As you read this I will be opening the clinic for the first time in 2012. I’ve had a great fortnight off but I have to admit I was itching to get back to work.
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These first couple of weeks of the new year are already busy. I’ve a fully booked appointments book and I have to finish putting the final touches to my Foundation course before handing it in for final approval. How exciting! I’m hoping to have the course up and running by the end of this year, but I’m making no promises, either to myself or anyone else. 2011 threw me a ton of curveballs that I really wasn’t expecting (the invitation to become a Foundation course tutor for starters!), and my biggest mistake of the year was to try and continue with the Big Plan regardless of all the twists and turns on the way.
So this year I’m learning from those lessons and allowing myself to be a lot more flexible. In the words of my beloved Dupree: “stay loose, stay liquid, laugh a lot.” I have no big plans, no big ambitions, no monumental life changing goals. There are a few vague plans – an Indian Head Massage course, a holiday in Yorkshire in February and an inevitable house move but other than that I’m flowing with the river!
That said, a few posts ago I mentioned The Spending Diet. I don’t know if you read And Then She Saved, but the blog author Anna put herself on a Spending Fast to clear off all her debt in 15 months. The Fast is too much for me. I don’t work like that. If I set myself up for huge huge life changes or massive restrictions I inevitably fail and then feel even more awful. But the various ups and downs of 2011 have seen me with quite a bit more on the credit card than I would like and so Spending Diet it is. I’ll keep you posted!
So 2012, let’s do this. What have you got in store for me?
Any goals for the new year you’d like to share?
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My life is ridiculously busy at the moment. At least, more ridiculously busy than I would like. Days off are taken up with Pilates training coursework and lesson observations and on Friday I head up to Durham for a few days of training to teach prospective yoga teachers.
It’s been a crazy year and I’ve been writing a lot recently about how we need to be kind to ourselves, to listen and to be happy not always chasing rainbows. It’s a kind of balance to the crazy. I wasn’t meant to do two huge trainings at the same time but the Universe seemed to think that was the way forward. And who am I to argue with the Universe?
But despite everything I feel I need to be doing more, that I shouldn’t be so tired, that I should be earning more money, or taking on more clients. That I should be working hard towards those future plans (yeah, that’s right, those ones that might never happen).
Somewhere along the line I’ve lost my curiosity. The ability to just say, “hmmm… here’s an idea”, set the goal and let it go, see where it takes me. Somehow I felt more freedom to be curious about life in my old desk job, when some bigwig was in charge of whether the company I worked for survived or crashed and I just had to turn up every day and collect the paycheque at the end of the month.
But then I remember I chose this life and worked my butt off for years to get it. And that just because it’s my business doesn’t mean I have to worry about it ALL THE TIME!!!!!
Sometimes we have to let things go a little, and sometimes we have to just accept where we are right now. Since leaving that regular paycheque behind I’ve tried to control things more and more, in part because of the fear of having to go back to the regular paycheque, of having to admit defeat. Whereas really I am stressing myself out trying to control the uncontrollable. Who knows what may happen in the future, we may have a seed of an idea as to where we want to go but all we can do is see what that journey is like. Maybe one day I won’t be doing what I’m doing now, maybe one day I will. Maybe one day is always in the future.
And I need to let go of that, to surrender to the present, to breathe again.
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Do you want to spend some time away from everything and learn to breathe again? Perhaps you’d like to join us on our yoga holiday next year. Details here – we’d love you to come!
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This post started with some maggots. I’m not even kidding.
“What is this dirt on the back window?” Himself asked at 10.30 on Saturday night as I was hauling myself to bed (Sunday is the first day of my working week so Saturday nights are decidedly unrock’n'roll in this house).
Bickering ensued.
Until I looked at the “dirt”.
And realised it was moving.
Maggots were crawling up my back window. **
Readers I am not going to lie to you. I FREAKED OUT!! I assumed the foetal position on the sofa crying tears of horror and disgust but also tears of rage at myself because I knew I was over-reacting and yet seemed unable to stop. And me a Yoga Teacher and all…..!
It happens to us all at sometime or another.
The to-do list seems never-ending and life becomes overwhelming. You feel your breath shorten and your shoulders hunch up around your ears.
