Stillness Is the Move

I made a really profound discovery this morning... I think.

I love to run.

I have been running regularly since september and it has been wonderful. It's such a great way to keep myself grounded and de-stress - I have high anxiety and running really helps me to keep it to a minimum. However, due to a recent foot injury, I have had to take a break from running.

I have not run for about a month.

At first not running was incredibly difficult. In the past few months, running has been the answer to nearly every problem that has come up in my life and now that solution had been eliminated, forcing me to find a new one. What was I suppose to do when I started feeling anxious? What was I suppose to do when I got into a fight with my mom? What was I suppose to do when I felt... trapped?

I'm a stubborn person and I really tried to ignore the emotions that running helped to temporarily tame for as long as possible. However, eventually all emotions become revealed in some way or another, and despite my initial reluctance, I was eventually forced to do surrender to my own worst enemy: myself, and face the thing that I was most afraid of:

sitting, with my feelings.

Well, I wasn't actually sitting. I was doing yoga.

Let me back track a bit:

Fortunately for me, and not so fortunately for my family and my boyfriend J., my vacation from running happened to come at the same time as a family vacation to Florida. My mom, dad, J., and I were stuck in a car for two days together. For someone with high anxiety this was no picnic.

There were plenty of thoughtless actions, emotional triggers, and tears... plenty of them.

However, although we weren't all hugging and singing songs together (although we did do some sweet car dancing on the way home!), everyone was supportive of my difficulties and I am endlessly lucky and grateful in that regard.

Once, we got to Florida I was unsure of what to do. I couldn't really walk let alone run (yes, my foot was that bad) and I needed to do something to release in a physical way.

I had brought with me a yoga dvd that I used on occasion but never really on a regular basis.

One day, while experiencing a mild panic attack, J. suggested that we do the yoga dvd together. Although at first I was skeptical: I didn't think that it was going to give me the amount of physical exertion that I require in order to experience relief from my anxiety. However, I had to face the fact that I really had no other option.

So together we did yoga. We started by focusing on our breathing and then we gently moved our bodies into postures that required strength, proper breathing, and forced us to focus not only on how we performed the exercises, but how our bodies felt. This emphasis on listening to your body was something that I had purposely avoided for a very long time. Maybe I didn't want to listen to my body. Maybe I felt like my body and I were not only strangers, but rather enemies who did not want to hear what one another had to say. In the past I had use running as a tool to silence my inner voice and frankly the idea of listening to it now scared me to no end. However, while I moved through the postures, which did satisfy my need to move in a refreshing and nurturing way, I thought... a lot.

I realized that running had been a way to solve my problems temporarily by distracting myself with movement. But with yoga, I was able to start seeing things in a different light.

Instead of stressing over unknowns such as: 'What am I going to do when I feel anxious?' or 'What am I going to do when I get into a fight with my mom?' I began to ask myself: 'Why am I anxious?' 'Why am I fighting with my mom in the first place?'. Yoga was able to help me change my thinking in a way that actually helped me to problem solve by getting myself to the deepest root of the issue. At the same time it also helped me o trecognize a lot of my own fears about life, love, and myself.

Now, I am not going to sit here and say that yoga solved all of my problems. It most certainly did not. I still have high anxiety, I still fight with my mom, and I still feel trapped... sometimes.

What yoga did do was help me develop an overall awareness of myself. It helped me to realize that I am powerful and capable enough to tackle anything that life throws my way, and it gave me the tools to always be able to look deep inside of myself and understand what my heart is really saying.

Yoga teaches you about strength. It forces you to connect with and embrace your own strength physically, mentally, and emotionally. It challenges your body physically while encouraging you to maintain an awareness of your thoughts and your breath. The most liberating part of the strength that yoga allows you to cultivate is that it is entirely your own.

I am now a proud yoga lover and frequent practicer but this does not mean that I don't believe running and I can not repair our broken relationship. This time around I want to run in the safest way possible which means not pushing myself through something but feeling what my body needs a the time(a technique emphasized in yoga). I also need to get new shoes and make sure that I stretch and give my body adequate time to recover each time I run.

Anyway, this morning I woke up with the desire to run. I can't run right now unfortunately, less because of my foot injury (it has healed a significant amount), but more because of location - I am not at home but at J.'s house for a visit.

I immediately felt stressed, and that old fire, the fire that I now recognize as a way of avoiding my own feelings, emerged. However, instead of giving into this feeling as I would have in the past, I recognized it. With that awareness I was able to reflect back upon the recent discoveries that I made with the help of yoga and channel it through another form of therapy: writing!

So friendly readers, if you are out there (and I hope you are!) my hope is that my transformation can help you to also grow in a positive way.

I think that the most important lesson that I learned is that you must constantly remind yourself to never fear, impose harm upon, or most importantly underestimate yourself.

Quote(s) of the day:

"Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured."

- B.K.S. Iyengar

&

Through the practices of yoga, we discover that concern for the happiness and well being of others, including animals, must be an essential part of our own quest for happiness and well being. The fork can be a powerful weapon of mass destruction or a tool to create peace on

- Sharon Gannon

Question(s) of the day:

Do you ever suppress your own feelings? If so, does the idea of sitting with those feelings scare you? Why do you think this is?

Have a great day everyone!