If you read my post earlier this week, you know that I was not in a good place. I forced myself to sign up for a group yoga class, with my husband urging me that it would be healthier to fight my stress productively, instead of through medication or alcohol or bottling it in until I had a migraine and was begging neckrubs from him. He’d be willing to help me get any of those if I needed, but thought I should try a little preventative self-care first.
I found yoga a few years ago, when we first started dating. It helped with the chronic pain and migraines I was constantly fighting. The most amazing thing was that while I was there and in my most relaxed and meditative state, I would find my mind drifting to my purpose in life. From my first class, I had realized that all I wanted to do was write. It became a process, trying to find a way to become what I knew I was called to do.
Then my position changed and my manager required me in to work so early and at such long hours, that I couldn’t attend my yoga classes and I lost touch with it. The only classes available now were more energetic and didn’t allow me to meditate at all.
My career changed again, helping me find my way to my calling. I was working from home and during lunch breaks, would step away to do online yoga courses. They weren’t quite the same, but at least I had some physical activity. Just being at peace finally in my work had given me enough clarity to restructure my life. My career was now based in writing and I could do everything I wanted to do with my family, my hobbies, my life. It was wonderful. I felt inspired every day, whether I was at work or at home, no matter what I was doing, because I knew I was on the right path.
There has been another change recently, and I have lost the ability to see past work. I have practically given up sleep and it still isn’t enough. Work has consumed my life. Personal struggles with my family leave me feeling emotionally drained. With all the hardship, I have no peace.
What I have felt this year has been so different from what I felt last year that it is hard to move forward with my goals. The story I’ve been working on focuses primarily on everything my family learned about finding joy through challenges and getting balance in your life, so it’s been hard to get myself into the same mindset to even work on that story. I’ve also felt like a huge hypocrite, giving advice I can barely follow, while knowing that I need to hear it just as much as any reader out there.
We went out last night and both realized that it was the first I had smiled in weeks. That wasn’t good and I knew it. Even so, today I wasn’t feeling in the most social of moods, but I knew he was right and agreed to go. I needed to take my own advice, too, even though it would be a challenge.
So I attended a yoga class with other moms from the boys’ school. I knew it would force me out and while I dreaded the lost productivity, I realized it was needed. I reminded myself that these moms were the people I was supposed to identify with and who my entire message was for. If I thought my message of finding joy could help them, maybe I needed a little help from them to get back to that point first.
While shifting to a new pose, the instructor said something that seemed to wake me back up: “We are unbalanced creatures. We come in to yoga without balance; yoga helps us to find it.”
It made perfect sense. I realized I had spent most of my life looking for balance. I have some obsessive tendencies, like needing to eat equally on both sides of my mouth, touch objects with both hands. I even have a quirky reaction of only getting goosebumps down the side of my body that has been touched, only equaled out if the other side is touched in the same way. It unnerves me when a yoga instructor does a pose on one side and continues to focus on other poses without doing the same pose immediately on the other side – I actually sit there anxious and distracted while waiting for the imbalance to be rectified.
My entire life has been a search for balance without even realizing it. When I’ve taken the time for myself, and found a way to balance my body and relax my mind, that is when I have been at my best. That is when I am most inspired and able to understand what I feel called to do. I can reconnect with God and feel his healing presence and appreciate my blessings.
In our lives, how could we choose to give this up? I know I left in a much better place mentally. I feel inspired again. I honestly don’t think I could thank the women that put this event on enough.
For all my friends going through something similar, fight for your right to have balance in your life. You never know just what you might accomplish when you put everything else on hold for a little.