Tue 16 Jun, 2009
A friend of mine posted this on Facebook today and I found it particularly moving. Looking at it felt like a scary dream.
Thu 11 Jun, 2009
I have started to go to yoga and I absolutely love it. The Yoga Center of Minneapolis had a free workshop on cancer wellness and the woman who ran it was so nice and gave off such a lovely, relaxed aura that I decided I wanted to attend her yoga classes regularly. I go to her classes on Wednesday afternoons and I also attend classes by someone else on Sunday mornings. I love it. The muscles in my body are starting to feel different, stronger I guess. I feel like I’m becoming better friends with my body.
But I really love what yoga has done to my mind.
I have always been a very anxious person. I am anxious when I go to sleep at night and I’m anxious when I wake up in the morning. I’m anxious when I’m walking to catch the bus and I’m anxious when I’m sitting at my desk at work. When I have to balance my checkbook or pay bills, I become so anxious that I actually start to tremble.
Yoga is changing this. I think it’s because I spend so much time inside of my head during yoga. I knock around up there while I’m stretching my body out and I get relaxed and in touch with myself and I’ve realized that it feels awfully nice.
So why not try to be like that all of the time?
It’s all about the realization of your thoughts. For example, I am trying not to rush through my actions. When I am doing the cat boxes or some other chore, I find myself trying to hurry through those things and I get frustrated and anxious. If I realize that this is just a chore and my life will still be there at the end of it, I can just relax and do the darn chore and not hate it so much. Why be frustrated and angry while I’m doing the cat boxes? Instead, why not relax and think happy thoughts while I’m doing them? After all, it will make doing them so much more enjoyable.
One afternoon, after I had attended my first yoga class, I tripped over something in the back yard and a surge of anger, initiated by frustration, rushed through my mind. I opened my mouth to curse but I caught myself at what I was doing. Instead, I took a deep inhalation of breath, held it for a moment, and the exhaled, letting go of the anger while I did so. I tripped, so what? Then I continued on with what I was doing. I was rather new at this and so the whole process was rather dramatic and when I came out of it I saw my husband standing at the other end of the yard, watching me and laughing. But I found that the more I catch myself feeling angry or anxious and grabbing control of that and changing my mood, the more I am able to do it more naturally and without so much physical emphasis.
Being angry or anxious never solved anything. Negative thoughts hurt us more than they do the people or things at which they are directed.
I have control over how I feel. Why feel bad?