TOTAL BODY LOVE – I dream for the day I can look in the mirror and truly love and accept what I see. I hope that for all of you beautiful people one day! NAMASTE ~ DL
The Goal Is “Total Body Love” Our constant companion “OUR BODY” arrives with us at Birth and leaves with us when we Die. Our body is a Container, a Teacher, a Guide for our personality and soul. Only inner work will change how we feel about our outer container, our body. My advice for myself […]
All I know is it feels good to cry that hard. It’s like cleaning the leaves out from the gutters. If the leaves sit there too long, they weigh on the metal and hurt the house. ― Natalie Taylor Below is the original photo used to create this image. At a rest area on […]
It’s really hard for me to let the tears out. I find myself pushing them down, promising to feel them another day when it’s more convenient. The therapeutic properties of a “good cry” can’t be ignored…
Part of people’s fear of writing comes from not “knowing what to write about”. We all have something to write about. Not all of us are willing to be vulnerable in the way you have to be in order to get it down on paper. Some people can’t deal with the shame they feel at having done such and such thing or the anger they have at so and so person.
Actually, writing it out helps me process it and relieves me of the stress it has caused. Even if I’m having trouble forgiving someone, putting it on paper does not exonerate that individual, but I can free myself of the burden that person is unknowingly leaving on me….
This is the form of therapy that we benefit the most, as bloggers. If we think about it, that’s why the writers write. They want to express what’s inside them and this eases their inner universe. The ideas or the pain get out and once the separation happened, the writers feel relieved. A […]
All-Green Zentangle – Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Medium: colored pencil
Just two mats side-by-side on the uneven mixture of grass and pine needles. We can see the bubbling brown stream and hear the honks of the geese and chatter of the mallards. It’s Saturday, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, so a few others join us at the city park. For the most part, it’s quiet and the only other sounds are distant or the quick passing of disk-golf players. The wind is a bit nippy but when the breeze stops, we are kissed by sun rays warm enough to make the top of my head sweat. Lifting our arms up to thank the sun for giving us such a beautiful day, we gaze up at the brilliant blue sky. Then we bow to a standing forward-fold. Half-way lifting brings our spine to a straight line all the way to the neck. Now we plant our hands and step our legs bank – plank pose. After lowering our stomachs to the mats, we use the strength of our upper backs to rise up – cobra pose. Next, we push ourselves up into downward-facing dog and hold it for five slow breaths. When our breaths are complete, we step back to the tops of our mats to meet in a forward fold again. With another wave of the half way lift, we rise all the way up. Our fingers reach for the sun before we bring our hands to heart-center.
After a long winter, that was my first time doing yoga outside in months. Although chilly, it was the perfect day for Dante and I to go. The park wasn’t terribly busy with park-goers, and, even though the parking spots were mostly filled by people attending the children’s soccer tournament, we found a decent spot. The busy lots must have deterred other people from coming. That, and maybe the fact it was the day before the holiday. Either way, after a light lunch while watching the birds on the water and our five sun salutations, we went for a mile-long walk on the trail. If it wasn’t obvious before, we don’t get out a lot. About half-way through, we started getting winded and I began sweating under the protection of my sweatshirt. We still had tons of fun finding big sticks to use like Gandalf and walking in the fresh air. Bikers passed. Runners. Other walkers with dogs. Some with children. I remember thinking multiple times when they walked by, “Now that’s a person who’s got it all figured out.” Resisting the urge to go into the entire backstory, I will quickly add that this basically means to me that “they (whoever I’m looking at) have no money problems nor intimacy troubles. They have a great relationship with their parents. They are way ahead of me.”
All this while I’m trying to have a walk in the park.
Not everyone gives me this impression, nor do I have to see someone with diamonds and gold wearing a fur coat to bring it on. Sometimes, it’s just a woman wearing a scarf. A man with sunglasses pushing a stroller. Someone walking into a store while I, myself, lack money at the moment. These are the people I live around…my peers? Yet I feel so different from them, so isolated. Like my life is worse than everyone else’s. As if I’m the worst bill-payer, worst dressed, the laziest person in the world. If I learned one thing from my time in the hospital, it’s that I’m not alone. Just in my area, there were twenty people plus in my ward and three others just like it in the hospital. Others had wait times and had to transport some of their patients to the ones with open beds.
So no, we are not alone.
Chances are, if I’m thinking in terms of “worst” (and other absolutes/generalizations/extremes) I am being manipulated by my anxiety. If I’m thinking of terms of “better than”, I’m only comparing myself to others, which will only lead to further depression. That’s never healthy. We are all following different journeys. We have our own thin “threads” connecting us to this Earth and they may cross and entangle with many others. Seeing these happy people at the park, doesn’t mean they are the happiest people on the planet – that they have no worries in the world and “have it all figured out”. For all I knew, they could have been looking right back at me and thinking the same thing when they saw my grin as I passed by with my big stick in my left hand and Dante’s left hand in my right.
Better a king in the gutter,’ he said, ‘than a slave in an emperor’s palace.’ ― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki Below is the original photo used to create this image. I found this drain on a sunrise walk around my neighborhood. No special lighting or retouching, just a snap from my smart phone.
This is really something I am working on now… New look coming to the blog soon.
In the search of creating a post, I stumbled across this video that reminded me something I often forget: perfection is a self-imposed standard impossible to achieve. But we all want to achieve it in whatever we do. It’s healthy to strive for perfection, but it’s not healthy to expect to achieve it. […]
