Alone Over the Holidays

My life has taken many turns since September when I last wrote. I’ve left a marriage, created a new life in the city, become a yoga teacher, and started the next level of my spiritual journey, digging into the gritty emotional work that comes when you no longer have any distractions, when there’s no one around I can use as an excuse to not do the work. It’s just me and all of my feelings and thoughts day in and day out. This is the work many of us avoid, because it’s difficult. We find it so much easier to populate our lives with others and blame them for the reasons we can’t meet the challenges life places before us.

When my guides told me to go to a local yoga studio and ask for a job last July, I had no idea that it would lead to my becoming a yoga teacher, or that yoga would become such an intrinsic part of my life. I’d always practiced yoga to some extent, but had never found a community of yogis and yoginis who took the practice to its full spirituality. Now, immersed in that world, and in teaching and practicing Yin Yoga, I know what my guides meant when they said that creating a life on my own would accelerate my spiritual evolution. Yoga not only opens the body to new levels of flexibility but it shakes up the emotions, bringing to the surface any issues we think we’ve buried.

As the holidays approach, I’m facing all the emotions that arise with being alone at a time of year that stresses togetherness. It’s a difficult time for many of us that are not surrounded by family. Usually, in this season, I just try to get through. This year, however, I plan to give myself plenty of time to be with my emotions, to discover I can sit with them and allow them to move through me as the temporary energies they are, and thereby uncover the awareness that lies beneath, an awareness connected to everything, to the Love of the Universe. I’ve been there before in Samadhi, but it’s a good challenge to go there when emotions are raw to begin with, not just when I’m already in a contented state of mind.

So, while others gather around the table for holiday cheer, we who are alone can recognize that these are Holy Days indeed, and use them to meditate and discover the Divine within – a loving awareness available to us now and throughout the year.

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Category : Holidays, Personal Growth
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