An Ex-Yoga Teacher on Aging and Fat Tissue

Addressing the Body

I've always been athletic. The only place I found validation for my athletic body was in a gym. Gym owners loved my sprinter's thighs and I worked on my upper body to get it in balance with the rest of me. Remember, this was before Madonna made biceps fashionable. 

I trained for fitness competitions when I was in my twenties and walked around on stage in a bikini flexing my muscles. 

I loved athletic yoga. I have spent half my life in a gym training. I really enjoy it. And I am sure one day, when the time is right, I will go back and start training again.

But at the moment I'm a stay at home mother who has deleted most of the exceptionally beautiful yoga instagramers from her phone because it makes her depressed to see everyone in great shape while she is sitting with rolls of fat and her thighs rubbing together. I thought it would be inspiring, and its not. It's just irritating. 

I especially used to follow a woman who has three little children and a flat ironing board stomach and she used to say 'no excuses!' and shout it at the camera and I was honestly terrified. I only felt more shame for my inability to get on top of my weight gain. I happily unfollowed her and have been feeling remarkably better. 

Moving from Fear into Acceptance

We all know the drill. Face your fears. Just do it. It's so common that it's trade marked. But that doesn't mean it's not true.  I have posted a few pictures of my stomach and I aim to continue posting pictures of my body, not necessarily just the parts I'm uncomfortable with, but all of it. It's ok. It's just a photo. It's not me. I can not be defined by a few rolls of fat. Even though I was living in total fear of them.

Ever since I posted the first picture, and facebook tells me thousands of people have seen it,  I feel liberated. I feel fantastic. The other day I was walking through our town and a few heads turned to check me out, and I let my stomach out, and felt it wobble and thought yeah, and with a belly. That's right. Check it out! It was really funny. I surprise myself. I had no idea how much I cared about my extra jiggle. 

Archetypal Shift

I'm big into archetypes and I like to read about them and talk about them in a way to help understand what is going  on. And during December I went through a conscious archetypal shift. I went from fear to fun, in one night.

I was living in 'used to be' land. That is, I used to be a fitness professional. I was a teacher, instructor and I felt a lot of responsibility to maintain that image. And every day I was failing. I was getting fatter and less fit and resenting my life changes because I wasn't being the best I could be. Yes, that's my perfectionist! 

Once I realised what was happening, I turned to my self and said, give it up. Just stop. You are not a fitness professional any more. You are not a yoga teacher. You are a stay at home mother who has a few classes here and there. Just give it up. And I cried. And I felt grief. And the next day I woke up feeling wonderful, and it was the beginning of facing my fears.

I didn't have to struggle to be perfect any more and I could be just a fat bottomed mum, just like everyone else. It is wonderful. No more judgement and expectations. And I have my sense of humour back, my sense of fun and wonder. My writer re-emerged. And here I am blogging again! I love my writer! She's interested in the world, she's fun to be with, she wants to be engaged in life and talk about things and explore deep issues. My yoga teacher wants discipline and practice, and if you fail her, she's constantly disappointed and frustrated. And that's how I spent the last 6 years of my life. 

Being a sad, disappointment to myself. And feeling everything was in my way of being where and who I was suppose to be. 

Let's get something clear. I still teach. I still practice when I can, and I still give talks. But I am not going to be dominated by that dictator in my mind who thinks she knows better than I do.

No. 

First and foremost at this time in my life, I am a mother. And I tell you right now that I am turning to embrace this wonderful experience. I will not spend another minute of my life wishing for something that I do not have. I embrace this life. I welcome it. And these are not just words. This is what is alive in me. But I did have to let the other one go. Before the new could come in to take it's place.

And I won't be in 'Mother' for ever, but I am now, and I am so happy for the shift. I'm happy for this opportunity, I'm happy for not bringing my daughter up to feel that she was in the way of my dreams. No. She is in my dreams. Actually, literally. This is a post from 2008 about dreaming of Lydia!! Just saw it today and was seriously amazed. 

Thank you.

Merging Between Worlds

Its here. My spirit has found its home. I have one foot on either side of the door. I don’t know for how long, or when it will change, or if I can do this again tomorrow –

But I do know that its here. All of the little hints, the glimpses, the peek show’s into the possibilities of what is around the corner have lead to this moment.

I have waited so long for this. When the inner world gains the upper hand over the outer. When I can feel and trust the inner as more important and more vivid and real than the illusion of the outer. I have known it, I have read about it, I have talked about it – but I have never felt it like this.

