Oh the anxiety!

I may be having a great summer and focusing on the good things in life but anxiety can still find me!

Basically, I am a bit freaked out by the thought of finishing my dissertation and actually graduating. I have been going to school for so long I have forgotten how to be if I am not a student. My whole identity has been wrapped up with being a student.  Without a dissertation looming over me – I can’t even fathom that experience.

On some level, that fear is holding back the writing process. It is more than just the identity of being a student. It is the fear of not finding a job, having to pay back student loans, and most of all, making decisions about my future.  For so long the decision has always been made by how will it fit within my graduate school career. Now what?

For now, I guess I just have to keep moving forward and have faith that things will work out.  Back to the mat….

incantata

When I started writing this blog I thought the focus would be balancing yoga with grad school. It has remained a blog about balance but I have come to realize it is about balancing so much more than those two areas of my life.

Learning and growing by engaging in everyday life, the good and the bad, has been more of a yoga lesson than the actual asanas. The physical practice has gotten me through life and all that happens in it but it is not the only place I experience my yoga ‘practice’.

My physical practice is a single, solitary, selfish act. Even when I dedicate my practice to someone or interact with others in class, I still feel like my asana practice is about me. The rest of my life is where my yoga really comes to light, in the way I interact with others, with respect, openness.

Right now I am enchanted with life and selfishly enjoying it!

Balancing dissertation work with play

I am loving my life lately! I am beginning a new relationship, taking time for yoga and running, enjoying the summer weather (when it stops raining) and generally being happy.

But the dissertation is still hanging over my head. There is nothing I can do but work on it consistently and diligently. The problem is focusing on that and remaining diligent when everything else is so wonderfully distracting.

So I am going back to the basics. The first thing I did was get rid of most obligations and social engagements (I am reserving time for the new relationship and close friendships). I have printed out a calender for the month of July. I put in purple my runs and yoga classes. I put in black my dissertation tasks and in green I put everything else.

Every Sunday I am going to review my progress and set a new intention or work goal for the week. Every Friday I will send a draft of whatever I have completed that week to my adviser. It is unlikely that he will actually review my work each week, but knowing that he might is enough incentive to make some progress happen every week.

We shall see if this makes a difference in my productivity. I am used to burying myself in work when I have major deadlines, but this time around I don’t want to do that and several months is a long time to disappear from friends and family.

How do you manage to maintain balance in your lives?

Upside down

My roommate and I have rearranged our living space and I now have a really great space for my practice – pictures to come soon! This has made it possible for me to practice inversions safely without having to move all the furniture around.

Inversions were a scary part of the practice for a very long time. I love doing supported headstand, shoulderstand, etc but doing them sans props…yikes! I guess I was always afraid that I couldn’t hold myself up. Slowly I have come to realize that I have the foundations of the poses and really can hold myself up. The trick now is to soften into the pose. To hold myself up without holding tension in my body. That will probably take years!

What poses do you find the most scary and how do you overcome them?

What is this thing called love?

Sorry no Moksha. I have decided to postpone the classes for one week.

Instead, I am going to open up about love. Starting a new relationship with the most kind and caring man I could possibly dream of has also brought up memories and throughts from past relationships.

Last November my Ex passed away after a long battle from Lymphoma. It was a complicated relationship full of young love and hurt. It wasn’t until after the funeral, well months after the funeral, that I was able to understand what had transpired between us. The insecurities we both felt had fueled the uncertainty, his pulling away and my grasping.  Only it was really him grasping and my pulling away. What occurred on the outside did not match the inside. But in the end, our collective failure in the relationship brought about my beginning.

Of course, it took seven years and his passing away for me to really be free. It should be understood that all the anger, pain, and confusion did not mean that there was no love. That is the beauty of relationships and, well, Love.  See, life and love, and relationships are complicated.  So few people, including myself, are really ever willing to admit this. Too many people see love and relationships as black and white. As a young woman I thought – you are either in love and happy or you are not.  But it really is not that way. The truth is that I believed love would conquer all, which is why I hung on to all that pain and anger and sorrow for seven long years. I was still convinced, only I thought he had given up and threw our opportunity away.  Now I know the truth.  He was setting me free and it was not easy for him.

Moksha Tonight!

recap tomorrow morning. I promise!

Primary Series

My beloved yoga teacher is trained in both Ashtanga and Iyengar styles. This means that we can take away both proper alignment and a flowing sequence.

Class last night focused on a modified version of the Ashtanga primary series. It was my first experience doing the series in a class and I found it challenging, solidifying, and restful. In a word – Amazing! Every once in a while I do a practice that makes me want to sing the praises of yoga to everyone. Last night about half way through the practice I thought to myself  ” I really truly love yoga!” When the practice becomes routine and I do it just because I know intellectually that it is a good thing for me, I lose the deeper connection I have to myself and those around me. I think the benefits are still present and even some bits of mindfulness are lingering, but when I have one of those amazingly present practices such as last nights class, yoga just sings to me.

Do any of you ever feel that yoga love?

Back in the Groove

After a week of lounging and relaxing I am ready to get back to work. I worried that the time off would set me back too much and that I would not be in the ‘getting things done’ groove anymore. On the contrary, I woke up this morning refreshed and ready for a morning run. I am inspired to do a yoga practice and work on my thesis. I am going to top off this great day by having dinner with my new beau.

I think sometimes we worry too much about getting stuff done. Time off IS productive because it refuels you.

Next week I am starting a month long exploration of Moksha yoga which I will chronicle here of course!

My inspiration for procrastination

Relaxed at home

There is something that happens every time I stay at my parent’s house, which happens to be the same one where I grew up and on a small lake, I totally relax. I read, sleep and chill out. I get nothing done even when I plan to work at least a few hours a day. This time I set a goal of working just one hour a day…after six days here I give up. I think it is impossible to work here so I am going to enjoy the last day with absolutely no feelings of guilt!

At least I managed to get two good runs in this week!