Leaning into the Hard Stuff

OFF THE MAT

Weekly Thought Offering:
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
-Martin Luther King Jr

When you do hard things you build self confidence 
-Elmo

Weekly Journal Prompts:
Something in my life right now that is hard is….
I can feel myself leaning away from it when…
Leaning into it would look like…
If I did that and I succeeded I would feel….

Weekly Mantra:
I CAN
I DO
I AM

JUMP TO THE FLOW BELOW OR READ ON!

Hello Sadhakas!
A theme has been coming up a lot lately amongst my clients. Too much soo to be a coincidence (there are no coincidences but thats for another blog on another day ;)). And this week we will explore it together both ON and OFF THE MAT.
What is the theme?
My clients keep saying something along the lines of “I asked the universe to make this thing go away, but it keeps coming back and I am so upset, I just want it gone”.
Have you ever felt like that? Like you just want something to go away wether it be a person/place/thing or feeling. And you keep pleading for the thing to be gone but it just permits or goes away and then comes back? Do you feel like the universe just isn’t listening to you or is trying to punish you? Well here is BIG BIG BIG tenet of the practice:
Things are not happening to you they are happening for you.
When you ask for something to be taken from you ie I keep getting upset with my children when they misbehave, I don’t want to do that but they just keep misbehaving.
Guess what- they are providing an opportunity for you to learn how to NOT get upset.
When hard things come to us that are providing us an opportunity to do the hard thing, to practice, to learn that we can do the thing we want to do so that we can KNOW we know how to do the thing.
Wouldn’t it be insane if a marathon runner told you he had never trained and was going to win? That would never happen. Any athlete practices their sport over and over and over again and the top professionals dedicate every waking moment to the thing.
So here is what I am offering this week- lean into the hard. Feel yourself wanting to move away from it and move INTO it instead. It might be scary or hard but even if it doesn’t go well I can promise you it will offer a shift, possible a HUGE one.

ON THE MAT this week we are, of course, exploring the same. As we move into deep hip flexion we observe the desire to round the low back and we don’t. We move into the challenge of keeping the flexion at the hip and keeping it out of the low back. This is one of my favorite valves to explore because it can charge our physical experience ON and OFF THE MAT so much by opening our eyes to where not moving functionally has been causing us pain and how to stop it.
Your back will thank you and so will your self confidence ;)

Ps the practice this week may feel pretty easy for some- let that be ok. There is A LOT happening in our world and for this week I want you to really really really drop into the breath and experience your tissues unwinding stress even as they work.

With great respect and love,

Nicole