Sit With This

Everything hurts and I haven’t been wanting to do much physically because of that. But I was thinking about how inverted poses in yoga are restorative, especially passive poses. So, last night I decided to lay on the floor with legs up against the wall. It felt wonderful. And it hurt. Everything was tight. And it shouldn’t be. I wanted to just lay there and complain and hide. How can you complain and hide at the same time? Wouldn’t complaining just draw attention to yourself? But, here they were. Both trying to take over. I guess I just wanted to feel anything but the pain of my body.

I choose to sit with the pain. I choose to find the stillness in that. I let my body feel it with love and curiosity instead. I kept thinking about empowering the calmness that was somewhere inside my body. I ended up crying a bit, but it was more of a release than anything else. I wanted to yell at my body for always being in pain, but I didn’t. Instead, I caught myself and thought “Of course it’s in pain. I never really listen to it. I expect it to be strong, not take up space, do all the hard exercise, and so much more, all while I’m yelling shitty things at it.” Then I realized that it has pretty much always had shitty things yelled at it. If not by me, then by other people.

As I laid there, I just started giving my body permission. Permission to be soft, to take up space, to relax, to stop fighting itself, to love itself. I gave it gratitude for always doing what I told it to do and what I expected it to do without ever saying “Please” to it. My body is pretty damn amazing.

It still hurts, but I promised to listen to it better. Something inside has loosened and self-compassion now has a little more room.

Here’s the thing. Do I really want to be okay with feeling pain? Do I really want to be okay with yelling shitty things at myself? No. Trying to make it all “okay” is based in shame. And for shame to live it needs a secret, it needs silence, and it needs darkness. What I need to do is to turn light inward on that shame and let my body feel what it needs to feel.

So, I will show myself the attention I need. It’s okay that some things aren’t meant to feel good. The goal in life isn’t to feel good all the time. The goal is to just feel.