To Be with My Feet
I’ve been quiet on this here blog. It wasn’t intentional. Or actually, maybe it was. Who’s to say? I began a 200 hour yoga teacher training in February, and since then I’ve been steeping in self examination and reflection, and it just wasn’t the time to write publicly.
As part of my training (I’ll graduate next month…assuming I pass the final exam), I had to complete an individual creative project.
That was it.
That was the assignment.
Complete and present a creative project to the group.
As a recovering perfectionist, such a wide, general assignment made me sweat, but I literally signed up (and paid) for such torture, so I determined not to panic and to let creativity have its way with me. As the September due date approached, I had several ideas but nothing was feeling right, and I was downright appalled that I had nothing to present. But as they teach in yoga, I took a breath, and very much unlike my past self, I stayed calm trusting that inspiration would find me.
And it did.
Five days before I had to stand in front of my peers, I was reading about nervous system dysregulation (a topic I find myself completely taken up with) when words started forming in my brain that I couldn’t get on paper fast enough. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’d like to say I didn’t judge my efforts, but I totally did. Nonetheless, I wrote what couldn’t wait to get out of me and put it to the side thinking surely something else would come along. While I was contemplating the newfound poet in me, I stumbled across a recently released song someone had shared on their Instagram story. It was one of those moments where I momentarily left my body because what I was hearing just couldn’t be right. And yet it was. The lyrics were a perfect complement to my unexpected written expression. So, I took the synchronicity as confirmation that my creative juices were, in fact, in the right glass and presented my first ever poem to my cohorts this past Friday night.
I share them here because I know there are many who are suffering. And many still who don’t know they’re suffering…they just think it’s normal. It’s a brutal way to exist. I’ve linked the song that gave me the encouragement to move forward at the end.
May we treat ourselves with kindness,
Allison
“Running, Running, Running from home
Where my feet could not take me, my mind always roamed
They hurt me, They hurt me, so defenses I made
My body, my spirit, my mind they all claimed
My oppressors’ innocence claimed, I retreated inside
No more could they take, I resolved then to hide
But the problem I found that when protected from them,
I walled off myself from the nurture within
For many years and years, mind and body were split,
To live without pain, this had to exist
But as time went on, no more would this work,
Depression set in, had to change or be dirt
So the journey began to return to myself
Many bumps, many bruises, many days felt like hell
What I needed from them, I couldn’t get safely,
So I came down from my mind to embody this casing
And wouldn’t you know, I was welcomed and held,
To grieve, to heal, to no longer be quelled
My mind is now happy to be with my feet
To be in the moment; together, complete
I came home, I came home, no longer to run
My body, My Spirit, My Mind now are one”