Loving Yourself: the power of considering contentment

I have found such joy in the simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head,
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.

I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain’s blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my window sill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase;
A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.

Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might
Tell every woman who goes seeking far
For some elusive, feverish delight,
That very close to home the great joys are:
The elemental things-old as the race,
Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.

~Grace Noll Crowell

Regularly I have clients approach me about anxiety, agitation, how they are searching. They are looking for happiness, positivity, joy, etc…but the one word they never use is contentment. If we were looking at a sliding scale, as Tim Ferriss discusses, the opposite of happiness is boredom. I disagree, I think the opposite of happiness is indecision. Neither places can a person live in at all times, because the greatest tool being overlooked is contentment. And its contentment that we as a society are in constant battle with. The closest anyone has come to labeling contentment to me has been by using the word ‘peace’.

Contentment is both the gateway and the destination.

The Paradox of Choice, is when a person is presented with so many options, they are less satisfied with the choice they do make because they are not sure the choice they made was the best one. With so many options out there, how do you know you made the best choice? In truth, you don’t. As the internet brings the world closer together, people doubt many of their decisions: Did I buy the best vacuum? Did I pick the best thing on the menu at the Cheesecake Factory? What to watch on Netflix? Am I with the right person?

Please don’t get me wrong, Im not asking you to consider ‘settling’ for the first person/job/vacuum that comes your way. Nor am I asking you to seek happiness within an unhealthy environment. I’m suggesting you pause. Just stop, before you see something you ‘need’, before you see someone who might be your soulmate, and just take a look at the place you’re in.

In this moment, can you find contentment if nothing changed? Not your job, not your home or your relationship status? Can you be ok within this moment if everything froze?

Now, the expectation of everything staying the way it is, isn’t realistic. We are forward moving creatures on a planet that doesn’t stop moving. So freezing can only be an idea as opposed to the reality. But the suggestion of it, the pause it creates in you to consider. That’s the moment I want you to think about.

If you’re chewing on the idea of contentment in this moment with some peace, allow yourself to come back to this question when you feel chaos coming back into your life.

If you’re feeling a twinge of, ‘I’ll be ok, but this one thing has to happen first’ Im going to ask you to consider if it doesn’t and how you will respond to the alternative. Again, considering contentment.

If the idea of nothing changing sends you into a panic, grab a pen a paper and begin to write down those fear-zones. Write them all down, but keep them in the present. If you find your language jumping into the future, dial it back to now. What if you stay in the same house, same job, same car, etc… And with each area, can you focus on each item and find some contentment within each of those spaces?

Finally, look at yourself. Just as you are. Don’t focus on places in the body that are uncomfortable, but look at you as a whole. Can you look at yourself without needing to change anything? Notice when the language moves into the future, or into the past, you’ve begun to compare. Can you keep the internal dialogue present?

Loving yourself implies surrounding yourself with boastful energy, while contentment implies settling. If you truly look at what those phrases are asking of you, they are asking for you to take away comparison. They are asking you to remove your inner ‘mean girl’ and find the person you are when nobody’s looking.

Looking for some more ways to work on self-love, acceptance and contentment? Join us at the studio Sunday, November 5th as we host Amber Karnes of Body Positive Yoga, as she leads the ‘Radical Self-Acceptance Workshop’. Sign up at www.mainstreetyoga.com/workshops.

I didn’t get into yoga to lose weight: an essay on finding True North

 I'm not in the ‘get skinny’ business. Nor did I start practicing yoga to lose weight, if I had, I’d be a size 2.

I began my practice at first, because I felt as though I had gotten lost. My moral compass and energy felt chaotic and I was beginning to spiral out of control. At the time I didn’t know what anxiety really was, but it had taken hold of me and I was suppressing it with alcohol.

At the time, I remember I was searching for the air I used to know. The clean fresh air that had a distinct flavor which would charge every cell in my body. I didn’t know how to describe it at the time, but I knew it when I felt it. For those moments, I caught a glimpse of myself trying to reemerge. My own duality of the self, realized. I wasn’t terribly proud of either version of me on their own, but I was trying to reconcile each side into a framework of a person I felt I was becoming-someone I felt I could be proud of, who lived with integrity.

Yoga had been on the outskirts, strumming this chord inside of me, beckoning to that previous version of myself. I would observe this pattern, as though I was a feral cat, and yoga a place of solace, circling me trying to lead me home. I was afraid of what yoga would show me and for a couple years, I just let it circle the perimeter.

In retrospect, I know why I was so hesitant to approach yoga. It was going to tear me open in a way I would least expect it! It was going to expose the underbelly of myself and show me how I was regularly lying to myself, hurting myself and not listening to my own set of truths. I just wasn’t ready to hear all of that at the age of 21 or 22. But at 23 when a series of events uprooted my entire life, I fell into yoga’s arms; much like many desperate people fall into religion. I was naked and terrified and out of options.

There are times I hate my practice, I cry or avoid it. I sometimes get mad at yoga-as though it had offended me. And yet, yoga lovingly continues to point out my own silliness. How I can get in my own way and when I’m being a hypocrite. It shows me how to honor myself and others without being rash or presumptive. It gives my soul a sanctuary to thrive.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the store I caught the air that first drew me toward my practice. My body felt its charge and was completely awake and aware. Each time it finds me I picture the orchard where I grew up. I can hear the wind blowing through the evergreens to the west. Their song so distinct and intense; yet soothing. In these moments everything stops. The wind speaks to me and I must pay attention to understand its message.  Its those moments where I am reminded of my ‘True North’. The inner compass of my soul speaks to me and time slows down. If I didn’t want to drink in the air so badly, I would probably hold my breath, but I want to experience the wind from all sides.

I, by no means, judge or condemn those who practice yoga for the physical benefits, but I knew long ago-physical yoga wasn’t what I was looking for. I needed to rediscover something within myself that I had been overlooking. Stop allowing other people to dictate my True North for me and listen to the person I had been smothering within myself.