“Progress is when we forgive ourselves for taking so long to treat our bodies like a home”
Yung Pueblo
The overarching thread that pervades my daily life and the purpose of THE THREAD JOURNAL. is the significance of cultivating a sense of homecoming; in relation to myself, my movement practice and the space around me. By this I mean the sense of being ‘at home’ in my mind, body and my surroundings, all of which I feel are deeply intertwined and reflect one another.
By tuning into little pockets of everyday beauty, I feel it is possible to create a sense of soul familiarity and sacredness within a space. I believe there is an inextricable tie between the Self and the space it inhabits, with energy transferring from one to the other as we inevitably absorb the space around us (which is where boundaries come in). By listening to how our bodies feel with moment-to-moment presence, paying attention to our breath and softening the barrier between skin and space, we can create a porous and fluid quality to enable a sense of effortless comfort and easeful flow, on and off the yoga mat.
Listening, breathing and softening sounds simple enough but in a culture of ‘doing’, rather than ‘being’ we are often hypnotised into a ‘trance of busyness’, a phrase coined by Tantrik philosophy scholar, practitioner and author Christopher Hareesh Wallis, what I interpret to be an unconscious struggle between over-efforting, pushing, chasing and hustling, under the impression that this is the only way to success. On the contrary, the culture of wearing ‘crazy busy’ as a badge of honour, can lead to an empty numbness and as a result can cause injury, adrenal fatigue, exhaustion and burn out.
I speak from experience as in the not-so-distant past I thought that I had the healthy life sussed. I was doing an intense amount of training, from cardio at the gym to HIIT classes and boxing to barre, with a number of physically demanding yoga classes per week thrown in. Classes were often before work, which meant packing my life for the next day the night before (inevitably packing very random items and forgetting rather essential items altogether from time to time!), getting up at an ungodly hour, rushing out of my flat before my body realised what was going on, getting into a fluorescent tube carriage to journey across London to any number of different studios, usually unaware of what exactly I was getting myself into and then pushing my body through whatever was required of it.
Despite the indisputable advantages of getting a seat on the excruciatingly early tube, trying out lots of new activities and moving my body before a mainly laptop-based day, my body was entirely stressed out – my adrenals depleted from the stress my body was under, my already underactive thyroid in disarray, my hormone levels out of whack, my body was physically tired and injured (including a torn hamstring and a broken foot) and it was actually screaming out for me to slow down. But still I carried on, pushing through the injuries, ignoring the signs that my body was not fully functioning as it should. By this point, my mind/body had had all of its feeling drummed out and had lost its capacity for being aware of the present moment, of knowing how to feel and even less how to stop.
I found it very easy to discipline myself to go to classes, I was on autopilot to get myself to class and my body became accustomed to being told how to move, but the more I did, the less I could feel my body and certainly the less I was treating my body like a home. Whilst embarking on my game-changing yoga teacher training course (alongside my full-time job in PR), I came to the realisation that I really struggled with the concept of home practice, of simply being with myself, of moving spontaneously without the need for achieving anything, being guided only by the wisdom of my body. This felt entirely foreign, of course as it required deep internal listening but after thrashing it around for so long, my body had stopped talking to me.
It was at a class by one of my favourite teachers Rikke Brodin where the pin dropped as she spoke about coming into conversation with ourselves by listening closely, being gentle and inwardly whispering to our bodies in order to regain their trust. My commitment and dedication to my health had conversely led me to almost completely disconnect, to a point where I felt either distracted, anxious or felt nothing at all.
Despite this realisation and access to the tools of yoga to come into deeper relationship with my mind/body, others around me and my environment, it has taken a long time and lots of twists and turns to regain the connection and for my body to trust me again.
I have since spent a couple of years patiently cultivating the relationship with my body, by slowing down, listening, appreciating and nourishing to bring it back into balance. It look another pretty major injury earlier this year, a nasty wrist fracture (after slipping in the mud on Hampstead Heath, another urgent message that I required instant grounding!) to cement my home practice, based around a daily meditation which takes precedence over anything else. This is not to say that my home practice is without its internal struggles, it continues to be very up and down. Sometimes it is half an hour of sitting still in magical emptiness/fullness but most of the time it is ten minutes of constant mind chatter. Even so, I feel better after a short time of staying still, tuning into my breath, realising that my thoughts are a valid part of me but essentially are not me and I can watch them pass.
Cultivating homecoming has become a captivating return to my centre, a sense of ‘dropping in’, a stripping away of conditioning and unnecessary layers, back to essence. It is a place where we can all peel off that exterior outer shell in order to retreat and rest in peaceful authenticity. I believe that this connection can be strengthened by creating a supportive environment that is healing through its beauty and intentional quality, that provides comfort and nourishment whilst becoming an extension of the Self.
Finding contentedness in quietude allows our innate wisdom to come forth, a journey back to a birth-like state, ruled by pure instinct and intuition.
Have you experienced a disconnection between your body and mind?
Do you find yourself doing rather than being?
What helps you to feel at home in your body?