Today, as I was walking down the street looking at the concrete, the cigarette butts, the lined faces of the people, it disappeared and I felt the warm glow from within, and my vision changed. Keeping my eyes low, I could feel, on a cellular level, the joy emanating from me and all around me. The animating force of the universe literally jumping for joy in creation.

Everything is permeated with this ‘stuff’ called chi, or energy, or prana. Its movement is known to many. I’ve seen it at times, I’ve felt it at times, but nothing like today.

In a blink of an eye I was moving between two worlds. The concrete as drab, the concrete as bliss. It was just the outer coating, like the autumn jackets on the people. Nothing more. The sad faces, the defeated bodies, its just a coating for the most miraculous creation.

So, I picked up my son from school and I made lunch, and I took him back to school again, and I did my afternoon meditation and

Wham! The spirit of my body crept in and took full possession. I’ve never felt it before. Every cell glowing. The power, the glow, the life. And gratitude! The thanks for letting us use the flesh, for seeing with the eyes, for eating, for looking and learning, the gratitude is immense.

And back again. With the constant weight within my chest – the reminder of the pulse of the universe within each of us. Look with the eyes of love. It reminds me that one of the first gifts that Tara gave me last year was pink open roses for the eyes. Look with the eyes of love.

A Prayer of Acceptance and Love

Dear God,

Forgive me for interfering in your plans for me. I know that when I assert myself, I deviate from the highest good.

Forgive me for fulfilling 'my' wants, instead of yours.

I know, that if I trust you 100%, you will deliver to me my highest good, in what ever form that will take. I trust that right now, given all the circumstances, my highest good is trying to manifest.

Dear God, give me the grace to give in to you and to feel safe in your hands.

Let me bless this day, because it is a gift.

Let me see the beauty in all, because it is You.

When I struggle to find the answer, please remind me that You are all I need to answer all questions. When my mind struggles to find the answer, remind my heart it is only with faith, endurance, love and compassion that I can find the answer within.

Let me feel gratitude for everything in my life right now. Because it is.

Amen

For Sarah

Embracing the Feminine

There are some definitive moments when I consciously moved from the androgenous into the feminine space. It was less like embracing and more like being an aggressive driver of a dodgem car.

I was 30 when I started to wear ‘pretty’ clothes, or clothes that flattered the figure. That’s not to say I have never worn them before, but I made a conscious decision to enhance my figure with clothing. That is, I wanted to change my outer image from tomboy/sports person to feminine and attractive. Yes. I wanted to be seen as attractive. I was going to manipulate my image. I felt a certain dirtiness in doing this. Its the same fear of 'wonderbras' that I have had. Pretending you have something you don't.

I bought my first pair of jeans and they were tighter than any pants I’ve worn before. I bought a pair of semi high heels and tops that fitted into the figure and didn’t cover my bottom. Wearing these things all together was a challenging experience. I was self conscious and embarrassed and knew that I had to do this to myself because I had daggers of judgement towards girls who dressed like this every day.

I had to embrace what I disliked so that I could stop to dislike it.

My problem with women started when I was born. My mother’s stories were that my father wanted a boy child. I was strong from the moment I was born. Small but strong, flexible, always awake, hardly eating, good natured, observant and climbing everything.

My father used to hang me from the door way with just my fingers curled into the frame at 6 months old.

I wanted to be a boy. I thought I was a boy. I wasn’t emotional. I disliked pink. I hated dolls and dresses.

I resented bras and bows and fluffy fancy things.

Women were weak. They cried and were dramatic. They were victims, shadows, manipulators, trappers of men, using their intelligence to trap and fool men.

Why did I think these things? Just watching the interactions of my parents, of the world around me. I had so much hate towards females in general.

The silliness, the giggling, the talk of boys, the concern for their hair, the preciseness of their pencil boxes.

It didn’t help that I was considered ‘plain’ and had a figure that was described as ‘straight up and down’, that my thighs were so big from running I couldn’t fit into normal sized pants and had to wear sport clothes, that my face was freckled and my mother adored clear beautiful skin, where my hair was wavy and brown and my mother loved thick black curly hair, that my mother thought the perfect waist was one you could put to hands around and actually, I didn’t have a waist. And so forth and so on.

I used to go swimming at 6 – 7 am twice a week and have competition on Sunday. I used to go to athletics training twice a week and have competition on Saturday. I used to jog for 45 minutes every morning that I wasn’t swimming with the local surf club. That was when I was 8.

