gifts

last week was my birthday.  that, in my world, is an event.  my parents made a big deal about birthdays (and holidays) when i was growing up, giving my transient family a sense of tradition that would provide us with a feeling of home as we moved from base to base. as a result, i play up the birthdays of all my friends and loved ones... and i celebrate my own in the same manner.

this birthday was not one of the best. i got in a huge fight with a loved one that ended up disrupting a majority of the day's plans.  and a yearly call i was expecting from another loved one didn't light up my phone, despite my constant monitoring. these let downs seemed magnified on my birthday, and i cried and felt depressed all afternoon and evening as a couple of friends visited and others facetimed and called to try to talk it through with me.

all i wanted was to have a glass of wine.  or six.  i wanted to just go out with my best friend and shrug it all off; to pretend like i wasn't hurt and fucking celebrate my birthday.

but there was one additional complication: i gave up drinking for my birthday.

last fall i toyed, for this first time, with being sober.  i blogged about the journey as i started with 40 days, extended it as i was "assigned" an additional 40 days by elena brower (ex-life coach, present and eternal teacher), and then the lessons i learned about myself along the way.

but there were a few things i left out, even in my honesty: 1) the real reason i started the first 40 days, and 2) the depth of the concern i had that i couldn't do it; that i enjoyed alcohol maybe a little too much for me to give it up for even 40 days.

the real reason i started the 40 days?  the rape i didn't really want to talk about yet.  yes, i wrote a vague blog about it.  yes, i named it as rape and several days later even reported it.  yes, i was doing a lot of things to process.  but the initial motivator for the 40 days was when my research assistant asked me "do you think you're drinking more?" as part of a post-rape self-care inventory.

"no," i immediately replied, insistent, even to myself, that i was handling this.  but when i got home and got in the bath that night, i noticed there was a large glass of wine in my hand.  and i thought, "i don't normally automatically pour wine when i walk into the house." and my next thought: FUCK.

and so, the 40 days.  i wanted to demonstrate that my life would not be negatively affected.  i wanted to show myself i had the strength to do something i didn't think i could (thematic in my life).

and that's where that second omission surfaces:  i had concerns about my ability to stop drinking. in my first post about it, i even seem to minimize the sobriety aspect of the 40 days with the calorie counting moratorium i threw in to the challenge. (side note: the calorie counting was actually harder for the first several days... and that behavior had plagued me much longer!) but i had deeper, more secretive worries about giving up drinking: some related to social situations, but others were around the relationship (or obsession) i've cultivated with avoidance mechanisms.

i've blogged more openly about bulimia and dating as avoidance, but not about drinking.  drinking, with most of my friends, is not something we need to talk about.  because it's assumed that everyone is always drinking.  a lot.  you could blame it on the penn state influence, australian norms, or the single-in-the-city lifestyle.  but a majority of my friends are drinkers. so why would i concern myself with analyzing an avoidance mechanism that is an acceptable part of my life and relationships?

each drinking event i attended sober became easier and easier.  sober dates and sober holidays and sober vacations followed.  it was more recently that i came across some life planning notes, from life coaching work with elena, that hit home the non-named concern i had with drinking at the start of the 40 days.

excerpt from work written 5/5/14:

Things friends have said recently, but I tucked away due to denial:
Hal: Does your drinking every worry you?
Owen: It’s basically like rape when we have sex and you’re that drunk.
Matt: Yeah, I didn’t realize we always do that [drink so much when together].
Kitty: But we don’t have a problem, right? We’re young and single; we wouldn’t do this if we had families.

dare i say i'm thankful for the impetus to start the 40 day journey?  reading about my previous denial scared me. i wondered if the "sober thing" would have ever appealed to me.  emergency room visits and blackouts hadn't influenced me to change my behavior; who's to say that anything would have?

in the 7 months after the "40" days, i haven't had much to drink on any one occasion.  i've learned i don't like alcohol or its after effects on my body or mind. and i LOVE being totally clear in my life and intentions.

