How do we keep missing the signs? Our bodies are trying to tell us something. Our hearts are trying to tell us that we are in pain. "Trauma is the biggest killer" according to clinical psychology. Personally, I always say that I am fine. I might say that more than anything else.
It's safe to say that we all have a vision for how we want our life to play out. Whether it's a big house or a job at the firm or a smoking hot partner. Maybe it's smaller. Maybe it's internal. Maybe your search is for happiness. Or meaning. Or maybe it's less selfish. Is your life goal to provide a great life for your child? Or maybe you are in mission work. Whatever it is, it is still a goal. And with goals there seems to undeniably be a load of stress. These set backs or blockages in the road aren't always dealt with head on. They are brushed to the side. Do we not think that they are important? Maybe not. Maybe it's just because we don't have time to worry about them right now. We are too busy getting to the next step to even bother taking care of ourselves and our needs in this PRESENT moment. Present moment. I'm always only thinking about the past and the future. I seem to either be dwelling on the past or stressing about the future. My boyfriend shared a quote with me the other day that stopped me in my tracks. "Be aware of the power of the present moment". Yea! Exactly! God, why didn't I think of that before? Why didn't I think about it before I was crying for no apparent reason! I think that there is no apparent reason, but the reality (if I could just force myself to sit down and look at it) is that I have had opportunity after opportunity to fix it. Now comes the question, "what is it?" Well shit... I don't really know anymore. Now it's a multitude of things. A million emotions that have been tucked deep into the pockets of my body. I'm that person that has no idea how stressed I am until it is too late. I'm "6-feet under" so to speak. I get irritable. I get grumpy. I close down.
Why, as humans, do we do this to ourselves? We push ourselves to our breaking points, and then when we get there we say that we are "fine". The worst part is that we really don't even realize it until we are at that cliff, one inch from being pushed over the side into the deep end. It makes me think about how adults always say that kids and teenagers think that they are indestructible. That's why they drive too fast, or drink too much, or play with matches. Well, what about us adults? We might not being be playing with fire in a literal sense, but we sure are in metaphoric sense.
I always tell my students "see what will happen". At that moment that you want to drop out of a pose because your legs are burning, just stay in it. See what happens. When you want to look at your neighbor to see if you're as deep in the pose as they are, don't. Turn your gaze inward, and see what happens. So I have to ask, what would happen if we (yogi or not) stopped to look at our emotions/ our traumas/ our let down expectations in the face right when they happened. Would we be better or worse for it? Why not "see what will happen"?
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