A box of happiness

This morning one of my friends told me that he put a postcard I sent him in his keepsake box, a box that he goes to for positivity when he feels down. I was touched by the sentiment. But, I also felt a twinge of excitement, like one might feel on Christmas Eve. A box of happiness, I thought… what an amazing thing to have!

I want happiness in a box. Some happiness I can access when I need it, happiness that I can take from as I please. I don’t expect to always just be able to find it; I would pay for it, especially if it was packaged in a pretty box with a pretty ribbon. And, because I’m a good shopper, I would naturally find it on sale and score a great bargain. And I would buy some for all of my friends. Imagine my popularity!

But, of course, as a yogini, I have to say all that I need I already have. No shopping required: it’s inside of me. The happiness is there, waiting to be accessed.

But if that’s really true, why is it so hard sometimes? I’ve been particularly stressed for the past couple of months: lots of visiting with friends, sandwiched between lots of travel, smothered with lots of work and conferences. That recipe of busy has left me feeling really depleted and like I don’t have any happiness for myself, much less any to offer to share with my friends, family, or yoga classes. I haven’t even blogged (ack!).

Hearing from my friend this morning that my postcard meant so much was a reminder: I do have that reserve inside, and apparently I am sharing it, even at times when I may not realize or remember it. In fact, recalling the short conversation with my friend ignites a spark of happiness in my heart. And deep down I know that my heart has endless happiness contained within it.

Now, to figure out how to unwrap the rest of it.

The more I think about it, though, even my friend’s box of happiness was coming from within. I mean, after all, he was using tangible things to remind him of happiness he had previously experienced. So certainly tangible reminders can work to tap into happiness stores. And I found that spark while remembering the conversation I had this morning. So reminders of warm conversations with friends can find some happiness.

But I want to take these sparks and stoke them. I want to be warmed by the fire of my happiness, not just reminded of it.

So my challenge for my next yoga practice (two hours from now!), and your next yoga practice, whether it’s today or next week, 10 minutes or 90 minutes: start with a morsel of happiness. Focus on that bit of happiness and remember how your heart felt, how your body felt, how you felt during that time. Spend a few minutes focusing on the warmth of that happiness.

Then, use that as your intention for your practice. Offer that small kernel as a beginning. And then? Explore. Open. Begin to unwrap. Keep searching. Offer a little more warmth to yourself as you need it throughout your practice.

Find the inner box of happiness. Open it! And then maybe try to share a little with others you encounter.

Loving

Why is it so hard to remember how awesome we are? I saw a post today that I loved, because it was in-your-face awesomeness! (CLICK HERE!)

As I was pondering my own and my friends' forgetfulness as to our awesomeness levels, I was thinking about how easy it is to get sucked into all the things going on around us: the media messages, the emails, the jobs we take on, etc. If I lived in a small, transient community, 2000 years ago, would I get sucked into those dynamics and forget myself? Somehow, I doubt it. 

So far I've had a beautiful, though not typical Valentine's Day. I connected to my sister living abroad via a Skype yoga session this morning, I chatted with a few friends that I've been missing on Skype and gchat this afternoon, and I saw a friend tonight before my yoga class, who gave me a lovely flower. where's my husband in all of this? Stuck in bed, sick. We celebrate our love often, so I'm not too upset about missing a dinner this one day of the year. But I do plan on pampering him whenever he is awake enough for it. 

In my yoga class tonight, I focused on loving ourselves. And I think there could not have been a more perfect audience. Most of the people who attended class tonight were single, and most of them came to yoga to be kind to themselves. The response I got from the self-love focus was amazing; I could see people brightening and warming throughout the practice.

It's on a day where we celebrate love where we should reflect on our own self-love (and, before you ask, no, I don't mean that self-love... this time). We don't have a specific day dedicated to expressing our own awesomeness, but it should be part if our daily to-do list. So go ahead, give yourself a hug, and a smile, and maybe even a little treat. You deserve it! xo

Amazingness

Our bodies are so freaking amazing. I wasn't feeling that way earlier today, but then I started thinking about my heart, and how I wanted to strengthen it: for me, for those I love.

Then I made this heart. This heart is a heart that is flexing its muscle. The lines, colors, and cord in it are the growing strength. The whiteness in the center is the openness within the heart. And the glitter is highlighting that space, because that space within the strength is something that I value so much.

Thinking about my heart and making this heart started me thinking about the rest of the insides of my body. Even when I connect to my body, I often forget about everything else that is going on inside. Skin, muscles, and even bones are relatively easy to connect to, especially in yoga.

But there are all these crazy organs and blood vessels and veins and nerves and hormones and neurotransmitters... et cetera! And somehow they all balance each other and continue to work to support us, even when they're ignored. That's my body loving me from the inside.

My body is loving me from the inside out. Even when I forget to love it, I know it's loving me.

Retreating into my Heart Space

Retreating is a funny word. People often think of running away, hiding, giving up, and defeat. And yet, we also go on retreats to relax, have fun, and enjoy ourselves. To retreat or to go on retreat? It seems like an odd question, one that isn't part of our every day lives. But, in reality, it's a question we're constantly faced with: to fear or embrace? To surrender to someone else or to surrender to our own needs? It's so hard to remember, but we always have the choice.

I went on a yoga retreat this past weekend in beautiful wilderness where I got to spend time with lovely people and a fantastic teacher, do about 10 hours of yoga, watch my husband deepen his practice, and remember to feel the strength in my own. I relaxed. I had fun. I enjoyed myself.