this is how i 37.

and yet i've been afraid to totally give up alcohol.  isn't it nice to have that one glass of wine occasionally?  isn't it therapeutic to have a martini with a friend when they really need it?  isn't it socially acceptable to have a glass of champagne while attending a wedding? i had a million reasons not to give it up.

and then, about a week before my birthday, i realized the problem.  i was looking at this from a perspective of lack, and the only solution to that was to re-frame it.  and so i did: this birthday i gave myself the gift of not drinking (ever again).  the disappointing july 6th had no wine; the party with all my friends the next day had no whiskey (well, none in my glass!); the birthday dinner the following night had no cocktails. 

but i have so much more. 

and this, my loves, is the how, the why, and the what of my 37th birthday. 

next destiny

tonight i got a text from my husband; it told me that i'm now divorced.  four years after our split, we are finally divorced.

i didn't know how to reply to the text.  i wanted to say something elegant; i wanted to process everything i was feeling; i wanted us to heal our wounds. 

i replied "oh my god."

*****************************************

i did a two day teacher training with elena this weekend.  upon arriving, elena had us draw cards from a deck.  each card had a quote.  mine was:

Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
--FRANK OUTLAW

i like the quote; i like thinking that what we practice becomes us. i also like that we can create our destiny; and, that if we read deeper, we can change our destiny.

which is what i've been focusing on for the past 5 weeks. 37 days of no calorie counting, no drinking, no mood altering anything.   each day has gotten easier.  and now i feel better than normal about food and exercise. better than normal because i know what it is like to feel so undeniably obsessed with it. saturday i drank a juice without examining the calorie label.  sunday i'm pretty sure i had four full meals.  monday i ate some yogurt from a larger tub without measuring out a 1/2 cup serving so i'd know the calorie count.  these things all seem like actual miracles to me.

sunday night, at the end of the yoga training, i approached elena in a panic about my 40 days being almost up.  elena looked me in the eyes, grabbed my mala beads that were around my neck, pulled my face nose to nose with hers, and told me that she had an easy solution: she assigned me 40 more days.  i instantly felt relieved and thus knew that she was right in her assignment.

and i started to think about what it really was that i was in recovery from.  yes, the eating disorder; yes, i'm not using other substances right now... but was there a single addiction here? 

i think it's that i was addicted to numbing feelings and avoiding feeling hard emotions. and i do need another 40 days to continue to find my way without returning to any of the number of avoidant crutches i've used.

*****************************************

it's that addiction which i will now openly credit with accelerating the dissolution of my past relationships. 

processing the text tonight was surprisingly hard, despite the fact that the divorce was not at all sudden. friends questioned "is it because it's the end of a chapter?" "is it because you weren't expecting it?" "is it because of the way he told you?"  i kept saying that i didn't know.  lydia facetimed me from sydney, immediately upon receiving my text, and encouraged me to cry it out and try to determine what i was feeling.  when i still couldn't understand it, she prescribed meditation.

i meditated.  i sat.  i followed my breath.  i was present.  all the attempted processing, the breathing, even the meditation didn't identify what felt so hard about that text.  but, i did what i've almost never done: i sat with the hard feelings. instead of allowing myself to shrink inside a constricted breath, i was able to expand my breathing.

i would tell my best friend, who just soberly processed the death of her grandmother so beautifully: i'm proud of you.  I'M SO PROUD OF YOU.

so i breathe a deep breath, an expanded breath, into that pride i try to direct back toward myself. 

and i swear i can feel my next destiny inside that breath.

Halfway to Barbados

I was in the Miami airport, halfway to Barbados, and one of my favorite songs came through my iPhone headphones: “Moments,” by Tove Lo.  Partial lyrics: “I can get a little drunk/I get into all the don’ts/but on good days, I’m charming as fuck.”  Every time I hear those lyrics, I smile.  And I identify.  

