action in inaction

Tuesday, the second day of the school week and in my head the third day of my week as I see Sunday as the first technical day of a week. When you allow for your own structure, there is a comfort in it. Yes, I am OCD. Yes, I enjoy the practice of routine in some aspects. Yes, I feel at home within a form of structure. No - not to the point that I am living with limitations and rules that confine my ability to grow and embrace newness, but without any format I find that it becomes extremely difficult to live successfully within the ebbs and flows of day to day life.

My mood today felt out of whack, out of alignment, out of sync. It is possible that it is an extension of the end of the year - not for the reason you may be thinking. Obviously, I am exhausted. If you know a teacher intimately on any level, then you know that the May to June time frame is the most chaotic and overwhelming time of the year. I am not denying the chaos. It is real. So very real. But the end of the year chaos is not what infects my mood.

My time with these amazing young people is coming to a close. Next year I will get a whole new set of gifted students wide-eyed and slightly anxious about the upcoming year, and yes I will have my former students still roaming the halls popping in and out of my classroom, sharing their work with me, and asking me for Dr. Pepper or snacks, but it won't be quite the same. It's never the same. Each year, each class, each block, each table, each student is different.

We are prepping for TED talks. A different form of assessment than the usual. When you do things that are different - you must prepare yourself for the unknown, both personal and professional.

Laying on my back, deep breaths filling my lungs, my back muscles expanding, spine pressing deeper and deeper into the mat, palms facing up arms fulling extended horizontally, feet firmly planted, eyes softly closed, and mind circling and whirling.

"I challenge you to focus on your breath today," we are instructed.

"Let the noise of your breath overpower the thoughts. Push them to the background. Let those thoughts become the background noise of your mind as you listen intently to your breath. You will go back to those thoughts later, they will be there, but now you must be in the moment, in the present. So often we think about the future: the possibilities, the plans, the expectations or the past: conversations, decisions, or reactions of the day or week. But right now, we are in the present, so let us exist here."

We place our hips against the wall and sweep our legs up onto the cool texture. Legs laying flat, feet parallel to the ceiling we are in an inverted action. We have swept ourselves into another physical world allowing our internal workings to shift in order to provide a comfort within our emotional and physical well-being.

I believe that when you become out of alignment; it is necessary to find a solution within your body. I love that today that solution was flipping myself upside down and listening to something we take for granted every day: breath.