Ever since I can remember I have loved swing sets. At recess in school I would bolt out of the classroom to ensure that I’d get a seat. Of course, I’d tire of that and head off to hang upside down on the monkey bars or play some tetherball. To this day if I’m at a park or playground with some kids, I embody that past memory and hop on.
There’s something about swinging that has a sense of creating momentum and then letting things take their course with just the occasional leg pump to maintain it all. At each turning point, a moment of stillness exists which is opposite to the sensation of feeling your whole body being pulled toward the earth before taking the next ascent along the pendular path. Effort, let go…effort, let go.
My life has felt a bit like that over the past couple of weeks with a sense of big swings between effort and letting go. I felt crazy busy during my final few days with the job that has just concluded. Shortly after my last day at work we headed off to Iceland for 6-days of exploration and relaxation. Within hours of returning, I hit the ground running in order to open my new studio next week. It feels as though I’m on that massive swing of life with bouts of high intensity, long hours of work and “getting things done” and then experiencing a completely different sensation, floating in the Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik and spending time in Iceland…completely letting my body absorb and literally soak in the waters of the earth.
As I sit and write this, I’m dreaming of floating in those warm, healing waters that tells me I need to be paying attention to keeping myself in balance. We can handle short bouts of high intensity and amped up levels of stress, but if we live in that energy on a continual basis it builds up to something called “chronic stress”. As we evolved, we naturally experienced short intense episodes of stress as a mean of surviving whatever might have been threatening us in our environment and when we retreated into our “cave” we recalibrated our nervous systems, welcoming harmony once again. In today’s culture, we do so much surviving and so little retreating that we throw ourselves out of whack on all levels of being-emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually.
I often state how grateful I am for my practice of meditation and yoga — two things that are a daily ritual which hold the intention of keeping myself in balance. They are non-negotiables in my routine as past experiences have taught me; without them, I’m not nearly as resilient to everyday stressors.
My intention as I launch into the first week of my new chapter is to remember that not everything has to be perfect from the beginning. To allow myself wiggle room to figure it all out and to remember that the reason I do the work I do is to ultimately serve and support others in finding balance and peace within their own lives. My intention is to walk my talk and offer myself compassion for being perfectly imperfect.
Oh…and to let myself play on a swing set and soak in healing waters even if it looks like my own bathtub and not the Blue Lagoon!
