Hold On
We are packing my son up for college. Despite all his classes being online, he is shipping out. The departure is not as raw as this is his third year, but there is still a sense of holding on. We are all facing resistance to the inevitabilities and this fall is filled with many more questions that no one can answer. Whether or not you are holding on to a child, holding on to a relationship, holding on to a career, or holding on to summer...sometimes it is just difficult to let go.
A couple of years ago, my friend Margi and I had the experience of a Hawk Hike with Sky Falconry in San Diego. Check them out HERE. Hiking through the mountains, Master Falconer Denise taught us all about raptors while we basically played catch with a beautiful bird named Steam. They are incredible animals, but one of the things I remember is their talons. They can apply over 200 pounds of pressure through their feet, instantly snapping the spinal cord of their prey. The muscles and tendons in their feet and talons are like a vice grip and it takes time to slowly expand one articulation at a time, notch by notch. It is not an immediate process. They cannot simply let go.
It is difficult for many people to let go in many painful or hard situations in life. Remind yourself that you are not alone. Many of us our experiencing enormous amount of sadness and stress as we negotiate what is currently happening as well as the future. Letting go of what we held as normal. Seeking company of those who may be able to understand what you are going through is helpful. Regrettably this is made more difficult this year as we physically distance ourselves from one another for Covid safety.
I am reading this book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (HIGHLY RECOMMEND) and it turns out exhaling, letting go, effects every single factor contributing to our health. Culturally we are so ingrained to take things on, gather, exceed, go, inhale, that we have trained ourselves out of the ability to exhale (let go) and it is effecting our health in a very negative way.
Yoga practice provides fertile ground for noticing and improving our breath patterns, particularly nasal breathing. Our attention to breath during practice can provide us with a very real natural calm or "high" post practice. It also familiarizes our noses and lungs with this pattern of breathing in the hopes that we can take it off the mat as well. I am committed to sharing ways for us to simply feel better, to improve our day to day experience in light of all this uncertainty.
A reminder that the exhale is is not a complete collapse, but instead a preparation for the next inhale. We have to let go to provide space for new.