While half way through the hottest hot yoga class I’ve been to in a while, mid the warrior series, with beads of sweat dripping into my eyes, my left hamstring (which I tore a year ago and still healing) aching, my breath deepening and my feet burning from working so hard to hold me up, my yoga teacher drifts past me and cues to the room to “sit with the fact that it's challenging”. And as dramatic as it sounds in that moment I could feel myself melt into the pose and all the uncomfortable sensations that were buzzing around my body began to subside.
A week later while presenting my fascial release workshop to 12 teachers, who were mid a glut release rolling their pelvis left and right along a hard ball, I heard myself cue the room to ‘welcome the ball in’, ‘ease into the discomfort’ and ‘soften over the ball, rather than resist it’.
It was at these very moments that it occurred to me that if I could just sit with the fact that it is challenging in all other areas of my life, perhaps I could find the same sense of ease and melting into it, rather than resisting it. Perhaps the challenges in life wouldn't seem so big, if I could sit with the fact that they were just so.
Little did I realise that over the coming weeks and months this notion would become more and more apparent. Without being melodramatic about the excitement that awaits me, I am in the throws of a life roller coaster. A ride which in the next 3 months is seeing me move house, pack up my life, leave my job, get married, go on honeymoon, and immigrate to the other side of the world, landing in Cape Town exactly one month after saying ‘I do!’ All of which is enormously exciting, but at the same time daunting. And so it is here that I am trying to apply my lessons of movement to that of my life.
I am sitting with the fact that parts of it are challenging. The thought of leaving my friends and family is hard, as is leaving an amazing workplace, deciding what of my worldly possessions is worth shipping and what is better off in the window of a charity shop, and the mountains of paperwork that threaten to drown me each day. Yes all of this is challenging, but I'm sitting with it, and also welcoming it.
Because with challenges also come rewards, ones of moving back to my homeland, catching up with long lost friends and family, starting a new life together with the person I love most in the world, and also the possibilities of continuing my passion of teaching Pilates in a different place, with different faces and finding inspiration in doing so.
So the next time you are experiencing discomfort of any kind, try sitting with the fact that it is so and see the power that you have to accept, welcome and melt into it. It’s sure a lot easier than resisting it.
