YES, OFFICIALLY I AM A MESS (and you can be too)

YES, OFFICIALLY  I AM A MESS

Take this as my confession that officially, I am a mess at the moment. Take a good look at my eyes. They seem somewhat happy after the morning yoga practice outdoors, but maybe underneath this little spark you can trace that I bawled them out of my head yesterday in a full blown hormonal storm as my moon started. I felt exhausted, angry at my partner, utterly frustrated, unsafe and unheard in a culture that I choose to live in at the moment, overall afraid in a world that seems like more or less chaos for me if I try to look too far ahead. 

Within this global situation we’re all facing a wild variety of emotions. The global becomes personal. I often still foolishly find myself thinking (I know a few others who might too) that as a yoga teacher we should be always emotionally coherent, calm and at peace, or at least not go around publicly admitting that we are all over the place, struggling with life or that we actually are in a state of mess. But hey, we all should give ourselves some slack. Within less than a year all of us have experienced a huge change - a need to adjust our lives, the way we interact with people, even our livelihoods. That goes for most of us at least. We also have been driven to have way more screen time than what is healthy for us, because everything just happens online.

Human being is a delicate being. I reckon only few of us really thrive in circumstances where we need to adjust ourselves every second to a future where we have no idea of what’s going to happen next. Our nervous system simply can not easily handle that. I know, life flows and you never step into the same stream twice and all that, but.. The irony here is, that of course we never know what’s happening next (there’s a chance for a piano falling on us any moment), but back in the good old days we could hold this illusion of being able to plan SOMETHING. This time has brought it forth very loud and clear that we just simply MUST live in the now. The tangible imperative you can not escape. It is both refreshing and fascinating as this message reaches more and more people, but also unnerving for the reasons I stated above. We have no choice but to navigate this.

I don’t feel so evolved, that I could say to you or anyone with a straight face that absolute surrendering just to whatever IS in every situation, would not create fear or anxiety in me. I am a human, and I do respond to the situation as a human. For personal reasons I have a big baggage of trust issues that are playing out LOUD and clear in these times, causing me to feel distress quite often. On the other hand I take this as one of the biggest lessons I can learn. Baby step by baby step, trying to yield to the moment, to the play of life as it is any given moment. It takes a lot of resilience, confidence, trust and self love. 

We are not beaten yet tho. There are ways to take care of ourselves. Being surrounded with your loved ones and nature feels nurturing to me if everything else seems wonky. I lean onto that. But meanwhile, I am a mess when needed. And you should be too. We cannot rise until we’ve rested and gathered our strength again. The journey to learn to trust life continues.