Letting Go of Desired Outcomes

This blog discusses the process of how meditation helped me understand when I had let go of a desired outcome within a conflict. I found it genuinely fascinating and helpful in my healing process.

Healing takes time.

Healing takes time.

Healing takes time.

Can you relate to wanting things you feel are important to go the way you feel they should go? This is a story worth sharing that involves me being stuck in overwhelm, anger, and sadness over a family of origin relationship in which I was a care provider. I was in conflict with this important relationship due to the choices the person was making. I wanted a particular outcome that I felt was in the best interest of everyone. My mentor saw my predicament and gave me this beautiful meditation to help me sort through my challenges and attachments. After all, I had worked hard over the years to help this person I so deeply loved and I thought I knew what was best.

This meditation involves the placement of attention on the breath and the images of water and waterfall. You call to mind a conflict or challenge and imagine your breath carries it from a place within you to your hands while you are sitting next to the upper bank of a river. You allow the object to be dropped into the river. “LET GO!” As you focus on breath, you visualize the current taking your obstacle down the stream and over the edge of the waterfall paying attention to the weight, shape, and size of the obstacle. You also pay attention to where you feel this release in your body. Stay curious!

Multiple times a week, I practiced this meditation and had the same response. The shape of the object was big, the weight was heavy making a big splash when I imagined dropping it in the river. 

I was still attached to the outcome that I hoped for and this weighed heavily on me.  This lingered for months.

Magically, one day in the middle of this meditation, after many experiences with the same feeling/observation...something shifted. I went to drop this same issue in the water and a different shape, size, and weight emerged. I could not have written the object that emerged more beautifully. It was in fact the complete opposite of heavy and big while making no splash at all when I dropped it in the water. The object was in the shape of a paper ship. I watched it float so quietly down the stream. My body immediately felt lighter and I remember laughing. 

My mentor explained that I now was at peace with the situation and was letting go of desired outcome. He even said, “healed.” OOOOOH, how I loved that insight and direction.

Meditation takes us into our “knowing” where all answers await. While there are many different types of meditation, I use the Viniyoga system of placing meditation at the end of my practice after working with breath-centric postures and pranayama to bring my system into balance first. I find that if I skip this process, I have a much harder time paying attention as my system is still out of balance.

I will end with this saying by my teacher, Gary Kraftsow who says, “With correct understanding, things become lighter not heavier.”

And so, the paper ship goes merrily, merrily down the stream.

Life Lessons in Salsa Dancing

Hello Friends!

Recently, I got invited to go salsa dancing at a local coffee shop in Austin with a friend. Having learned the basic steps of salsa a few years ago, I felt confident to step into this opportunity and go have fun. 

When I walked into the salsa atmosphere, there were definitely some spicy movements, and the air was thick with humidity from body heat and energy. I started dancing and made it my goal to dance with people of all ages that asked me to dance. I was also happy to ask others to dance along. 

In Salsa, the man leads, and the female is aligning with his steps. It’s important to know the basic steps too so you can stay in rhythm. I danced with several people, and I will categorize the 3 types of dancers that I experienced:

1.     The Rigid Leader = One of my dance partners kept stopping my movement to tell me how to do it correctly. It caused me to leave my body and get into my head. I looked down at our feet. I felt disconnected. I also struggled to hear him above the loud music. We found the steps, but I felt unsure and I perceived he was uncomfortable. 

2.     The Experienced Leader = I found a willing partner that jumped at the chance to dance together. He was excellent at the basic steps and a few turns and never missed a beat. We felt close, we smiled, and I didn’t have to look at my feet because our hips moved perfectly to the beat. He felt my confidence and led me through a few turns. We laughed when everything didn’t go as planned. We looked good dancing together. 

3.     The Freestyle Leader = This partner knew the basic steps and knew how to allow me to follow him. There were no corrections but close connection. He knew to let me mess up and then, just when I thought we were in perfect sync with our steps, he would let go and do movements that were nontraditional. He was freestyling. I let go, mirrored his movements, and found my own creative way. I asked, “What was that?” He told me that he could tell I needed to embrace freestyling within the dance. He read me well. 

This is a wonderful analogy for how I work as a yoga therapist and teacher. It’s important to know your stuff and be well trained in understanding the technology that is yoga. This takes years. And then, there’s freestyling where you adapt to what the person needs when working with mind/body/energy. This is the artistry of being an effective yoga therapist…

• you are able to hold their story:

• allow them the safety of expressing their story

• help them rewrite their story

• and gradually lead them toward a sense of playfulness and joy

  This is my goal in working with others and in how I want to live life. I want to become “Joy and Playfulness” itself.

As I looked around the dance space, I observed all types of dancers. But the ones that appeared to be having the most fun were the couples who had embraced freestyling. They had to start somewhere and become educated around the basic steps and practice, practice, practice. Gradually, confidence built and somewhere along the way, salsa dancing inhabited them. They were free to play and express themselves. They became the dance itself.

It’s like that in yoga too. We AWAKEN FROM THE INSIDE OUT. Working with the postures and breath becomes a form of expression. We are telling a story from the inside out.

1. The first step is to learn =there is no timeline

2. Practice, practice, practice

3. Do the activity with joy and playfulness