My friend Sarah and I attended the Yoga for EveryBody class at Syracuse Yoga. It was a WONDERFUL practice that anyone from a novice to full on ‘yogi’ would enjoy and benefit from. At the end of a yoga practice, Savasana is an asana done lying flat on your back, your legs spread as wide as the mat with palms facing up, a few inches from your body, eyes closed. The intention is to rejuvenate the body, mind and spirit while releasing the stress of the day.
Sophie, our instructor, had let us know that she'd be coming around to adjust our shoulders (allowing us to opt out if we didn't want her to). As she came to me, she quietly suggested I widen my wingspan, so to speak, and two things happened; the first, I immediately felt like I was taking up entirely too much space in my new position and second, my whole body felt like it might melt into the floor, as if I'd finally just 'let go' and was allowed to just 'be'. I felt free.
I saw the little girl with the bangs ALWAYS in her eyes, desperately seeking approval from her teachers. I see their pained expressions of having to 'deal with me' etched in my brain because I was probably needlessly overbearing and awkward. Confidence is a funny thing. You either have it and it EMBOLDENS you but when you don't, the lack of it acts as an internal vacuum that seems to deflate you from the outside in. I saw the teenager that STRUGGLED with her sense of self which severely effected her health and wellness right into adulthood. It was then, I realized that my entire life since those pained expressions given to an overly seeking child, I've been trying to take up as little room as possible, both physically and emotionally. On a daily basis, I'm always slightly suffocating to unburden this pre-written audience of my past and it turns out, I'm not physically, emotionally or spiritually small! NONE OF US ARE! Meanwhile, as we try to squash who we are for fear of rejection or failure, we leave space for the mass amount of negative energy that is always desperately seeking to envelope as much room as possible. We need to fill that space with love and it's SO glaringly simple! We ARE love and we ARE light. To our cores, we are.
Accepting yourself, allowing yourself to Be, loving yourself enough to share that with others; that is how your world changes, that is how our minds change. Today, I plan to take up as much room as possible, today I will bring the joy, today I will love, today I will breath and stay present, today I will be me in all the space that I need!