Wednesday 15 November 2017

The practice of yoga is available at any moment

As I am working on expanding services that Samya Yoga Healing offers, I'm reminded constantly how every moment is a learning and opportunity to move past limiting patterns, which is the heart of yoga.

I would describe myself as having a tendency towards being an introvert, autonomous, and loyal.  The first surprises most people, but is true.  I am someone who enjoys being alone and being alone helps to recharge my batteries.  When I'm contacting a lot, putting myself out there, I can end up getting tired, more anxious and overwhelmed...even if  I'm having fun.  I tend to want to do things on my own and learn by researching and doing...thus it can be hard to ask for help.  When a person enters my world, I am there to support and empathize.  When I find a service that I love, I tout them to the moon and back.  This can also make it hard for me to change a service, even if it's in my best interest.

These three patterns have had many opportunities to expand and change over the past few years with starting and expanding Samya Yoga Healing.  It's been challenging at times, but once I'm through it, I'm so grateful for my comfort zone being pushed and I feel empowered.

I had one of those times today.  If you go to my website, you'll see that in the future, I will be offering some online courses.  I was so excited when I decided I wanted to pursue this.  I started to brainstorm what these courses would look like, feeling more confident.  Then I came up to the, "how do I actually do this?" I started researching a quickly became overwhelmed as this is a new area for me, especially on the tech side.  In the past, my interactions with technology that is new would lead to feeling overwhelmed. I would be filled with anger and frustration, self-doubt, and wanting to just give it the middle finger. But, in my goals with Samya Yoga Healing, I've learned that this doesn't help and keeps me stuck by not taking any action. 

What's helped me most is pushing the boundary of "I can do it myself" to asking for help so that I can do it myself.  I even used technology to help with a lot of this. Just by using search engines to ask questions and then getting my answer, I've learned quite a lot.  Wow! There are people out there posting so many resources to answer almost any question you could imagine.  This fits well with my tendency to be more autonomous, not having to call or talk with someone to get that answer. 

Today though, this was not the solution.  I had been thinking about contacting the customer support for my website hosting for a few weeks, but all those self-doubt thoughts kept me from doing it.  "What if my question is stupid?  What if they can't help me?  Will I have to change everything and that will be so much work!"   Today, I did it.  I called the number and my self-doubt and fear were quickly shown their predictions were completely false.  The tech support was supportive, helpful, and he's now my contact guy for any questions I have in the future.  He was excited about what I'm doing and looking forward to helping me make my goals happen in a cost effective way.  There's that empowerment feeling again! Also gratitude, and humor at how much my limiting thoughts kept me from doing this before. 

What does this have to do with yoga?  Yoga is the practice of self-awareness to notice how sensations in the body, breath, and mind are either moving us toward or keeping us away from who we truly are and our full potential.  What I went through today, pushing through the fear to ask for help and trying something new, opened up possibilities and gave another experience in how self-doubt is not my truth.  If I had listened to it, I would have continued to be in the misery of wanting to create online courses and being stuck in taking a step forward in making it happen and feeling more and more like maybe it's not possible.  Taking a breath and making that phone call broke through the block and I'm flowing again.

Remember, yoga is not just a physical posture class you go to a few times a week.  It can be a lifestyle and daily practice, at any point in the day, that moves us towards self-transformation and a more content, peaceful existence.

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