The Thing About Overthinking

There is no rush, there is only now. Tapping into patience.

I haven’t written in the past ten days. Writer’s block, stuck in a rut, loss of inspiration … you name it. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my writing usually happens when I write from a place of inspiration and peace, instead of fear and must.

In the past year, something has shifted within me. It is both confusing and wonderful. I cannot put my finger on exactly what is going on, but it seems to be happening in just the right way. One of my favorite quotes is by Arthur Rubinstein: “There are no formulas for living the life you secretly dream about, because if you simply accept and welcome life, it’ll reveal itself to you.”

It is not through effort that you mold the universe to your liking, but from allowing the universe to mold you, and show you the way. When I began doing what I love, which is guiding people how to move their body safely and with intention, I had so much fear. I remember going into my first official yoga class to teach; I felt like I was going to pass out from my nerves. When I look back now, after teaching over 100 classes, I can see clearly that I entered that studio from a place of fear, certainly not a place of love.

And for a second, I almost stopped myself even before I began, because I didn’t believe in myself. I saw so many other teachers doing what I wanted to do, and they were more accomplished, had more knowledge, and were more successful.

Or, so it seemed.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was trying to find the answers outside of myself. I followed this teacher here and that teacher there, I kept reaching for goals, I kept making lists, I began to over think everything, and soon I realized that creating shapes was just the topping on the cake, and that the real ingredients involved self-compassion, contentment, love and patience. There was no magic pose that made all my challenges go away. If I couldn’tunderstand the meaning and purpose of my life, and moreover, if I wasn’t working on fulfilling that meaning and purpose, it really didn’t matter how long I could stand on my head — that wasn’t going to make me a happy person.

When I came to a point where I had to listen to my heart and feel where I should go, I stopped trying to figure things out. I realized that I don’t know it all, and when I listened to my heart, things seemed to lead to more happiness, peace and freedom in my life.

Problems come and go. Patterns come and go. Sometimes I’m more in tune with my inner wisdom, and sometimes I’m not. On the days that I’m not, I do my best to relax and do something else.

I do my best creative work when I’m connected to that inner wisdom, and it is that inner wisdom that guides me toward the life I’m creating. When I don’t write for ten days, I’m not hard on myself. When I don’t step on my mat for a week, I drop my inner critic, drop my expectations of myself and tell my mind to bugger off.

There will also be days where you feel like nothing is going wrong. Those are the most exciting days to stay present; because they help you grow your awareness muscle. When I stay present, not only am I more connected to that inner wisdom and stillness, but I feel calmer and more at peace with myself. I also realize that I don’t have to identify with my thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings arise, sure, but I don’t have to feed the fire.

The problems begin when I create thoughts about the initial thoughts or feelings. This is also what stops me from simply allowing my dreams to unfold. If I get a thought that’s fearful, doubtful or uncertain, and if I believe that thought, I’m trapped until I see through it. When you stay present, as best you can, you let life unfold. Sometimes it’ll feel like chaos inside of your body, but that’s okay, that too shall pass. It’s the human experience.

Learn to trust that inner voice and when your heart speaks, take good notes.

