I hadn’t done as much yoga as I normally do…for quite a few days, I’ll admit. Life had taken over in the early mornings due to having to give lifts or be somewhere very early, that sort of thing. Besides, I’d started a weekly yoga class and that felt like compensation for at least three of my morning routines (the way it made me ache afterwards…this lasts for at least three days) and I’ve been in a lot of pain this month, so far. But the long and short of it was, I wasn’t feeling so flexible when I returned to the mat because I had fallen out of the habit of it.
So, after my beginning asanas today (all very gentleand slow) I lay on my back with my music on ready for track three, where I usually flow from an asana into my goddess dance (see my post Dance like no one is watching for the low-down on this) and proceeded to do something like what I usually do to the music…only, lying on my back. With my arms and legs doing the movements, I drew out shapes and I “danced” upwards from the seed of myself like shoots reaching for the light and continued this until I could summon the will to kneel and then stand up again….slooowly, carefully…to a finale of sorts. In other words, I did what I could do from exactly where I was…and it worked out perfectly in its own way. I feel soooo much better for it, plus it made me smile. I may have looked like a dancing ladybird flipped on its back but it was better than doing nothing and tomorrow is another day.
The same applies to all the different layers of life…when we only focus on doing what we can do from where we are right now we achieve the highest possibility available for us to achieve in that particular moment; there is nothing more that we were ever meant to do than that. We have everything “in hand” because we are focusing on just that…what we have right here, right now in our grasp. And then we also stop beating ourselves up for not doing more than we did; we stop ruminating about all the “ought to do”s or “if only”s, stop worrying backwards or projecting forwards, and start celebrating what we are actually capable of doing, which is so life affirming and self-loving that it can only spiral upwards to create better and ever more fulfilling outcomes. We capitalise on exactly who we are in the moment and that is always the most potent place that we can ever create from; the very cauldron of creation (if only more people were prepared to accept the truth of this instead of constantly over-reaching themselves until they, almost inevitably, topple over). Years of chronic pain have taught me this over and over and over…which is one of the many gifts I’ve received as I now have it ingrained in me that enough is enough, I am doing all that I can and there is nothing more I “have” to do than that in any given moment. That’s not to say we don’t stretch ourselves into new areas when there is joy or excitement in doing this; but we don’t turn it into “I have to”.
Then, when we do this for ourselves we expect no more than this “do your best from exactly where you happen to be” stance from other people, which enables us to be far more accepting and forgiving of other people. When we look back and allow that our parents only ever did the best that they could with the level of understanding, the experiences and resources that they had given their upbringing and circumstances, for instance, we can let go of whole swathes of past hurts. When we do this in relation to people whose actions we find abhorrent and yet we allow that they don’t know what we know (nor do we know all that they do) and that they may have been through many things that we have never had to suffer, we make room for the kind of compassion that can heal the world. But before I over-reach myself again, lets bring this right back to the only place it ever needs to be…where I allow that, in this moment, I can only do what I can do, right here and right now…and that this is always perfect and quite enough.
Living whole 