Stress, anxiety and panic have been such a huge part of many of our lives this past year, for many different reasons: fear of becoming infected with Covid - fear of infecting those we love - fear of being alone - fear of not having enough income - fear of the frustration we feel towards our family when we can't have the usual space or breaks from each other - or fear of not being able to see our family members enough - fear of the unknown - fear of breaking down - fear of overwhelm and situations too big for us to bear - fear of death...and more.
I've suffered from occasional headaches all my adult life, more so in the last ten years or so, brought on by an inner stress of expectations and 'shoulds'. For much of this time I've felt bad about this. In my head the dialogue would go like this (accompanied with panic or at the very least, anxiety): 'I can't have another headache, I had one last week! I'm a yoga teacher, I'm supposed to be above stress and able to manage tension by doing yoga (which sometimes made it worse and sometimes made it better), I'm obviously not a very good yoga teacher and NO ONE must know about this terrible weakness of mine!' Needless to say this line of thinking did not help my headache to ease. Neither did tablets. But, finally, I came to a new insight that changed everything. It was so foreign to me at first that it took a couple of months to be able to take it in and do it. I learned that instead of turning away when I feel a headache coming on, trying to push it down or repress it, trying yoga or shoulder releases or other movement to desperately try and stop it coming, I learned to turn towards it, to welcome it into my experience. Actually, it is a part of me. I don't need to be ashamed of it. Oh no no no. It is helping to tell me that there are emotions within me that I can't access at the moment, and it is presencing itself to help me feel. Better to feel something than to push it all down so far that my body eventually can't cope with it all. All that emotion needs to go somewhere. And then I learn, one headache at a time, that it is no longer the master of me, causing overwhelm, but joy of joys, I am the master of it! There seems to be so much stress and anxiety around at the moment, causing distress in so many ways, that I felt my next workshop needed to be about this theme. Join me on Saturday April 17 from 10:30am - 1:00pm (with generous breaks) as we actively explore the ways we can transform and melt away anxiety and fear. Physical, practical, simple things can be truly empowering! More information is here.
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