Until I was halfway to Barbados. I was smiling, mouthing along to the lyrics, walking toward my gate, and, upon hearing those lyrics, I thought, “oh, that’s kinda sad.”

And I stopped in my tracks.  I actually stopped walking because I felt so confused. 

I have had a narrative in my head that I’m strong, even though I’m broken; that I’m surviving, even though I’m broken; that I’m functioning, even though I’m broken.

And when I paused to consider what was wrong, halfway through “Moments,” I realized it was a miracle moment: what was wrong was that I didn’t feel broken anymore. 

I smiled.  I smiled so big that I must have looked a little crazy to, well, everyone else in the airport. And I thought to myself, “I’m whole. I’m whole now.”

Feeling whole felt so fulfilling, and so different than anything I could remember, that it felt startling.  It feels scary for me to write: scary because I’m nervous that the feeling of wholeness might be transient.  My literal mind says, “but of course I was always whole; I just forgot.” And so I begin typing, assuring myself it’s safe to commit to digital ink.

The shift could be linked to the 40 days, friends’ life changes, the spontaneous impending vacation, the yoga workshops with Elena over the past two days, the reading and journaling I have been doing with Gabby’s new book The Universe Has Your Back, …or most likely a little bit of all of the above.

One of the lessons Gabby references from A Course in Miracles is that we “create visions of the world we want to see,” meaning that the stories we tell ourselves are powerful. The backstory to who we are, even if it is never written down or spoken aloud, resounds through our minds. 

The truth is, I liked thinking of myself as broken.  I liked the fragility and girlishness about it. I played into it. I felt like it gave me character.

But it was an excuse. The more I challenged the notion that I was broken, even though I wasn’t always doing it consciously, the harder it became to believe.  Until the Miami Miracle Moment, when it became impossible to believe.

“I have my moments.”

icarus

it's the evening of day 20 of my 40 day challenge.  40 days of no substances and no calorie counting.  20 days in: i've learned a few things.

a la movies 

 

no substances: i'm fun, and can party just as ridiculously sans alcohol.  i've been out with friends drinking late on weekend evenings, dancing til the wee hours, totally sober.  well, okay, maybe the diet cokes hyped me up a bit. so maybe 99% sober. 

some people haven't been inviting me to things as much, fearful that i wouldn't go or that i wouldn't have fun without being able to drink. but i don't blame them; i would probably suspect the same of most of my friends. luckily i also have a bestie who is doing the challenge with me.  and we look very cute sober at a movie on a saturday night.

first dates, cocktail parties where i don't know anyone, and business dinners are all a little terrifying without any alcohol. however, i've met a few brave dates open to the challenge, and made friends at parties and dinners despite the sobriety.

personally, i've been feeling more confident and happy: realizing i'm fun on my own and that i can make it through these events sober has translated into less fear overall.   the confidence has even bled into other areas of my life.  i've stood up for myself with colleagues that weren't listening to my expertise, and i've expressed my needs to friends and partners more readily. 

it's also made me much more sympathetic to people who have quit drinking.  i've always thought that recovering from bulimia was very hard because food is something that is necessary: you cannot exist in a world where people do not eat.  although i had sympathy for anyone in any type of recovery, i still felt like "but you don't HAVE to be around (insert drug or alcohol here) if you don't want to!"

but i don't know how true that is for alcohol, really.  it's quite pervasive in our social lives.  although i'm quite happy not drinking right now, i also know that it's not forever.  so to my sober peeps: i'm sorry if i minimized your struggle, even if only in my own mind.  also: i'm totes up for sober parties, even after my 40 days are up.

no counting: eating without counting every bite and calculating each calorie is way less stressful.  i never liked counting every chip at the mexican restaurant, or estimating how many tablespoons of ketchup i just squeezed on to my plate. i was doing it to ease the craziness in my brain, but it was actually only contributing to it.  (i know, i know, if you have never dealt with this issue, it sounds like a "DUH" statement.)