Life throws you another curve-ball (in my case, maggots), and you allow yourself to react badly. You cry, or feel your heart rate speeding up. You don’t know what to do to slow everything back down again, bring it back on track.
And then there is the multi-spiralled path of the dreaded overthinking. Much as I love the internet it does have a tendency to allow those of us prone to this particular blight to overthink. Should we write a blog post on such and such? Will people judge us and our opinions? What do I know about it anyway? (continued spiralling for several minutes until…..) Everyone else in the world is better than me anyway! *dramatic gesture*. And very often all of this really is in our minds, the only people we are doing battle with is ourselves. For example I was inexplicably nervous about publishing Tuesday’s post, I honestly thought people would see it as some sort of marketing ploy. And I have had nothing but amazing responses from it!
If any of that rings any kind of bell for you at all (and I’m betting most of you are nodding along to at least one of these ridiculous sentences – why do we do this to ourselves?!) then these five little lessons I’ve learned over the years might help you too. The only way to slow ourselves back down to normality again, the only way to tug ourselves out of the spiral is to really make ourselves sit in the present moment and accept what is. Right now.
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1. Acknowledge – this has been one of the most important things for me. Rather than being embarrassed or ashamed of feeling overwhelmed or bad about myself or overly anxious I have begun to acknowledge that this is how I feel. I say hello to my anxiety, ask it what it wants, why it’s here. The alternative is to stuff the anxiety down, ignore it, pretend it’s not there and this just causes the pressure cooker effect. Eventually all of that suppressed anxiety will explode into a full blown panic attack/tantrum. Ask Himself, he’s had the pleasure of witnessing it once or twice! So just say “well hello anxious overthinking, how are you? I haven’t really got time to hang out with you today so I’m just going to get on with this.” It sounds a little mad but it’s a great first step!
2. Move – we all have a favourite way of moving our bodies so get up and do it. Go for a walk, notice each footstep, each breath. Go for a run, without music, feel the vibration of your body every time your foot hits the earth, notice each breath. Dance around your living room to your favourite tunes. Do yoga. Practice Pilates. Stand on your head. Take five yoga poses at your desk.
3. Breathe – we’re breathing all the time. But as I mentioned above, when the whole “fight or flight” thing kicks in, when we panic, when we doubt, when we fear then the sort of breathing we’re doing isn’t conducive to calm body, calm mind. So close your eyes and listen to the breath. This can be done sitting or lying. It can even be done standing if you need a quick fix in a panicked situation. Place one hand on the abdomen and another on the chest. Notice each inhale and imagine it travelling from the upper hand to the lower hand. Notice each exhale and imagine it travelling from the lower hand to the upper hand. Start to notice the movement of the abdomen under your lower hand. Notice the journey of each breath and how each breath becomes longer and longer. Take at least ten breaths.
The breath is intrinsically linked to the mind. When your breath slows your mind slows. Everything slows. And your to-do list becomes manageable again.
4. Write a Small Stone - long time readers of this blog will know that Small Stones are tiny little snippets of writing – five words or two sentences – that observe something as it is right now. The weather, your headache, the spider in the corner of the room. They are the brainchild of Fiona Robyn and the beauty of them is they make you focus on the now for just long enough to bring you back to your senses. Give it a go. You can see some of my small stones here.
5. Rescue Remedy - there are times when none of these things work. And that’s OK. That’s when Bach Rescue Remedy comes in. I don’t write much on the blog about my interest in Bach Flower Remedies, partly because I have no formal qualification in them and partly because, although I definitely believe they work, I can’t for the life of me explain how. But everyone has Rescue Remedy so don’t be afraid to use it. Two sprays on the tongue and you’re good to go.
We can’t control life, much as we want to. We can’t control bad things happening. But we can control our reactions to life. It’s hard hard work and I’ve spent many years living with and working through various anxiety issues, but it is worth it.
Any tips to share readers?
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** the maggots, it turns out, were coming from the corpse of a dead frog that had become stuck in the drain. I am terrified of both maggots (I’m scared of most things without legs -slugs, snails eeeuuurggh) and drains (I read Stephen King’s “It” when I was a little too young to read such things). Himself valiantly went forth to deal with the issue, boiling the maggots with hot water until they popped (not very ahimsa I know but needs must) and disposing of the frog. Oh the joys of living in the fens…..
