Winter Break! See you in 2023
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”
― Jim Morrison
Hellooooooo Practitioners,
Happy 2023. School is back in session starting tomorrow.
I had a bit of a break, which included time with family and then exciting and glamorous things like deep cleaning, doctors appointments, and crossing off long lingering items on my to-do list. I also had wide open spaces to think, dream, and write. Time to linger, meander, and wander. This was precious.
As we enter the New Year, there is a surge of messaging about detoxing and cleansing, resolutions and commitments, goals and achievements. We’ve all lived long enough to look at New Year’s resolutions with cynicism at best, hopelessness at worst. For the record, I think the idea is excellent. But, the implementation is awful. Why? Because it starts with a misaligned motive: to “fix” something that is wrong or bad. It’s a stick. And a stick that is often used to bludgeon based on external standards - to look or behave a certain way. To accomplish or achieve a certain thing.
Now, there is nothing wrong with achieving or improving! BUT, how about a carrot instead of a stick? What if instead of being bludgeoned from behind, you’re being enticed forward by something nourishing? Hear me out! This can be done. It’s what Aligned Motive #1 is all about: practice to connect with what’s already and always good, whole and complete.
Instead of: this is what I don’t like about myself… and here is how I’m going to change it… ASK: what do I need to do, implement, practice, or put into place to stay connected with what makes me feel alive and inspired? What moves the needle in positive and powerful ways for me? What is rich and rewarding and how do I stay close to that?
Here’s an example: I savored open space and free time during my break. I had more time to read which fills me with inspiration. I lingered in meditation until I felt complete. I was attuned and aligned with my inner guidance system. To stay close to what’s fulfilling:
My “cleanse” or “detox” is eliminating the hustle and go-go-go that seems force-fed by society and keeps me starved for time. Instead, I will feast on softness, slowness, sensitivity, and receptivity.
My resolution is to release the cultural obsession with achievement that keeps me feeling always-lacking and never-enough. Instead, I commit to pause and appreciate often. Play regularly.
These shifts satisfy my insides. This is radical because the dominant narrative at New Years is externally oriented. Cleanses or detox focuses on what you’re putting in your mouth, often to change how you look. But what about what you’re putting in your mind and your heart? What media are you consuming and how does it make you feel? What is eating your attention? Is it fulfilling?
Other resolutions or commitments are about what you achieve, rather than what you are being or becoming. For example, achieving a certain look or acquiring a role. But are you being a role model? Would you want your friends, family or children to follow you? To do what you do?
Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes we need a reset, a cleanse. Sometimes we need to get our butt to the gym. Sometimes we need to wake up early, work late, and put in the time to make something happen. It’s rarely WHAT you’re doing but HOW you’re doing it. What’s the energy and intention behind it? Are you coming from a place of not enough? Or the peaceful and compassionate discipline of true self-care?
Intention, the energy behind what you’re doing, is everything. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of feeling like I’m on a hamster-wheel of doing, accomplishing, improving. This doesn’t mean that I’ll stop practicing asana, meditating, reading, studying, writing, reaching for big bold dreams. But it does mean that the energy behind these activities will be different. Rather than getting it done with grit, I will go with the flow of grace. Rather than the taut muscles of effort, I endeavor to soften into the splendor of poise.
How you feel influences how you act. If I’m rushing, scrambling, hurried, harried, striving, then the choices I make for movement, nourishment, connection are very different than when I’m in a place of ease, grace, and space. Can you feel the difference? Rushing, scrambling, hurried, harried… Ease, grace, space… It’s hard to explain and impossible to scientifically measure, but when I’m internally aligned, most “bad habits” magically and mysteriously dissolve.
To align your energy, intention, vision and actions for 2023, watch or rewatch the Aligned Motives for Practice Webinar in your Virtual Library. Every week students tell me how transformative this single teaching has been - for practice and life.
Here’s to another year of learning and growing.
May your practice bring a personal revolution,
Alison
