When I woke up this morning I was a little sluggish – not necessarily tired, but unmotivated and a bit anxious. I knew morning pages and some meditative readings would be a good place to begin turning this day around. Praying for others and giving gratitude began to restore my energy. Then, once again, there, right in front of me, appears exactly what I needed when I needed it.
The reading for today, by Melody Beattie, was entitled Surviving Slumps: June 26. I was amazed. She said:
“In a slump we may find ourselves reverting instinctively to old patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, even when we know better.”
When I hit a slump, the thing that scares me is that I will revert back to those old patterns and that’s what causes my anxiety – because the thing I don’t ever want to do is revert back to how I was feeling one year ago. As I read further, she wrote the saving words:
“We’re in a slump. It won’t last forever. These days are normal, even necessary. These are the days to get through.”
Then later on in the passage she gave the key to getting through these days:
“I will remember that acceptance, gratitude, and detachment are a good place to begin.”
Everyone of us has off days. We wake up, much like I did today, in a slump for no reason at all. We must not try to shrug it off. We must pay attention to how we feel and attend to it. Feeling our feelings is essential to changing them and letting them pass through us. Not attending to them will cause them to hang around a lot longer than we’d like, causing undue anxiety.
By the time I got to yoga I was smiling and my spring was back in my step. I now know there is no going back to last year. Last year I never would’ve been able to recover that spring, that quickly.
In class, the instructor brought up things this practice spent all last year teaching me. Do the very best I can do today. It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect. It’s not how many times you fall out of a pose, it’s how many times you get back in it. Do the best you can with the body to have today.
Once again, how perfect was the timing for the things I needed to be reminded of this very morning. It still continues to amaze me how the same 26 postures can continue to teach and heal completely different things within me each day. It proves we really are brand new and unique when we wake up everyday, and we need to attend to, care for, and be loving with ourselves.
And so, as another day goes by, it’s life practice, not life perfect, and…I have written.
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