Acceptance

by Stephanie F. Earls

Recently on my way to teach class I was totally pissed. Excuse the lack of eloquence but there is just no beating around the bush on this one. I'm a person, I'm human and sometimes I just get totally pissed! So, that day I was and I had 15 minutes during my ride to recenter myself before I entered the room to teach.

On that particular day what really hit me was how in these 15 minutes I did not want to face myself.  I'd have rather ignored it all. I was tired and at my limit and dealing with myself was ANNOYING!  It took acceptance to get past it all.  As I tried to ignore or deny that I was pissed the feeling just kept getting worse. But as soon as I looked at myself and admitted what I felt, it started to dissipate.

It got me thinking about how when we walk through our lives we may not know what will come up.  Coming into a yoga class (either as a teacher or as a student) we do not know what we are going to find. On the external level you do not know who will show up, how crowded or spacious the class will be, how the practice will unfold. On the physical level you may find that your "tried and true" postures feel different maybe because you fell and banged your knees or are feeling tired from your day. In the same way you might not realize how moving through some things physically might perk you up. But most of all, on the internal level you might not know what from your insides will rise up to ask for attention or healing or, celebration.

It takes acceptance and courage to face yourself. Some days your heart will sing and bubble with joy. Other days the ache inside will be too much to bear. And either may creep up on you. That night I was not prepared for feeling pissed, something had taken me by suprise and though I knew it would pass, I found myself impatient and more mad that it was happening right before I was heading in to teach.

I wanted to be somewhere else. I felt disjointed, my mind in one place, wishing, my body in another.  It made me remember when I was sick and how at that time I wanted to get away from me.  But healing only began when I stuck by myself and faced the way I felt in the moment.   That night, on my ride, I took a  second to check myself and remind my body that I was HERE and not THERE and I could either embrace the HERE, as pissed as it was, or feel disjointed for the rest of the night. I decided to just look at it, remembering how quickly I started to heal when I accepted Crohn's Colitis. And like magic, things started to melt.

Every day, every moment that we sit and wish things were different is a day that our body does not know how to live in the here and now. It's another day we are disjointed, dis-eased. And only in the here and now can we heal, can we experience health, wellness, peace of mind. Ease.

When you practice your craft whether it's yoga or meditation or roofing a house... anything that promotes your understanding of yourself, surely there are ways that will let you skirt around yourself, glancing from a safe distance at who you really are and how you really feel.  But most of the time when you come to a place of practice, there is no way to hide from yourself. It takes courage and acceptance of where you are. There is no practicing a posture the way you did yesterday because you are not yesterday. You are today, you are now. And with that sense of courage to take a look at yourself now, you continue your path to peace of mind, peace of body and wholeness in whichever form you seek. You give yourself the chance to be available to yourself, to unconditionally accept yourself, to be available to your present moment; the only place your truth and beauty can unfold.