centering

i got un-centered and i don't know how it happened. for months i was meditating every day.  i was flossing every day.  i was on top of things and i was "in flow." 

and then i wasn't.

and i couldn't get it back.  something was throwing dust over my glasses; shadowing the path; blocking the metaphysical flow.  i tried taking time off: time off from work, time off from socializing, time off from anything that allowed it. i tried forcing myself back into flow by doing things like making myself a nice dinner.  i tried spending quality time with cat. i tried binging the second season of unbreakable kimmy schmidt.

today i was very angry about how un-centered i felt.  i was on my way to teach yoga to a few of my colleagues at CUNY and was listening to the most recent episode of freakonomics on productivity. in the podcast they were talking about habits and i started thinking about some of these good habits that i had lost recently--ones that i thought i had ingrained.

what keeps me in flow?

i wasn't sure i knew, but i wanted to figure it out. so, i began planning a theme around it.

as i was walking into yoga, one of my colleagues said "i've been feeling so out of it; i haven't done yoga in so long!" "perfect," i replied, "perfect."

so in class we 1) thought about something that felt in flow already, 2) identified what kept that area flowing, 3) focused on the feeling that flow created in our lives, and then 4) choose an area of our lives that felt out of flow that we wanted to use as an intention for the practice. we used the practice to explore how flow felt, how breaking out of constrictions felt, and exploring new flow.

all of class told me afterward how much better they felt.  and after class i felt centered. almost instantly. weeks of feeling un-centered undone.  i felt at ease. i went about my day and could notice where i had been acting out of habit, where i had been acting without thought, and where i had been on auto-pilot because of this lack of flow.

i texted a few friends about how much better i was feeling, and about how i was still angry about the last few weeks of un-flow.  one friend admitted that he had been worried about me.  i realized then that maybe it had been more severe, or more noticeable, than i thought. 

at 630 i got a last minute request to cover a 730 yoga class in harlem.  the class was right across the street from my office, where i still was, so the answer was an easy yes.  i texted a friend that i'd be there, and he said "i hope it helps continue the re-centering process!"  gone were any thoughts about creating a new theme for the class: i wanted to continue to focus on this idea.

after the evening class, i got even more positive reinforcement about the theme. one girl "vibed with me" so much that she wanted to insta a pic of us.  (ps that is the first time a student has done that, and it kind of made me feel like a rockstar.)

all of the positive reactions to the flow facilitation made me start thinking about how common it is to get stuck--but it isn't the getting stuck that is the problem; it's knowing how to get unstuck and get back in flow. maybe we assume that there are just times when we'll feel like this and sit back into the stuckness. maybe we hope that someone else in flow will come along and dislodge us so that we don't have to do the work ourselves.  (i'm both, and i'm ashamed of the second--i blame it on disney.)

either way, i encourage the work. go. find your flow. find your center.

goals

a friend texted me today: "your body is a huge goal of mine... i really love how amazing you look and how you embrace yourself.  spring cooper = fitness goals!"

she said that immediately after receiving this photo from me.  so i instantly thought "she's only saying that bc i know how to take things at amazing angles that make me look better than i am."

i then had to sit with what she said for a minute and think "she has seen me in a swimsuit; she knows what i really look like."

all week i've been feeling bad about my body: comparing myself to others and judging myself. sometimes are harder than others and sometimes i can't identify why. this week was one of those times.  i heard my head yell eating disordered thoughts at me several times this week and weekend.  some of the times i was able to talk back to it; some of the times i was not. (that doesn't mean i ended up binging and purging; it means i ended up believing what it said too much of the time.)

believing harsh thoughts your head screams at you sucks.  it's hard enough when someone else says something.  but when you tell yourself something, you sometimes forget that you CAN fight it.

but the thing is that you can always rephrase. you just have to remember that you can. thank you rachel for reminding me.

lighting? check.  angle? check.  filter? check.  perfect selfie? check.  perfect body? every body is perfect.  including mine.