i'm more present when i'm eating with friends.  i listen to them talking instead of re-counting the number of calories i have consumed thus far at the meal.  i can reply to them and engage in conversation instead of calculating whether i have enough calories left in my day to have a bite of the dessert they ordered.

it has been hard, a million moments of each day.  i've created a few thought exercises to distract myself when i start to try to count something on my plate when eating alone or start to try to remember all the things i've eaten in a day. (they involve trying to remember very minute details in other areas of my life.) but, in general, it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  not basing my self-value on a number, and whether or not i feel like it is the right number, is freeing. 

i no longer wake up after a day where i decided i had 200 too many calories with a sense of dread: a feeling that i had to make up for being "bad" the day before by eating less or exercising extra, trying to find extra time for working out or brainstorming places to save calories.  or even panicking because i might have a social event in the evening that i knew would involve alcohol--and extra calories. which leads me to the following. 

and the combo of the two: alcohol has calories. i've definitely played the sorority girl game of eating less to drink more.  i've run extra to drink more.  i've chosen which drinks to enjoy based on their calorie count (no different than foods).

not drinking for the past few weeks has taught me how afraid of alcohol calories i really am: on mornings of social functions i used to feel anxiety.  lately i have not.  and, scarily enough, i've realized it's because i don't feel internal pressure to run an extra few miles to prep for the looming alcohol calories. i can workout the normal amount without the fear of "going over" the calorie count i've allotted for my day.

and i've also started to become terrified for the time when the 40 days is up.  not counting calories has been a really big step in my recovery.  what if i'm not able to refrain from calorie counting when i introduce alcohol back into the equation? what if i try to go overboard on running (again)? what if...

yeah.

if it was one of my friends saying things like this to me, i'd give the advice i always do: wasting time worrying about this in advance of the actual situation is not helpful.  and so, i keep up the meditation and the yoga.  i practice.  and i trust that i can keep flying that line between the sea and the sun.

clarity

today i started 40 clear days.  meaning no alcohol or mood changers of any type. i've never tried to go any expanded amount of time without being able to relax with a glass of wine.  i have friends that do "dry july," which i've never consider doing, since that's my birthday month.  i have friends who have done cleanses, which i just never really felt called to do.  and luckily i never get sick, so i'm never forced to go on breaks while on antibiotics.

but last week i decided i wanted to do 40 clear days.  kind of spontaneously actually.  i texted my bff and told her and she immediately signed up. ("signed up" means she said "ok, i'll do it too!") over the course of the next few days before i started, a few other friends committed to their own variations of the theme.

and then, last night, right before i started, i added a challenge: a challenge that is way scarier than going to dinner or bars with my friends and watching them drink; way more horrifying than feeling left out of a social situation; much more terrifying than fomo.  i decided that i'd try to stop counting my calories for the next 40 days.

counting calories is something i've been doing some version of for 25 years.  i don't write everything i eat down anymore, and i don't keep track of each day's input and output now, but i still keep a running tally in my head every day.  i know that my usual breakfast has 450 calories.  i know i usually run 6 miles a day.  i know i usually have -250 going into lunch.  i check my daily mileage tracker regularly to see if i get to count extra calories as "burned."  i try to fit extra activity in where i can and automatically subtract it off my total consumed for the day.  ...the math is constant.

harlem street food, exhibit 1.

and it's also exhausting.  my brain gets quite consumed by this activity.  when i'm bored in a meeting, i recalculate for the day.  when i'm eating, i'm actually calculating calories. i can't concentrate on conversation at the dinner table until i've figured out the calorie count.

so i decided to experiment with letting it go--since i was getting clear.

today: i had my usual breakfast.  so i knew how many calories there were without having to do any work.  i ran an hour, and i knew how many calories i burned, so i didn't have to do the math.  it wasn't working.

so for lunch, i skipped usual options and went rogue.  i went to a cart on the street and bought a falafel pita: something that would've taken me several attempts and re-attempts until i decided which calorie total was closest to the truth.

