What does it feel like to be invited to a party?
Ponder that for a moment. ...
Now, what does if feel like when you are told you have to attend a function?
Hmmm. ...
This is something that I’ve been observing for myself in the practicing and teaching slow yoga and taking things in life a little more slowly. I’ve discovered that by taking the time to “invite” my mind and body to simmer down and slow down a little more, to take pause and just rest into this moment, magical things start to happen. My body, in all of it’s innately intuitive and intelligently designed wisdom, is starting to communicate with me. Well, it’s been communicating with me for a long time, but I just haven’t been hearing or understanding it. Learning that asking has way more power, and in the flow of things, rather than telling my body it has to respond ... or else.
When we ask our body to do something it responds instantly - even when when we don’t ask it, it responds instantly. Breathing, digesting, processing... it’s a pretty amazing piece of machinery. But communicating with our body is a language that sometimes takes relearning and attention as time goes on. We sometimes separate ourselves from the physical workings of the body and lean into ‘expectations’ that it should just work. Until something goes out of sync, we injure something or we wear something out, we don’t hear the body. Learning that certain types of food just don’t agree with us, even something that used to be fine, as time goes on, now doesn’t agree with what the body needs for fuel.
The same goes for exercising. Young supple bodies bounce, heal quicker, bend in multitudes of directions. Where as older bodies take time to regenerate, slower to respond, flexibility changes. These aging characteristics of the machine are not a bad thing, it’s just the way life cycles are. But the way we work (or play) and communicate with our bodies will determine the longevity and how it’s cooperation unfolds for us. In my continued discovery of yoga (physical movement and meditation), nutrition (fueling and feeding), and the brain (neuroplasticity and expansion)... I’ve been just scratching the surface on how I’m re-learning the way my body is speaking to me.
The way in which our bodies respond to us is our feedback to how we are communicating with them. I liken it to the phrase: inviting rather than expecting. And how asking and then taking the time to listen can take this communication to a whole new level of understanding and self-connection. Slowing down and listening when I pose a thought, movement or question, has me now preemptively healing the body before it is in dyer need of attention.
As ongoing as anything is in this lifetime, building relationship is a lifelong journey. Both in the aspect of exploring through own experiences and through learning through experiences of others. Remembering that we live in a global community of explorers... all hitching a ride on the same train...
...inviting each other to the parties of life.
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