But, I also panicked a little here and there. Surrendering to my body's needs and giving it a chance to grow, recover, and balance was hard. Mainly because I have trained myself for several years to ignore everything my body tells me. Foot hurts? Keep running! Stress fracture from running too much? Swim every day! Tired from so much time on crutches and in the water? Don't give up teaching fitness classes! Perhaps you can imagine how my crazy mind gets slightly more insane when it is put out of its comfort zone. When I listen to my body instead of ignoring it, I sometimes get uncomfortable with what it tells me.

But it is a lesson that I desperately want to learn. When I think of that higher, brighter, best version of myself, I visualize a loving person who shows compassion to everyone around her, but, most of all, to herself. Practicing compassion on the mat is becoming easier and easier. I don't feel the need to bind every time I do a twist, or to do a long exhausting practice when I'm already feeling overly tired. Showing compassion toward myself in the rest of my life is way freaking hard, though.

So I went on retreat and focused on practicing that compassion. I practiced and practiced and practiced. When I went for a run in 100 degree heat, I stopped after 15 minutes because it was too hot. Compassion, right? Sure, maybe the best-me wouldn't have forced herself outside in the first place, but it's better than before (I promise, it is). Baby steps into my heart. Baby steps into surrender. Baby steps retreating.

Moderating and Transforming Intensity

Bad things happen; bad things can make us feel like sh*t; shitty feelings can be very intense. And you know what? Those feelings can be very, very UNcomfortable.

So what do we do with intense uncomfortable feelings? I meditated about this earlier this week after my mind felt unable to deal with some seemingly unreasonable anger. After meditation and then an intense, forceful asana practice, I came to the conclusion that yoga has an important lesson about this: moderate the intensity to turn the intensity around!

Pushing too hard in asana practice counteracts the surrender that is necessary in some part of the pose. But we can moderate the push that we feel the need to force out into the world. Energy is energy, but energy can move and change. Just as in asana, the flow of energy can support us or work against us; that energy working against us is the same energy that supports us. If we want to transform negative emotional energy, we can sit with it, experience it, and offer ourselves compassion and love. As we offer compassion toward our negativity, we find the power of transforming it. And the more we practice the transformation, we can turn that intense negativity into intense positivity--joy, love, compassion, and kindness. INTENSE joy, love, compassion, and kindness!

It sounds kinda simple and easy, and also kinda ridiculous. Which might be why I like it. I think, "yeah, that makes sense" while simultaneously thinking "that is incredibly impossible." But if you find that you can believe the first half of the statement, even a little, then your mind is open enough for it to work. Practice the transformation of energy on the mat, and find it ripple through your life.

I took that anger and transformed it, flipped it, and experienced some lovingkindness. It wasn't quite as intense as the anger was, but I know I've got more time to keep practicing. Which is a little more positivity.

Intentions

I'm running a workshop series over three weekends to LOVE YOUR BODY. We all treat parts of our bodies poorly at some time, whether it is through food, alcohol, drugs; by being inactive; or by being inauthentic in expression toward others. But just because we've done these things in the past doesn't mean we need to keep doing them! The theme of the first workshop of the series was "Shifting Perspectives," which we did literally by focusing on inversions.

Shifting our perspectives for this next journey around the sun; what a worthwhile intention! What a hard goal.

Coming home from the workshop, I felt uplifted, light, and grateful for the time that both I and the workshop participants had spent upside down. (Yes, I'm obsessed with inversions. But it's one of those healthy addictions, right?!) But, at the same time, I felt a little anxious. What was I thinking? I felt a little like an impostor. I've certainly come a long way in my yoga and body love journey. But I'm not "there." I'm not totally shifted. In fact, the evening after the workshop, I felt positively disgusted with my body, following a mini post-dinner binge on pretzels and licorice.

But, reflecting on the workshop and my own experiences, it's the intention that matters. I love that word so much. I think it's so much more positive than "goal" or "aim" because there is no opportunity to fail with an intention. Merriam-Webster days that an intention is "a determination to act in a certain way" ... contrasted with goal's definition: "the end toward which effort is directed." Since an intention is open-ended, there is no timeline. There is no deadline. There is only space. Space to practice that intention and continue to work on it. I have my whole life to practice yoga, and my whole life to live with my intentions. So, I return to my intention.

... Wait for it...

One of things I have the most trouble with is one of the things I love the most about this world: that nothing ever stays the same. I’ve blogged about this before, but I have to remind myself of it so often, that I think it’s worth blogging about again. I know that all things are in a state of flux, but some days it’s hard to remember it. Sometimes things seem terrible, and it seems if they will always be that way. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had some hard days—not due to any external events, mostly just internal craziness. Yoga teaches us to be patient and endure when a difficult situation arises, rather than react.

Being patient is hard! But being patient for long enough brings change and the time and space to find contentment. There will always be something else we feel that we need; some other thing that we are waiting for that will bring the happiness we expect. But if we instead are patient and content with what we have, we can find the fulfillment that is already there.

I can’t help thinking that patience is one of the hardest lessons to learn. We strive for instant gratification. We are used to fast food, instant messaging, and lightening fast replies to emails. Waiting isn’t something that is valued in our society. We get angry when we see the line at the post office: we panic about what will be lost, what won’t be completed, and what we will have to sacrifice. Instead we should savor those moments—those times when we can practice our patience. We can gain something, find some completion, and surrender to the experience.

Patience is what will get us through. Because things are always changing. And if you can’t find the internal fulfillment just yet, don’t worry. Just be patient.