In my thirties I took a shot of vodka, then another one, and then I went to my first belly dance class with my good friend Mitra. A class that changed my life. A class I was so afraid of – to move the body freely. To move the hips. To shake the shoulders. To let the hair be free. To embrace the female body with its curves and beauty.

I felt my feet pound the floor to the drums – and it was awakening the female power from below. My feet pounded on the door to our great Mother. My hips moved in circles – winding, calling, and invoking the snake goddess of dreams and darkness. My arms and hands moved out into the space around me and felt the energy of light. I became darkness interacting with light. Light was my medium.

I went home to Australia and made my peace with the black and the white. I gave my tears of sorry to the despair, and I gave my bowing and forgiveness to the arrogance. I took the earth into me and felt her release her floodgates of love. She had always loved me. I just didn't know it. I had to release my own hates and unhappinesses. To feel the Mother's love, you have to let go. You have to clean the inner self.

I moved here, to Catalonia, to a place that is blessed by the Virgin of Montserrat. The virgin of the serrated mountain. The Black Madonna. Its where I have come, to place my roots down into the earth, and to make a home. My first home where I can leave my things and travel to other places without selling/giving away all of my possessions as I have done three times before.

The Mother Earth – the continual healing, the continual giving, the continual renewal – without end. We scream at her, and she gives us food. We hit her, and she gives us sunsets of such beauty we think we will die. We destroy her ornaments and she gives us flowers.

Its time to grow up. To stop the tantrums. To turn to her and embrace her with love and gratitude. For everything thing the Mother represents. For everything the female represents. For everything.

And this does not mean we are against the Father. Not at all. It just means, we are for the mother. When she is strong, and has been awakened, we can allow the sacred meeting of the father and mother to take place within each of us. The light, the darkness. The rational and the irrational. The waking and the dreaming. The mountain and the valley.

Thank you to my mother, thank you to my Grandmothers, thank you to my sisters, thank you to my father, thank you to my first female friends, thank you to Mitra, thank you to Sevika, thank you to Sarah, thank you to Geir, thank you to Anders, thank you to Jett, thank you to Katrine, thank you to my brother, thank you to Albert, thank you to Elizabeth, thank you to our dear Mother and thank you to Ordinary Sparrow for helping to bring the clay into some sort of identifiable shape with a master’s touch.

From Light to Darkness - The Tao Within

By all accounts, I was a happy sunny child.

Life shone upon me, and I grew into a hard blend of Artemis and Athena. Withholding and defending my light with arrows of judgement and eternal virginity. Hunting for more of my kind. People to believe in what I had become.

When I questioned my coldness, the light grew stronger and stronger and shattered my image until the all became One and one became All.

Then the Darkness arose, for I had returned home to claim my sorrow, my guilt, my incomprehension, my fears and offer my love and forgiveness to myself and all.

The Darkness was so deep into my blood, it began to turn into Light. The light and the darkness merged and I saw that it was the same, but different.

The Golden Tao.

The threads of my new life begin to create the new form for this phase. Its delicate shape arises little by little with threads of gold from the extraordinary of the ordinary.

With Love and thanks for all that has been, and for all that has yet to come.

Wage Peace

Wage Peace
by Judyth Hill, September 11, 2001

Wage Peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble

Breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red-wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

Breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out life long relationships intact.

Wage peace with our listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothing pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music; learn the word "thank you" in 3 languages.

Learn to knit: make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries.

Imagine grief as the outbreak of beauty or gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious.

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

(Thanks for posting this OS - its just what I need)

Only Breath

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim,
not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.

I am not from the East or the West,
not out of the ocean
or up from the ground,
not natural or etheral,
not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world
or the next,
did not decend from Adam or Eve
or any origin story.

My place is placeless,
a trace of the traceless.

Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,
only that breath breathing human being.

The Essential Rumi

(Coleman Barks)

Become All Surrender

Happy the one who has become like us;
who has become all surrender and contentment;
Who has become the pledge of love and madness;
who has become a jewel in the sea of purity.

Rumi

Falling Slowly

See Falling Softly on youtube.

I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me

And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along

Chew your food girl!

