There was this moment in a yoga class I was teaching on Monday afternoon that just felt so right…
Everyone was moving and flowing in whatever way they wanted. Everyone was doing their own thing.
If you know me then you know how crazy it makes me when students do their own damn thing in my classes.
Like I’m teaching warrior 2 and they decide to go into pigeon. That shit infuriates me.
I will almost always say something unless it is clear the student is taking a moment or isn’t able to do what we are doing.
But every now and then I like to challenge my inner (and often times outer) control freak and have my theme be Choose Your Own Adventure.
Yup like those old school kids books where you get to a particular page and then have to choose which way the main character goes. I loved those books.
And this is what I do in these particular yoga classes. I set up the structure and then let my students choose where they want to go.
On Monday in my class it felt so liberating to see everyone just doing their own thing. They looked so free. They looked happy.
And it got me thinking about control….
About how we think we have it over so many areas of our live…
Like our relationships and our jobs and our bodies and what is going to happen next. Often times we set up these very safe parameters to keep out what we don’t want and grip onto what we don’t want to change.
I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Gripping. Let me tell you if you don’t already know, it’s exhausting.
Take love for example. Lately I’ve realized I’ve been trying to get my loves to love me in the way I want them to. To say what I need them to say or act the way I need them to act.
Ugh even as I write this I feel so silly. But alas, it’s true.
It was really all an effort to make myself feel safe and secure.
But it didn’t actually work because that’s not how love works. That’s not how any inner qualities work actually.
You can’t control your way into them. You can only foster them. Inside of yourself.
For me this often looks like pushing my edge and making myself really uncomfortable and moving through it.
But this weekend I took a yoga therapy session and discovered that what I needed was to stop pushing.
I let myself be nurtured in this session. And in that letting I allowed love.
And all of a sudden things felt different. All of a sudden I was letting it in. Not by trying or controlling. I can’t even really tell you what I did. Because I didn’t DO anything. It just happened.
It’s so easy to try and control our lives but this never really works. We never really know what will happen. Life is an adventure. A pure journey into the wild unknown.
Any semblance of control is all in our heads. When we think life is mundane it’s really because we aren’t getting super present to the rich potential each and every moment contains.
So the next time you find yourself holding on tight to the reigns of your life, may I suggest loosening your grip or ever putting down the reigns and trusting you are being guided.
Because you totally are.
Want a little help letting go?? Try getting grounded first. Check out free mini meditation course by CLICKING HERE