The Most Important Part of a Yoga Pose

Have you ever wondered what to prioritize when you are doing ayoga pose? What is the most important thing to focus on when doing Triangle? Or Downward Dog? Or Savasana? Ask 15 different yoga teachers from different yoga lineages and you will likely get 15 different answers. Is alignment the most important? Is it the breath? Awareness? Eye gaze? What is it? I have wrestled with this question myself and have attempted to deconstruct hundreds of poses to figure out what is most important … but after 29 years of practice (yep, I’ve been practicing since I was a kid!) there is one element that I come back to again and again — and it might surprise you! Relaxation is the doorway The backbone of every pose is not your vertebrae, but rather what lies inside of them: your nervous system. Your brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves are gateways of input and output for our bodies. Their ability to relay messages to and from our tissues is critical for being able to perform a pose (or any movement whatsoever). But if your mind is caught up in a bind, stressing out about how to do a pose or “getting it right,” you add tension to your whole system. What I am suggesting here is that we need to consciously dampen our stress response in order to create a better environment for the full spectrum of sensing into our tissues and our movements. In other words, we must imbue our mind with relaxation as a prelude to posing. The yogis call this Unmani Mudra, or “no-thought mind.” Line the mind with meditation It is fairly easy to flip the ON switch in the body, as most of our brain is actually dedicated to helping the body be aroused and alert. But how do you flip your OFF switch? Much less of our brain-space is dedicated to chilling out and it becomes even more challenging when we ask ourselves to let go but are unsure whether or not we’re still holding on. When a body deeply relaxes, it temporarily loses muscle tone (as soon as you start using your body again, the muscles spring back into action), breathing slows down, heart rate slows, body temperature drops and the mind begins to experience space between thoughts. This “space between thoughts” is exactly the entry point the yogis were seeking in coining the term Unmani Mudra. The challenge when doing poses is to rid yourself of both physical and mental tensions so that you can enter and exit poses with such deep relaxation and concentration that the body and mind experience each pose in its totality. In other words, the mind becomes quiet enough that it can “listen” to all of the nuances of motion, position and sensation that the pose exposes to the nervous system. How to relax before your yoga practice There are a few quick ways that you can target the relaxation response in your body so that your poses emerge from a place of deep calm rather than a frenzied effort. Choose one or several of the un-actvities listed below, then proceed into the rest of your yoga practice sedated, yet alert. 1. Extend your exhales. A breathing technique or Pranayama that focuses on lengthening the duration of the exhale so that it is longer than the inhale is a way to sedate and soothe the whole nervous system. This can be done either in a reclined position or as a seated meditation. Index fingers and thumbs touch in Jnana Mudra. Feel your pulse in the fingertips. a) Place gentle pressure on a pulse point anywhere on your body. This can be as simple as pressing the index finger and thumb together, touching the inside of one wrist, or placing a finger alongside the neck. b) Observe the throb of the heart at this pulse point. c) Using your heartbeat as a metronome, inhale for four heartbeats and then exhale for eight. d) Remain for 3-5 minutes. 2. Veeparita Korani Mudra. Place your heart above your head — a gentle inversion like Veeparita will provide just enough of an inverted slope to alter the brain’s signals from arousal to “drousal.” If this is too much for your legs or back, try the simpler Legs Up the Wall Pose. Raising the heart above the head on a gentle incline promotes whole-body relaxation. a) Lay on your back and place a yoga block at any height that feels stable and comfortable underneath your pelvis. b) Raise your knees towards the sky, keeping them bent. If this feels like too much effort, keep the feet rooted on the floor. c) Slowly inhale to swell the belly, then allow it to passively deflate. When your body feels ready for the next inhale, slowly inhale, then passively allow the exhale to exit. d) Remain for 3-5 minutes. 3) Roll out the restrictions. Self-massage before activity will help to eradicate the tension in hypertonic muscles that are unconsciously contracting and potentially creating pain. Using a self-massage implement like Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls or Gaiam’s Massage balls or a foam roller can help to turn OFF muscles that think they need to be ON. This ushers in global relaxation for the whole body, and it also helps all the layers of your tissues to warm-up and be more efficient for practicing poses. Rub out your kinks and fast track a sense of total-body calm. a) Choose a tight area of your body, such as the upper back, low back or buttocks, and place the balls or roller into positions where you can tolerate the pressure and still breathe deeply. Create small slow gentle movements that help the massage tool roll into, along and around the area of tension. If you cannot breathe, or if you experience deep discomfort, move the tool slightly higher, lower or to the right or left so that you can return to tolerance and relaxation. These un-activities are effective in as little as three minutes, or can be implemented for up to 10 minutes prior to your yoga practice. If you do them longer, you may become too relaxed, and have a hard time during your more active practice. Any of these sedating techniques can tune down your stress and will deeply enrich your presence during your practice. Let me know how the rest of your practice goes. And remember to always make relaxation the most important part of your practice. Namaste!

The Hope That Travels With You

As an online travel company, TravelShark interacts with many different people throughout all phases of their travels — from picking out a hotel to finding the best crepes in Paris. From these interactions, we have come to realize thattravel means something different to everyone.

For some, travel means saving up for years and taking that long-anticipated trip to Disney World with the family.

For others, travel means stuffing the bare essentials into a backpack and buying a one-way ticket to a place as far away as possible.

For many people, traveling — on a budget, with your life savings, for a weekend, or for months at a time — is also inherently full of hope.

Hope is why people spend months planning out every tiny detail of a five-day vacation. It’s why people throw caution to the wind and decide to follow their intuition instead of their itinerary. It’s why people still talk about the most positive aspects of a trip years after they’ve returned home.

As a company, we love being a part of people’s trips and seeing the different types of hope people take on their travels.

There are the small hopes: You hope your plane will take off on time. You hope that it will be sunny in Mexico. You hope it’s easy to find your hotel. You hope that you don’t take a picture of your thumb instead of an elephant.

There are the worry-hopes: You hope that you’ll be able to understand the language (or get by on your native tongue). You hope that you’ll be able to find that childhood friend of yours for dinner, even though neither of your phones will work in Buenos Aires. You hope the famous wild game restaurant people recommended in Calgary will have a kids’ menu.

There are the exciting hopes: You hope that you finally get to see that painting you studied in college. You hope you will meet a handsome stranger who drives a moped. You hope your kids will come home and tell their friends that it was the “best vacation ever.”

… And then there is something bigger beneath it all: the hope that travel will somehow change things. It will change your mood. It will change the way you see the world. It might even change the way you see yourself.

While not everyone actively thinks to themselves, “Hey, I hope this next trip really changes things for me” (personal discovery and making sure no one gets a sunburn at the beach are not exactly synonymous), the concept of change is implicit in any trip. You want to escape, get away, do something different, do the same thing you always do but do it somewhere else. Travel is changing your location on the map with the hope that something else — something inside you — will change, too.