Sex, Drugs and…………..….Yoga?
I recently did one of my favorite themed classes: falling down. The class begins with my announcement, “You will fall down in this class! I fell planning this class and I will fall in front of you during this class.” The response is a little laughter, some confusion and some excited smiles.
In life we fall down. We have uncomfortable experiences and things do not go as planned. So we practice on our yoga mats. On our yoga mats we practice being uncomfortable, we practice falling out of a pose and we practice getting back up again.
“How we do anything is how we do everything.”
The mat is a microcosm for our entire lives. If we are lazy, dramatic, push ourselves, self-conscious, brave, quiet, and fearful in life it shows up on the mat. When it shows up there we get the chance to recognize it and acknowledge it with our awareness. When we practice going outside our comfort zones in yoga class it prepares us for the curve balls life throws at us.
The yoga space is safe and warm with calm lighting. It is filled with people that are all there for the same reason – to travel inward and stretch and sweat their way there. It is a safe place to fall down.
My themes for yoga classes have evolved over the years. When I first started, just getting thru a class was sufficient let alone adding some deeper meaning. Then I was able to pat my head and rub my belly at the same time and added in themes. I would use gratitude often as we can never have too much. I would be inspired by the external world- following the seasons, the moon cycle, the elements and holidays. I liked to look to Indian mythology that originally inspired the yoga poses for class themes. Only in the past year the themes have changed, they have gone deeper – more into the internal world. Perhaps these messages were always alluded to in class before, but now they are positively potent.
I ask spirit for guidance on what to say in class and the messages have become a direct mirror for the life lessons I am facing. The struggles I am working thru are the catalyst for each theme I include in class. I am not perfect, a lot of my actions are driven by ego and mind-made fantasies. I change my mind a lot, become distracted easily and ignore my intuition. When I do life slaps me across the face to pay attention! I have paid attention before in the past, but this year something clicked on a deeper level. Maybe it’s the teachings of “A Course in Miracles” maybe its years of sobriety, maybe it was just fucking time for it to happen.
For the first time in my life instead of ignoring an emotional problem, self-medicating or dismissing the issue as worthless. I dealt with that shit. And I mean I dealt with all the layers of years of learned behavior stemming back to experiences as a teenager. I realized I wasn’t even really upset about the present problem, it was the all the past stuff I had never dealt with. So much of our pain response in daily life, is actually based on a learned reactions we developed as children. So we have a child with fear based patterns making our life decisions and reactions! No wonder there is so much trauma in the world.
A huge source of pain for me in life has been my romantic relationships, if you can’t relate to that – you are so amazing and lucky! Those of you that can relate, you are also so amazing and lucky!! I recently realized that I had been living the same exact pattern of romantic relationship since I was 16 years old. I am a grown ass woman and not the same drug abusing teenager that I was. So why was I having the same patterns? We become conditioned so much easier than we realize. The strangest stuff can become normal. Anyone who has switched cell phones, found the new one so strange only to have forgotten how to use the old one within a week – should know how quickly we can be trained.
It was such a miracle to identify this pattern, to realize that I was operating from this old level of consciousness. Anyone that has attended an AA meeting knows the first step of fixing a problem is identifying it. So I identified and prayed and meditated and journaled and forgave! I forgave past lovers, each and every one. As I forgave, I released and prayed for their inner peace, loving relationships and happiness. One of the teachings of the 12 Steps has to do with resentment, it says when you resent someone you should pray for them to get what you want. So I did, every day for 2 weeks and it worked. I felt so peaceful about people I had been unbeknownst to me been holding resentment against for years.
It was so freeing! I had fallen dozens of times in dozens of ways. I had fallen into years of drug and alcohol abuse, I had fallen in love and lust with uninterested or undeserving partners. In my life now I was able to use yoga to share my lessons as a way of healing and processing. I know if I am going thru this, other people are going thru it too. We are not alone and we are all in this together.
There is power in standing up, there is power in knowing that YOU can stand up. When we fall out of tree pose we get back up again, our reaction to our fall is telling of how we take care of ourselves. We get to decide, do we beat ourselves up or do we laugh it off, rise up and try again?
The light in me sees and honors the light in you.
Namaste,
Larissa
xoxo
Click this link below to see the playlist inspired by this class:
music.apple.com/us/playlist/a-1-triumphant/pl.u-oZylAA9Tq4brxg
Nome Yoga 