Entering into a new state of awareness, every day – is funny, challenging and odd. In Entering the Castle, Caroline Myss poses the question ‘what are you willing to change in your life? If God comes knocking, do you shut the door because you’re happy as you are and are afraid of the changes that may occur?’
Of course, being an eager beaver, my mind went into hysterical affirmations that I’d do anything… just ANYTHING that comes to me. Those anythings could be donating what little money I had to a charity, could be giving up a weekend for ‘cleaning’ or helping somewhere…

But what if your inner guidance just says ‘chew your food?’

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting…

So, there I am, eating my toast. I was walking with my food into the dining room and chewing and swallowing and I felt the little lump in my throat as I swallowed - and actually, it hurts sometimes, but I don’t listen – and today, I listened…

Take smaller bites and chew it.

So I took a half sized bite, chewed it, and still it hurt to swallow.

I took a smaller bite again, chewed it, and slowly, without having to have the awkward ‘swallow’ I usually contend with, it just kind of slide down my throat without a complaint.

‘Really?’ I thought to myself, ‘I have to eat such small bits, and chew so much?’

Suddenly there was a gentle smile and the words ‘it gives you time to appreciate the food, appreciate where the food comes from, give thanks with each mouthful. A lot of work has gone into each piece of food you mindlessly consume. Go slow, be thankful.’So – now I have a different lump in my throat – and go slow I will.

Thank You Caroline Myss

Caroline Myss

Your faith falls upon me like a mantle.
It burns my skin.

Your light is ahead – a constant lantern.
I must cross the darkness of me to get to the next light.

You tell me what I know –
But brightly, divinely-
Crashes of cymbals upon me.

One step I take
And I’m greeted by blossoming joys,
As I could not imagine.

Your next words smile in their knowledge.
I know. I know. Keep following.

I feel your smile, I see your hand,
Ever there, ever beckoning.

A guide you are
To the secret of me.

Thank you – I touch your feet.

A beautiful day

The light shines and seems to prove the white hot spear of the divine.

The shadow hides, deeper, and reminds me of the secrets yet to come.

I float in the water, safe at last, delighting in its weightless gift - and I know its my unconscious - that finally, I trust myself.

Finally I am whole.

The breeze touches my skin - and it is the breath of the living energy in all things.

I see a slumped body and hear a defeated voice - and I see the illusion we have created - that I have been a part of creating - and I glory that it is not me, any more.

And I glory that I can see it... I glory and hold it fast to me - hold it for dear life - because its the only truth worth fighting for...

The truth of the eternity of your soul.

Thank you Ms Myss for lighting my path.

Bringing back the power of the talisman

Its funny, how we’ve been fighting to bring ration into the world – fighting the backward thinking of the past – and now the self is so superficial, we have to dig up the old traditions to bring some meaning back to our heartless state.

My son is sensitive. He’s fearful and susceptible to negative suggestion.

We were walking around a market today – and he saw a bracelet that he liked. It was made of wood – and quite bulky for his little wrist. He wanted to buy it.

Before I could think (often a good thing in my experience) I explained that because the bracelet was made of wood – it would act as a protective tree force for him. That it would help him to feel safe and connected to the earth – that it would give him strong roots, like a tree. If he wore it…

He wanted it. We bough it – and as he put it on, and waved his hand – his eyes lit up – ‘mum- I felt an explosion! I waved my hand and just here (at his heart area) I heard an explosion.’ His eyes were shining – and he kept touching the bracelet.

Later, I explained that he’d need to ‘charge’ the bracelet again – by putting at the roots of a strong tree he admired where ever he was. He needed to visualise the bracelet being zapped with positive energy and regaining its positive effect – and then it would be strong and clean again…
He’s been patting it and taking very good care of it since.

Honestly, he looks happier and more relaxed than he did before. The words came out of my intuition – not from my rational mind…. And I’m realising how much my own disbelief in my intuition has hurt him. He’s a natural emotional and intuitive person – and because I didn’t validate myself – I didn’t validate him… and he knows this – its why he doesn’t feel safe in this world. Because I don’t let him.

But now – its going to be different… Today he’s said he loves me three times – with real delight and intensity – and I know its because I let him be him – just as I am letting me be me…

Thanks be to all for letting this miracle open up and change our lives.

Gratitude for Ms Myss

I’m reading Caroline Myss – Entering the Castle – it feels as though it was written for me- so I give thanks for all that have come before me – for all the forces that came to help Ms Myss create the book – and for all the energy that has helped me have access to the work.

Its helping me at a time when I need it the most – for guidance, for clarity, for helping to validate how I feel in the depths of my soul – when I know something is missing – she’s helping to light the way – and far I have to go…