while i was eating it, my brain actually tried to start adding things up.  SEVERAL TIMES.  so i pulled up an article and focused really hard on reading it while i was eating.  and then went right to the next task and kept yelling at myself: DO NOT THINK ABOUT HOW MANY CALORIES WERE IN THAT WRAP.

very occasionally, cat is calm.

i had a few more meetings.  i prepped for evening teaching.  i went to yoga.  i rushed back to teach and grabbed a snack en route.  i knew there were 250 calories in what i was eating, but i didn't know what to add it to.  i didn't know what my total was for the day. it hurt my brain not to think about it, but i pushed it away as i rushed into the classroom. 

i ate dinner watching tv. i kept quieting my mind.  but writing this is still quite an effort in non-addition.

however, it's 1am and i don't know my daily total.  i don't know if i'm "over" or "under" for the day.  the mental energy to not add, subtract, and re-calculate all day was almost equal to the amount of energy i would have expended doing so. i assume it will be easier tomorrow.

and, if it isn't, i'll just scratch cat behind the ears and think about  how much a glass of wine would help me forget about counting calories.

forget what you think you need

"forget what you think you need" was advice from gabby's "crazy sexy miracles" talk last night. when she said it, i really heard it. because i realized that the night before, that's exactly what had needed to happen: i got an email from my husband saying that he filed for divorce, and i freaked out.

i. was. hysterical.

i spent the evening talking to a bunch of friends about how i was feeling and why. but i was still feeling weird about it the next day. until i heard gabby say "forget what you think you need."

i thought i needed to be in control of this situation: i thought i was going to file; i thought i was taking care of things; i thought i was going to be the adult here. when i got that email, a little piece of my reality changed.

what i thought i needed was to take care of this situation myself.
but i realized this was actually another little miracle.
sometimes blessings can be hard to receive.

this whole move has been an exercise in acceptance; in letting go of control; of forgiving myself and my friends for stepping on each other's toes (matt, anthony: i love you both and greatly respect your ability to forgive!). and that last one relates straight back to forgetting what you think you need.

gabby on forgiveness: 1) lose your shit and allow yourself to be in it; 2) choose to forgive, to see the situation differently; 3) let it gently lift as it is ready; and 4) what you need will be given to you when you are ready.

but only when you forget what you think you need can you be open to receiving what you REALLY need.

i need this divorce. and here it is, on its way.

so now i'm just working on trusting ALL of the seeds that i've been busy planting. we make all these little steps and decisions each day. they are steps toward where we are now. and where we are now is on our way to that next place--that next miracle. and we have to trust ourselves. and trust in the next miracle that's just around the corner.

anthony lost his wallet just before coming to meet me for the miracles talk. we spent a while on the phone searching the apartment with no luck. eventually anthony thought to check his work voicemail (since he had one of his business cards in his wallet). and--miracle--someone had found his wallet, handed it in to the local post office, and they had notified him that they had it. *miracle*

this morning i went to elena's yoga class. elena is my favorite of all yoga teachers, and my life coach. i'm used to stalking her internationally to make it to her yoga classes, or doing them online. i'm used to skyping with her in the wee hours of the morning sydney time. but today, i got to just walk in to her yoga class--because now i live in new york. while flowing during class, elena instructed us to dive forward, taking our arms through prayer position.

all of the sudden i remembered a line from one of her online yogaglo classes: "you can swan dive or take your arms through prayer; i usually take my arms through prayer--i'm a new yorker and i'm used to PACKED yoga rooms!" and, right there in the middle of her real-live yoga class, i started crying. i looked around the packed room and realized that was me now. i was a new yorker. *miracle*

so yeah, there are miracles all around us all the time. i'm living one. sometimes i just need to forget what i think i need in order to realize it.

through your eyes

i was at a birthday party a couple of nights ago talking to a friend i don't see very often. he gave me a few compliments that were hard to hear--because they were so genuine and nice.

