Yoga: Home Grown Delivery Wisdom
Every Thursday we get a delivery from Homegrown. They deliver to us a beautiful box of local-ish super fresh vegetables, eggs and bread. They use hardly any plastic and produce is delivered in a wooden box. Each week, I have to remember to put the empty box out before the next delivery. This used to cause me anxiety but not any more.
I used to have to put the box in the middle of the sunroom days before so that I would remember to leave it out. I’d write a note days before to remember. I’d ask my partner to remind me (and blame him when I forgot). My life was so busy and crammed and uncomfortable that I felt like a tornedo on a calm day. Some days I’d be the house that gets destroyed in the middle of my own tornedo. I was constantly sick and constantly fell apart.
I don’t need to put the box in the middle of the sunroom anymore. Or write a note. Or blame my partner. The night before our delivery, a little thought pops into my mind to put the box out. How does that work? Where did that thought come from? And why wasn’t it there before?
Thanks to my own yoga practice I have room for the kind of life I want. I am so much more aware of how I feel. I know when to slow down, when to say no. Fundamentally, yoga is a leap of faith that I am not just my thoughts or my mind. I am also not just my body. I can’t be, because those things change. So what is the part of me that does not change, yet dictates every cell and waking or sleeping moment? And ultimately changes what I do, say and feel?
Some talk about it as connecting with soul, consciousness, cosmic energy. I don’t connect to whatever it is in that way. But I do know something else exists other than stress, clutter and feeling uncomfortable; even other than happiness.
Through the regular practice of the non-doing space of gentle yoga and meditation (yoga’s true purpose) I’ve noticed many things.
This is what yoga (especially MindRest) practice has done for me and the things I’ve noticed in my life now:
How my mind looks for conflict when it has some space
My mind’s negativity bias is not to be believed
It is easier to fill in space than feel what I feel
When I’m triggered I still want pizza but I don’t always order it
When I keep up my yoga practice I am kinder and nicer to be around
I have found something I am good at that does not cause me stress
I understand my past more and can curate my future
I am free to live life with more peace and wisdom.
The positive affects of yoga cannot be grasped with our minds, because that’s what gets us into trouble in the first place! Yoga is a practice. You have to actually do it. You have to do it regularly and retrain the brain. The more you do it, the more you want to, and the longer you’ll stay there. It’s like 1 + 1 = 2. I promise.
One of my favourite yoga nidra lines is everything that cannot be done by your doing, can happen only the non-doing presence of your being: from I AM Yoga Nidra training.
We may still get triggered but we can soften our responses; we may fall down but we get up with new knowledge about ourselves; we wobble and find steadiness at the same time; we can feel our breathe expand our life.
And Yoga is for every body, You don’t need to go to a gym or wear fancy tights. You don’t need to be flexible or able to sit and meditate (yet!) You can be messy and grumpy and outraged and struggle to leave your house. Yoga is how you work with your mind, right now, whatever is showing up.
Yoga creates a more natural way of being in the world because it allows us to make space for our good old homegrown wisdom.