I’m sure one thing we can all agree on is that the world feels a little uncertain at the moment. In the west, world events and circumstances are challenging our ideas of normality and adding an extra layer to a modern and western way of living that celebrates busyness and striving. This often leaves us with little time for our human need to rest, or to catch up with and care for ourselves and those we love or process how we feel about our every day experience.
My yoga teacher recently made me think about the philosophical idea of digestion in yoga and Ayurvedic philosophy. How might it be to consider digestion as more than a physiological process of movement and assimilation of food through the digestive tract, but rather a concept of processing all that comes into our bodies and minds through our everyday experience?
Sometimes the effects of busyness, rhythms of working and modern life, everyday relationships and life’s inevitable ups and downs don’t have time to be processed. We can end up with a backlog, possibly feeling tired, exhausted, in pain, emotionally out of sync and unable to connect in the way we might like to live our lives. We might get to a point that makes it hard to flow with the pace of life that until now we’ve been able to keep up with.
How do we digest these elements that make up our lives? How do we make time to take in what feels good, what is inspiring and allow ourselves to be with or find uniquely compassionate ways to move through things we find more difficult or don’t need any more?
We are always in relationship with the world - we cannot escape it’s effect but we can learn to consider how it effects us, how we feel about it and what we want to do about any difficulties or potential joys that arise in our experience of living a human life in this world.
What would it be like to pause, relax and find ways to care for your experience from a place of rest and acceptance? Is it possible that this would allow your system the time it needs to take in what feels good, be with and begin to move through what has been stored as difficulty and come to some perspective that suits where you’re at and where you want to go? What would it be to allow this process to be part of your rhythm, your self care? How could you allow this to happen in your own unique way and to trust that your body knows how to do this?
I love the potential of the idea that our bodies are always in a state of becoming. From this point of view life’s difficulties have the ability to change as our lives are forever moving and evolving. Nature does not stop growing, seasons come and go, seeds grow into plants that bloom and wither to provide compost for new life - a never ending cycle of growth. Plants can become healthier with careful positioning, cultivation, care and love. How would it be to trust this process in your own body and open to ways of caring for your own experience that feel uniquely right?
Whether it’s working with touch or being with your experience through body oriented coaching, the heart of what I do is to offer a calm, supportive and open invitation to come and land, rest a little in a peaceful place surrounded by nature and see what your body and mind want and have to say. Maybe you might like to switch off and relax a little. Maybe there’s something that needs processing. Maybe you’re curious about finding a way forward with something that isn’t working for you in your life. It’s all welcome here and the start of an invitation to journey in to your experience softly or bravely and explore what you need to live well at this time in your life with the friendly support of another.