like SO nice. i kept saying "really?!" to things he was saying, and he kept saying "oh, come on, you know this; i'm sure your five best friends tell you this all the time!"

when i repeated these things back to kitty (still in disbelief), she said "umm, i tell you that ALL THE TIME!" oh. hmm.

three lessons here: 1) we don't tell our friends genuine things enough. 2) sometimes we may not hear or believe the things our very best friends tell us. 3) we often have no idea how others see us.

if you asked me how i see myself, this is what i would say: i'm just a girl.

sure, i know i am talented and have a lot of good qualities. but everyone has their own talents. and everyone has some great qualities. so i guess i just don't really feel that special most of the time. but it's really a strange thing to hear yourself described by someone else. luckily for me, it was also positive.

there's this old episode of "this american life" that i love so much i've listened to it a few times, and i never listen or watch things more than once. this episode is haunting, but amazing: it's called see no evil. the episode is all about pretending that things are ok and ignoring things that are uncomfortable--on personal, business, and national levels. in the first segment, there is a family struggling to see the bad in one of their loved ones. even when that something is really bad.

why is it that we can only see the most amazing things about our loved ones but we struggle to see those things in ourselves?

there's this exercise in gabby's 40 days book that has you look into the mirror and say things to yourself as if you were saying them to a best friend or lover. the exercise is quite confronting, and hard to get through. i've gone back to this a few times to try to get it "right." but it's always hard. (i dare you to try it.)

telling yourself those nice things, and believing them, is something that takes practice. we can do it on the mat or off. we can practice cultivating inner strength and power by breathing through a challenging yoga pose or by breathing through a difficult conversation.

after seeing kanye friday night, i taught a theme in yoga about stepping up to a stronger more powerful version of yourself: like believing SO MUCH in your inner strength and power. but not for ego reasons (yeah, i'm calling you on that one kanye). when we truly believe in ourselves, we can do more; we can give more; we can become more; we can inspire more.

we can manifest miracles.

and it's important to do. hard work... but super important.

practicing believing what i hear. love to you N for your words saturday night. i actually heard what you said. and it means a lot to me.

sharing the love back. words to KK you may need right now: you're smart, intelligent, genuine, kind, caring, loving, and loveable. to A going for a job interview later today: you're going to rock it. #nodoubts and to all y'all: you have it inside you too. xx

mid-journey

i've treated myself terribly.
i've believed things other people have said.
i've criticized and judged myself 24/7.
i've believed that i wasn't good enough, fast enough, thin enough, or sexy enough.
i've exercised excessively.
i've binged and purged.
i've severely restricted caloric intake.
i've abused alcohol ridiculously.
i've escaped through sex.

i've used every distraction.
i've ignored all of my internal signals.
i've relied on anything but my inner guide.

i'm forgiving my fears.
i'm accepting the intuitive guidance.
i'm squashing the anxieties with love: love for the entire journey.

miracles keep happening.

inner light bright

the world constantly amazes me. like things happen. and fall into place. and connect to each other. and then everything makes sense. and i wonder: how? how is it possible that all of this is interrelated?

the meditation of the day (in gabby's may cause miracles book) today was: "i am not my body; i am free." there was also some additional text suggesting to think of the inner-self, the spirit, the energy that resides inside, as light. so all day today, i thought of myself as light. instead of an academic going to work, i was light. instead of a commuter on the train, i was light. instead of a girl running with her friend, i was light. instead of a teacher offering yoga musings, i was light. instead of a body with a spirit inside, i was light.

the crazy part is that this worked. some of the near-constant body talk cycles in my head began to shift. i began to feel less anxious about my body; i stopped being overly critical; i even stopped judging other people's bodies.

and then this afternoon, an unsavory character made a rather lewd statement that i'm sure he interpreted as a compliment. not only was the comment rude, but it had the multiplied effect of crashing me back into my body, of disrupting the bright light i was channeling. i don't think i have ever been so angry at a complete stranger.

