Hello friends,
I truly hope this finds you well.
The past weeks have been incredibly traumatic, stressful, and scary for so many. My hope is that with this message, I might be able to provide some support to help you facilitate a calming of the nervous system and a way back to balance for yourself.
I believe in self healing, and the sovereignty we all have in knowing what our body, minds, and hearts need to feel better, to feel safe—and that we have within us the ability to give ourselves that. My intention is to provide support for you in getting there. So, to that end, in light of how busy so many of us are and given that the constraints of time are very real, I'm launching a free online offering this month of a shorter version of my in-person workshops.
If you would like to give it a try, please check out my first ever (gulp) You Tube video. In this video you will still get all of the benefits of the practices I teach in my workshops—yoga, meditation, and expressive writing—but in less than 30 minutes, which you can do when it works for your schedule.
Try Yoga & Writing To Calm The Nervous System
I would love to hear your feedback if you give this free, online version a try. What works—what didn't—and if you would like to see more!
Prompt Of The Month
Grab your notebook, settle in to a space where you are comfortable, and won’t be disturbed, and remember that this type of writing is all about just letting come through what needs to come through. Don’t judge or edit.
The prompt for this month (which you will also find in my online video) is about feeling safe in the body. If doing the full online practice doesn’t work for you, please just go ahead as usual and work through the prompt and pose of the month as you have been.
The prompt is: “What can you do today to feel more safe, more at peace, more at ease, within your body? Your mind? Your heart?
See what comes through, and if you can, take action, even if it’s a small, baby step, go ahead and do it. You won’t regret it:)
Pose of the Month: Forward Folding Butterfly Pose
Forward folds are the best poses when it comes to calming the nervous system and stretching out the posterior chain. The reason they work so well for soothing the mind and the body is that they mimic coming into a sort of fetal position, turning your attention inwards both literally and figuratively, as your eyes will naturally close as your body folds in towards its centre. The pose that I've been working with quite a bit over the last few weeks has been Forward Folding Butterfly Pose.
The wonderful benefits of this pose are that it provides a full body stretch: The shoulders, the back, and the hips, as well as the groin and inner thighs, depending on how close or far apart from your body you hold your feet.
In yin, we do this pose in a passive manner, meaning you are letting your neck and spine round (as opposed to keeping your spine straight) and your arms are allowed to rest gently at your side or in front, preferably with your palms facing upward to emphasize the surrenderer of this shape.
You can do this pose at any time of day if you’re feeling the need to reset or balance out a sense of fear or overwhelm. Even if you can only stay in this pose for a couple of minutes, trust me, it works.
Final Thoughts
While I'm aware that you definitely do not come here to seek my thoughts or opinions on the state of the world, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the deep pain that so many are in.
When I thought on this, as trite as it may seem, the poem by Rumi came to mind:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
Doesn't make any sense.
When I started to research the meaning of this poem, different interpretations and translations from the original language in which it was written (Farsi) came up in my search. One alternate translation I discovered was rather bleak, and spoke to the fact what Rumi really meant to express was that everything—even the idea of a peaceful place between right and wrong—was a mirage.
Although this translation isn’t as uplifting as the more accepted version, I thought this discrepancy was so apt for right now because within it is a reflection of the many different opinions, backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and beliefs that make up the world, and at times cause such conflict. So that even this accepted translation we all know and accept as true is not that simple—there are other ways to read it, other versions, and clearly within it both a negative and a positive, a dark and a light, a yin and a yang. Which is exactly what is playing out on the world right now.
That being said, I think that the popular interpretation of this poem is a beautiful idea, even if it is not what was originally intended, and so that is the one that I choose to hold on to. Because I do believe that high above the places where we are different, and other, there is indeed space where everything is peaceful, where love resides, which is the place we all come from. And although it may take future generations, and much hardship still to get there, I believe that is a place where we will all eventually meet.
Until next time…
All good things your way,
Allison