During these last few weeks of 2011, I’ve been pushing to Get Things Done—tying up loose ends, trying to complete unfinished projects, lay out plans for the year to come. All those good end-of-the-year activities that seem So Very Important.
However, in the metaphoric way my body likes to protest my “mind-not-quite-succeeding-being-over–matter,” I’ve also experienced back spasms, a sprained shoulder, smushed thumb, and a torqued knee. As I described in a vlog a few weeks ago, I slammed my thumb in a car door in a mindless flurry of activity. This was after straining my shoulder in an overenthusiastic workout. In the last couple of days, in a fit of denial that I’m not in the same shape I was when I was a fitness instructor in my 20s, I pushed myself into a back spasm trying to do a stretch faster and further than was right for the present moment.
So I have to ask myself what my body is trying to tell me. (I know what I’ve been trying to tell my body, to no avail, “C’mon Let’s GO!!”)
I believe that these physical “mistakes,” where I’ve ignored “where I am” in the miasma of an idealized “where I should be,” are related to how I experience power—trying to Feel, it, Prove it, or generally Muscle my way through it. Now you might think that after 40+ years of practicing qigong, t’ai chi, and yoga, I’d remember that this might not be the optimal way to accomplish my intention. Embarrassing to admit, really.
My injuries are all healing remarkably quickly, ie a back spasm that used to take 2 months to heal has completely reversed itself in two days. But Still. As I set my intentions and work to create my Best Year Yet, I think I’d better remember the image of becoming one with the vast river of flow that is one aspect of Tao. This seems wiser more sane than the kind of Conquer and Deliver attitude I appear to have adopted lately.
Last year, I wrote about the importance of releasing fear for 2011. This year, as I enter 2012, I am invoking the spirit of one of my early T’ai Chi Ch’uan teachers, Dr. Franklin Kwong, now deceased. Week after week, he demonstrated how to feel and use power differently, with a sense of lightness and joy instead of urgency and heaviness. My New Year’s wish is that I carry the touch of his teachings in my awareness once again so I can drop the burdens of “should” to express the possibilities of “shall”.
Have you ever experienced your own power “lightly”?
Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
Do you ever have days when you find yourself railing against things that Just Don’t Feel Fair? —where it feels like the universe is conspiring in a Job-like way to keep you from doing what you want to do? How can you follow your passion when you hit the roadblocks, the nay-sayers or the voices of self-doubt that appear to drag you down? In fact, is all that appears to be bad really bad?
In an earlier blog, I spoke about The Law of Attraction and how, for me, the most interesting work is to hold the stance of accepting, even welcoming, all that happens as food for spiritual/personal growth and development.
I want to be very clear that when I say to accept what’s going on, I don’t mean submit or “there’s nothing you can do to change things so just buck up and deal with it.” For many people the idea of acceptance is so connected to submitting or enduring that they believe the choice to “accept” would result in even fewer choices than they already have.
But I mean something very different.
I’m talking about avoiding a pitfall, the trap of keeping your focus on what should be and so losing sight of opportunities embedded in what is. Focusing on “what is,” rather than on something more “ideal,” makes you better able to make clear choices about how you want to relate to a situation rather than getting stuck in a self-defeating, powerless state of “it is not supposed to be that way” or “it’s just not fair.”
When have you seen an undesired situation transform from a challenge into something that ended up being a gift?
Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness Program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Integrating over 40 years of Chi Kung practice with other martial arts as well as her work in Yoga, Feldenkreis, physical fitness and theater, Vicki has developed a dynamic set of tools to increase awareness, transform obstacles into opportunities and enhance creative potential. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
As I’ve devoted energy into my own business over this last week, I’ve noticed that I’ve been living under the specter of “one more thing-itis.” It feels like I’ve been running and running yet somehow still staying in the same place. One part of me is pleased by the illusion of perpetual productivity, while another voice inside insists that it’s important to balance doing the work I love with some time for reflection and replenishment, a “space in-between,” where I might balance the expansion of my outward energy (or yang state of activity) with times of internal focus (or yin state of receptivity).
Yet I resist. Too often in that space of non-doing, I end up feeling guilty or, god forbid, non-productive. Then, because my brain has hit a wall and I just have to dosomething, I find myself sitting in front of the tube watching instant play reruns of old tv shows. While this choice may succeed in silencing the “do-do” (doodoo?) mutter in my brain, it still doesn’t feel very good nor do I end up getting recharged.
In a chapter of my book The Way of Joy, I write about a principle I call Balance Brings Harmony and how often I’ve been struck by how many students and friends have said they feel ashamed to admit they have taken time during the day to read a novel, do a crossword puzzle, or take a nap. For most people, even vacation time is barely long enough to stop the internal buzz before picking up their “real life” once again.
By contrast, Wayne Dyer, author and inspirational speaker, has said, “It is the silence between the notes that makes the music. It is out of the silence, the gap, or that space between our thoughts that everything is created, including our own bliss.” Opening internal space, then, actually gives birth to our inspiration.
I remember hearing a story by the brilliant, heart-filled Jungian storyteller, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, about Picasso in his garden…
Want to have some fun telling stories? Interested in getting up on stage and performing? Join Vicki in her Playback Theater Improvisation class beginning Jan. 28 (with final class performance May 20)
Vicki Dello Joio, founder of The Way of Joy: A Spiritual Fitness program, is a teacher, speaker and performing artist. Book: The Way of Joy: An Evolutionary Process to Awaken Inspiration, Focus Intention and Manifest Fulfillment, CD: Short Meditations for a Busy Life.
teachers, Dr. Franklin Kwong, now deceased. Week after week, he demonstrated how to feel and use power differently, with a sense of lightness and joy instead of urgency and heaviness. My New Year’s wish is that I carry the touch of his teachings in my awareness once again so I can drop the burdens of “should” to express the possibilities of “shall”.