but, it was also another chance to practice my mantra for the day. so i went back to it. and i redoubled my efforts to believe it.

then, when teaching yoga class tonight, i offered this lesson back to my students. i instructed them to visualize their inner lights as the only form in the class for the evening. i languaged the class with inner cues: about softening, lengthening, finding space... but mostly about brightening that inner light. i gave up on form a little so that we could find true function.

the meditation i led at the end instructed them to go back to the beginning image, to inhale it brighter, and to exhale it expanding. the class really responded to the theme and teaching tonight, and i felt pretty damn bright as i left the yoga room.

so, i get home, have dinner, take a bath, and finally have a chance to do my own evening reflection. i open up may cause miracles (well, i wake up my kindle to may cause miracles) and look for this evening's instruction. guess what it was?

the exact imagery and instructions that i had led my yoga class in only a couple of hours before.

ummm. that's weird. i mean it's not out of the realm of possibilities entirely, but it kind of seems like a little miracle. as if i brightened my light enough to be more connected to the world, to be just a little more conscious, and to be able to anticipate and expect things that are possible from the world around me. look, i'm not saying i have a crystal ball here. but... still.

a course in miracles says "inside each of us is a spark of light. as we become aware of the light, it grows bigger and stronger." and i'm thinking that the bigger and stronger it gets, the more it connects to all the light around us. and that is enough of a miracle for me. because that is pretty fucking beautiful.

shine on.

i will trust in myself

yoga teacher confession: i can't do a handstand in the middle of the room.

i know how to teach it. i know how to help others in it. i can even hold a two minute handstand at the wall. but i can't handstand in the middle of the room. this has been a mystery to me for the past two years. but, yesterday, i figured it out.

it isn't about information. it isn't about strength. it's about not trusting myself: my intuition, my inner self.

and you know what? that sucks. because if it was just alignment, or strength, i would immediately know what to do to work on it. but trusting myself? hold up. that's hard work.

what's weird is that i thought i trusted myself. but maybe i lost a little bit of that somewhere. just last week someone said to me: "oh, that's great; you're learning to trust yourself!" i paused when i heard that, and thought, "am i? is that something i need to learn?" so when, in a yoga teachers' workshop yesterday, christina sell talked about the different things students may need to complete a yoga pose, and she mentioned "trust in self," it all clicked. that freaking handstand!! the missing ingredient is trust in myself.

yesterday a friend and his daughter were playing with me. they were showing off a trick they've been practicing: daddy on his knees, hands palm up. she stands on his hands, and he lifts her a few inches off the floor. in order to keep steady, the 3 year old needs to engage her core, use her balance, and... trust herself. sure, she wobbled a little, but she smiled the whole time... because she completely trusted herself.

i'm sure i trusted myself when i was young. my 3-year-old self would never stand for the negative self-talk and self-doubt that pervades my mind at times. she wouldn't understand where those thoughts came from. she would say, "STOP IT, SILLY!" because she would know that i'm whole. that i'm good enough. that i'm amazing. and that i shine.

i'm not sure where my self-trust went exactly; i can't really figure that out. and i don't know that that is even the important thing here. but i know i want to change it. i want to believe what the 3-year-old spring believed. so i will use my intuition: i am committing to trusting in it, to begin to follow it instinctively.

and then i will handstand in the middle of the room. maybe not tonight. maybe not tomorrow.

but maybe by the day after tomorrow. i just need a little practice.

