intentional stability

The chaos of my always-growing to-do list rattles in my head, items clinking against each other lightly as I set up my mat. For a Tuesday, it definitely feels like a Thursday. Like the amount of things I have already accomplished could only fit into 4 days - not two - it just isn't possible. Yet, here I am, reclining onto my mat convincing myself that it is in fact Tuesday. The instructor lays out candles in a off-center horizontal line of the studio: Candlelight Gentle & Restorative couldn't have come at a better time. Our mats are up against the wall per her instructions. I love using the wall, not accidentally kicking it.

"Turn to the wall, lay flat on your back, and we are going to start with our feet firmly placed against the wall," she explains, we all rotate, gently lean back and adjust our feet onto the wall applying onto enough pressure to feel the resistance of the cool texture. Clink-clink-clank-clink. Thoughts loud enough to make me curious enough to try to resolve even though there is nothing realistically I can achieve while laying in a yoga studio. Wrong.

The obsession of rapidly achieving each task is just that, an obsession, an addiction, an epidemic. You cannot possibly experience life when it is only focused on the next task at hand.

We now move to our full legs against the wall straight up in the air flushed with the wall. My arms extend parallel to the wall palms up seeking the energy.

"Focus on your breath, extending your exhale followed by your inhale. If your mind is busy, apply that to being in the present, in the moment of now. Analyze what's going on in your body, the tension, the release, the movement."

She must be able to hear the loudness of my mind.

Inhale...exhale...inhale...exhale...inhale...clink...exhale...

"Our days are full, but now we are here. Shift your focus to the present. Take in the richness of the moments."

Inhale...exhale...

Instead of always worrying, planning, constructing ourselves for the next moment, we need to take in the richness of the one we are in because it will be almost impossible to duplicate this moment again. Future moments are going to come, and when they do we can inhale and exhale through them, but the one we are in now is where our focus belongs.

Hang in the gravity of where you are so that you soak up all it has to offer because there is no promise you will have the opportunity again.

Gravity is often the antagonist, but if we shift our perspective it can become a friend instead of foe.