Changing My Mind

In February, I went to 19 yoga classes. At the beginning on the month, I overdid it and injured my shoulder & neck. I spent about a week & a half in pain and taking it very easy. I got a massage, saw the chiropractor, took Advil, did things with my non-dominant hand, iced, took hot showers and stretched. It all helped and I feel much better now with a deepened reverence for listening to and being more aware of my body. There is nothing like constant pain to make me extremely grateful for having a mostly healthy, pain free body.

Tonight my yoga teacher, Michelle Klink, was talking to us about Sukha (happiness) and Dukkha (suffering) and the place of contentment in the middle. The most contentment I experience is when I don’t try to control or avoid the transitions between happiness and suffering. Just allowing the emotional seasons to fluctuate as they do feels the most honest and realistic. This way I find there is more of the in-between contentment available.

I’ve been focusing on loosening my desire for consistent stimulation, contact, attention…and just being with myself in the experience that I already have everything I need. It doesn’t always resonate or feel true, but I like embodying that state when I can remember to.

I was wondering why at this time it is so easy for me to go to yoga regularly and in the past I was so resistant to it that it was like pulling teeth. I think it has to do with taking care of myself ahead of everything and everyone else. It’s finally happening consistently and all kinds of other things are slipping and shifting as I’m finding new ways of being more myself.

Also this week, my therapist at Kaiser who I’ve seen every 4-5 weeks for about a year, let me know that she is graduating me to “as needed” status. She said that she’s not really “working” in our sessions anymore and that she looks forward to seeing me because we are just hanging out & chatting. From a medical necessity perspective, I agree that I don’t need to see her anymore. It’s great news!

I’ve done a 180 in the last year because I asked for & got myself even more help than I thought I needed, I put aside all my reasons and evidence why things weren’t going to work, and I allowed myself to say yes, receive everything offered to me that I could use and be as transparent as possible about my journey.

Maybe the biggest success I’ve had is that I allowed myself to change my mind over and over and over. I was in a large group of people that were all trying to recover from deep suffering and I saw over and over that the people that got better wanted to get better and were willing to change their minds about themselves, their lives and their circumstances. I decided I wanted to feel better and change my mind about my relationship with depression, so I opened my ears, listened to what my doctors where telling me would help me and then did it. It was the way out that was available to me and I took it. I don’t regret it because I literally tried almost every single other way first.

Everyone has their own journey, I’m not advocating for anything in particular, just sharing my own experience of how I have been able to remove my own boot off my neck and begin to live a happier, more unencumbered life.