My first home grown, red cabbage.
It’s 9pm and I am filling up my daughter’s new hiking water bladder. I am struck with the realisation that I was actually about to embark on something I did not imagine I was physically capable of. I was not one that easily imagined I could jog a 5km trail with others, let along inspire my 9 year old daughter to join in.
I am going to presume that you have read this kind of fact many times before, the fact that we never believe we are enough. Like my image of the dissected homegrown cabbage, we never feel whole. This core belief holds us back in life and makes it feel almost impossible for us to gain a sense wholeness.
When I was in high school I was moderately active. I shied away from too much sport and left it to those girls that “looked the part”. I certainly did not look “sport worthy” if you know what I mean. I did not focus on what my body could do and instead chose to focus on everything I thought my body couldn’t do. When doing any kind of exercise I would be overwhelmed by the uncomfortable feeling of my thighs rubbing together and my breathing was all over the place. Late in life I would be told by my doctor I have asthma. Those that appeared to enjoy sport did not look like me, or so I believed.
Like many others, I have learnt from years of a poor diet, out of balance work/lifestyle, incessant social media addiction and a lack of movement that the body/mind can only take on so much stress.
When our nervous system struggles to cope with daily stressors efficiently, it loses its strength/tone, just like a muscle does. This results in a nervous system that predominantly functions in sympathetic overdrive, inhibiting the body and mind’s ability to rest, rebuild, fight off viruses, not to mention efficiently digest food and daily experiences. Anxiety, depression, insomnia to name just a few classic symptoms which we experience with this state of being.
Over the last two decades of practicing yoga, including asana (poses), breath work (pranayama) and meditation, it has given me a safe framework to navigate my own well-being and mindset challenges. My biggest realisation was the fact that I have a deep sense of never feeling good enough. I could write an entire article about it! Once I began to “shine a light” on this deeply seeded belief, I started to see how my daily habits stemmed from this subtle but consistent message.
In yogic philosophy habits, patterns of behaviour and/or layers of thought are called samskaras. Just like the famous line in the first Shrek movie where Shrek says to Donkey, ” layers Donkey, Ogres have layers!” This is a light hearted reference to the ancient concept that we all have psychological layers and that we also possess the ability to slowly “strip” these layers away revealing a sense of stillness, peace, a sense of divine that exists within each of us.
Seeking that deep sense of stillness, the kind that many ancient philosophical texts have spoken of for thousands of years, has become a little more accessible as my yoga practice matures. This has extended into shaping the way I perceive my body and exercise. Instead, I now see exercise as a movement practice that offers a beautiful opportunity for learning more about oneself.
So back to me standing in my kitchen on the eve of a trail run, filling up my daughter’s water bladder, preparing for a trail run, I am struck with the realisation that our thoughts have so much power over us.
When we begin to question our thoughts, become more curious of their self depreciating themes, we may find they are outdated and most often not true. Maybe, just like I have experienced, this self enquiry may lead you a little closer to connecting to that deep sense of stillness within.