**addendum. three days after writing this post, i came across elena's yogaglo class on trusting in yourself. it blew my mind, and is the perfect practice to share with you here. thank you, elena!

i choose, umm, the easier option, please?

imagine you're at a restaurant, and you're really hungry. you're provided with two equally-priced options: 1) you go pick all the ingredients up from the garden and store, bring them back to the restaurant, help prep them, help cook them, help set the table, and then you can eat the dinner. or, 2) you eat the exact same meal, but three hours sooner, since the restaurant has already done the prep-work for you.

well, i don't know about you, but if i'm really hungry, i'm going to choose option two. because it's easier. and just because i don't mind working for things, and i actually like cooking, that doesn't mean that i wouldn't choose the easier option in this situation. it seems to offer the same results with noticeably less time and effort.

while this analogy isn't perfectly aligned with life's choices, we can still find similarities. just because option two allows us to get to the result more quickly, there are potential trade-offs: by choosing option two, we've missed out on an experience, an opportunity. maybe we lost a chance to learn some new techniques or lessons. we probably wouldn't appreciate the final product as much either. so maybe option one seemed easier at the time, but maybe option two would have made many other situations easier in the future.

recently i had a really close friend tell me that she had liposuction about a year ago. she hadn't told anyone about it, but she was starting to shift some of her thinking around her experience, and she shared her experience with me. before i continue, let me set the scene: this is a young, beautiful, athletic woman. my sister once commented on a photo of this young woman saying something like "wow, she's beautiful! is she your friend??" additionally, she's in a loving relationship.

but, she suffers from some insecurities. before her surgery, her thinking patterns were telling her "you don't look good enough; the easiest way to change this is through a surgery." after the surgery however, she has come to realize that she took what she thought was the easiest option to make herself feel happier. it didn't work. because the option she chose wasn't the easy option. it wasn't the better option. it just seemed that way at the time.

in gabby bernstein's 40-day guidebook "may cause miracles", she says:

our fear-based minds believe that change is tough and self-reflective work is difficult. but let's face it: being consumed by fear is far more difficult than showing up for love--we're just tricked into thinking fear is "easier" because it's more familiar. when people at my lectures complain that change takes too much time and energy, my response is, "it takes a lot of time and energy to feel like crap, right?"

this excerpt reminded me of something one of my favorite yoga teachers, christina sell, said at a workshop once. she was talking about a relationship of hers. she said that she was thinking of ditching the relationship because she thought it would be easier than working through all of the hard stuff in the relationship. she received some advice from one of her teachers that said something to the effect of "think of how hard and painful it will be to end this relationship."

no option is ever really and truly easy. but for some reason we trick ourselves into thinking that the fearful responses are easier. personally, i love to avoid things. my go-to move when something sounds difficult or time-consuming is to simply distract myself with something else. i don't know what i expect to happen: that the situation will just sort itself out? that someone else will take care of it? that a magician will appear with a wand to make it disappear? secretly, yeah, i guess i'm constantly keeping my fingers crossed for my fairy godmother to appear.

but, since, let's face it, that isn't an entirely realistic option, i've started to do some work to address this fearful thinking. as i've started doing this work, i've discovered it's much easier than i expected it to be. i've been addressing things that i haven't addressed in over a year: contacting people to sort things out; being honest and open with people that i thought wouldn't accept me if i had those conversations with them.

and yeah, gabby, it DOES take a lot of energy to keep fighting myself, to put myself down, to feel judged. so why in the heck would i want to continue to do it? (umm, i don't.) those habitual responses seem easier, since i'm so accustomed to them. but they aren't necessarily easier. and they most certainly aren't better.

in the yoga class i taught tonight, we practiced identifying these options on our yoga mat. yeah, it seems easier to let the floating leg just hang out and relax. because we think "relaxing is easier than working." but really, as experienced yogis know, "a tight leg is a light leg." and then we meditated about being open to seeing different options, the non-habitual responses, in our everyday lives. if you're a yogaglo subscriber (or wanna try a free sample membership), here's a good centering meditation by elena brower to try to start to bring you in to this frame of mind.

i'm re-wiring. i don't want the anxious avoidance to be ever-present in my life. i want to choose love. i want to be there, happy and calm, to see what happens when i consistently choose love. will it be harder? will it be easier?

who cares? it will be better.