Commonly practiced in Ashtanga yoga, Marichyasana A is a take on the classic forward fold with a bind to help open the heart. I'm not even demonstrating the best form, but it takes time to get this pose and I needed to work on opening my heart. I feel this post demonstrates my struggle of wanting the heart open, and the feeling bound to my experience with struggle I can't always explain.
I came to my mat today with radical accountability. I have been trying to regain strength in my body and some assemblance of loving myself in physical form. -- I have recognized through my journey I have only been able to love myself when things were positive, attractive, strong. I have not been able to love myself when I am weak, ugly, and in pain.
I put myself in childs pose and said to whatever the fuck actually exists out there listening,
I admit I do not come to you in humility or humbleness. I come to you in anger. I come to you in resentment, fear, and anguish. I come to you (as I leaned into a sensation/emotion I had no name for) with something I cannot explain that unnerves me.
I admitted out loud that I wanted to find grace, and peace over the last few years with lyme and then covid thats turning into long haulers, and I don't have it. That I have rethought my entire life as a possible lie, and when I die did I get it right? Will I be punished? Did I love enough despite my anger confusion and trauma? I am aware that in my belief set, things aren't always about right and wrong, good and bad, just what we do with it, so that old Catholic traditional upbringing has surfaced in a way I did not expect or see coming.
What if everything we have been taught about death, dying and living is a CROCK OF SHIT and to pass on from life and be at peace, we only just needed to learn love? Not money, not stuff (i live small anyhow too much stuff makes me upset), not fame, glory, fortune, or even how to live in the matrix, but just love. And not even love as an operative word. NOT a doing space. A more broad sense of love and how it filters into each experience vs. I need to love that person or this situation etc..... Love in mindful attention into everything we do sitting in that sensation where ever we are at any given moment? The vibration of it? What does that even feel like?
This matrix we are in feels like a trap. Love through anger? Love through Trauma and pain? It's a hard thing to do! I fully admit I believe that our experiences give us choice on how to come out of something. Which wolf do you feed Kaile, is something I ask myself often. My wolf feels tired, shabby, scabby, missing hair, pot bellied, and despite the pack support of undying loyalty from a choice few.... I still can't feel whole.
I think I help people in my sessions because I understand reality and I'm willing to look at angles and take radical accountability for myself and support others to do so. There's no agenda other than.... let's figure some stuff out together.
So I spent a half hour on my mat, stretching, and breathing. I spent the time being ok with I'm uncomfortable and changing up poses into alternates when my body didn't feel supported or the pleasurable discomfort that comes with a stretch.
mmmm Pleasurable discomfort. I think I'm onto something there.
Are you experiencing pleasurable discomfort? Can I witness for you today? Drop me a thought in the comments with a mindfulness of love flowing to see if we can change this damn matrix we have swallowed blue pill after blue pill after blue pill.
Dark night of the soul for each of us is hard. I'm in one.