15 minute writing exercise blog….GO!

I just set the timer for 15 minutes. It’s a writing exercise where you just start writing whatever comes out, no editing, no going back and reading what you wrote. I’m doing this because I have not been blogging, hell I haven’t even been writing and I used to LOVE to write. I used to love seeing the world and making my observations and keeping journals full of thought meanderings and doodles and lyrics and all kinds of stuff. Writing is a practice just like yoga. And when you fall off the wagon, when you get out of your routine it’s hard to get back on. Sometimes, if it’s a minor blip, I can just chill out and rest and wait for the inspiration to come back, but not this time. I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting….oh yeah and napping. But nothing’s coming back. I sit and stare at the little blinking cursor, I even have ideas about what I want to write about but nothing, just blinking pixels mocking my existence, my (what I once thought of as) talent. I used to think I was a good writer, sure my spelling and grammer are atrocious but I have spell just for that and grammar well I can write that off as my southern charm right? But lately it’s just a wash of………nothing. So I’m trying this little writing experience to see if I can get my juices flowing. I’m starting here with one public stream of conscious rant for all the cyber world to enjoy or not. And then I’ll take a little more disciplined path of writing. I’ll work at it. I’ll actually view this blog as an occupation, sort of occupation, no, not occupation. Practice. Like I said earlier, a practice. I will just sit and write of 15minutes a day about whatever comes into my little yoga brain. And I will reset my neuropathways, I will be a writer.

But why, why does this blog seem important to me? I don’t expect to get well known, I’ll never be a David Sedaris or….well insert the name of a blogger turned author here. But it does feel important to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve never found a blog about yoga that I like, because maybe I feel like yoga is just taken to damn seriously way too often. Sure it’s serious but it doesn’t have to read like a technical manual or a new age book promising the ultimate embrace by the Lord or Goddess or Universe or whatever! Sometimes yoga is just there, it’s just a part of us. Like the two by fours holding up our houses, it’s just the frame from which I choose to se my word. “Pause, build the foundation of your asana” I say that a lot. I guess I mean it. I guess I don’t think I need to be hit over the head with my yoga, or even told that my yoga has lofty potential. No. I just want to be reminded that yoga is there, always, every breath I take, every decision I make, ever stupid joke or pun I say and all the sacred giggles or eye rolls that follow. 

Yeah, I guess I blog because I need it. I need to remind myself about how I see yoga and I choose to make it public because that’s how I am. I share everything with my Community and even the tiny things I share sometimes find the right ears. It’s not why I blog but its part of it. Just me meandering around my brain and sharing it with a broader Community.

Ok 15 minutes up. Time to spell check!

Greetings From Rock Bottom a.k.a. Gratitudes

When everything falls apart and you have nothing to hold onto, I guess there is nothing left to do but be grateful. Counter intuitive, yes. Counterproductive, no. See here is the thing, when you struggle with depression mild or other wise, or heck even if you are just plan human, our minds have a tendency to focus on the negative. So while I'm rolling around down here in the mire of rock bottom I was trying to figure out how to get a leg up and start pulling myself out. Not easy, because my sad little brain only sees all the things I don't have around me. My sad little body only feels how tired it is from all the effort (seemingly in vain). And my sad little heart is just plain broken. Now seems like the perfect time for gratitude, I shall elaborate.

This is a little practice I have done throughout my life when I was feeling overwhelmed or just plain unmotivated and sad. It's a tool to help teach our brains to stop focusing on the negative parts of a situation and be thankful for the good things in our lives. Good things don't have to be directly linked to the situation at hand because once you start finding good thing somewhere then you can start seeing them everywhere. Basically you are training your brain not to slide into depression (which for some of us we are simply genetically more susceptible to), you are actually breaking down old "negative" neural pathways and rebuilding more positive ones. It's science, it's faith, it's whatever, it's really really cool. It can also be really easy, easier than making a grocery list, just list 5 things. My 5:

1. My dog is happy and healthy and did the best happy "i thought you were dead but you came back!" dance EVER yesterday when I got back from Chicago.

2. I took a really fantastic yoga class Sunday.

3. My car is still getting almost 30mpg on the highway!

4. I got to hang out with my cousins kids yesterday morning, 16months and 4years old, both boys in my lap, coloring, and cooing, le sigh.

5. I have a pretty stunning family of friends.

So those are my 5 right now. In the past they've even be so mundane as "I could afford to make my car payment this month!" or "the homeless guy didn't harass me on the way to the train today." I think my dog is always number 1 though. Also, you don't have to write them down, at one point I had a gratitude journal and ever Sunday I would write my list down, that way I could see my progression of thought. But these days I just make a quick mental list of 5 things to remind me that no matter how dark it is out there I can see at least 5 little twinkles to keep me moving forward.