felt like a roller coaster has taken over my life. And through it all I've had phases of keeping it together and phases where things have come apart, really badly. But throughout everything, yoga and meditation and pranayama kept me going. And as serendipity would have it, my teachers would plan a class around a theme that i most needed on certain days. Attaching a meaning to your practice, through a sankalpa (read last post) or even by carrying what you felt and experienced on the mat, off it, helps hugely when you're dealing with ups and downs in life. But this time around, nothing seems to be working.
Often when you're in veerabhadrasana 2 (warrior 2), you are told as an alignment cue to keep your torso in line with your hips. One of my teachers said to us once, leaning too far forward in your Veera 2, means you are hoping too much on the future and living your life for what's going to come. Leaning too far back, similarly, means that you're hung up on the past and stuck to things that happened, stuff people said. So by being in the center, that's what you are doing, literally. You are centering yourself to live in the present. For most part of last year, I was too caught up in the past, thinking about the mistakes i made, situations I could have handled differently, sometimes even questioning my decisions. Only towards mid last year did I feel comfortable being in the now, comfortable in my own skin, content at being where I was in life, extremely content with that I had and very grateful for it. My mom is a huge believer of the book "The Secret", it's her "Alchemist". And she always tells us, if you believe it and think it, good or bad, it will happen, because you are attracting those energies towards yourself. And when I was content, i attracted more contentment, a lot more happiness from work, from friends, from life generally. And this year, I'm back to where I was last year. This time around not only leaning too far back, but also leaning too far forward. I'm constantly thinking of the past but also constantly waiting for something: at work, with friends, and in life. And that's not where you want to be. Because I've tasted contentment, I want to be there all the time, I want to go back to feeling at ease with who I am, and where I am in life. I want to go back to truly feeling grateful for all the wonderful travels I have already been on this year and the many many more planned for the rest of the year. I want to be thankful for my friends, who've been subjected to my "leave me alone, Im dealing with life" phases and my "I want to talk to you right now, can you call back" phases as well. I am extremely grateful for the beautiful family I have, for my own little haven in Singapore now. So this post is more a reminder for myself to start embodying my practice, to let life flow like the breath, in and out, every breath has an inhale and an exhale.
So even though, I am a lot better at asanas than I was late last year, and I am a lot more knowledgeable about yoga than I was last year, I have definitely regressed spiritually. Maybe regressed is too strong a word, but I've definitely let go of the strong core and I'm standing again on shaky grounds. Some of my meditations for the next couple of weeks will be focused on staying here and being here now. If I embraced my fortunes last year and danced with the wind as it carried me over green hills and blue skies, I need to embrace this wave that's washing me. I need to stand and face it and with equal grace, just the way I ran into the arms of good times. As I sat atop an elephant in Chiang Mai last year, after I had spent the afternoon cleaning and feeding her and taking care of her, I remember thinking to myself, there is no place I'd rather be today, right now, i don't want to be anywhere but here. As the elephant lumbered on, I bowed down to time and accepted that it was flowing slowly, but that that is what i needed then. I remember, the goodness and the fullness of being rising from my depths, coming up to my stomach and collecting in my heart, and as I breathed it in, I held it a lighter tighter and smiled and as i breathed it out, I let it go, and in spite of letting it go, I was more complete than if it had been within me.
I need to get back on that elephant and feel like that, not literally of course. Although, maybe this search for that feeling, led me to sporadically book tickets to go back to Chiang Mai later this year! How the mind works. Sigh. Anyway, I need to find that elephant and climb onto it, and this time experience that feeling and work on my mind and body remembering it, so that the mind-body can return to it, every time a wave comes by. I can find that elephant on my yoga mat, in my meditations, in a mug of chai, in a freshly baked cake, or simply on the footpath, as i walk home. I need to look for it, again. Otherwise, i might do a headstand or a handstand or twist myself like a pretzel and never really be a true yogi. Otherwise, everything I say i believe in, are only words, hollow with no embodiment.
For my own sake, i need to find my elepahnt ~ Meenoi.
~
namaste
Comments
Post a Comment