All is Within

What we know for sure: 2020 is a year to remember. 

(And the year some of us lost our $#!@.)

 

What we don’t know for sure: lots of things. 

(Hence the $#!@ losing.)

I’ve been practicing yoga for over 20 years and teaching for over 15. I see how others hold the stories of their lives in their bodies. I witness where my own body holds tension and collective suffering. I also work as a trauma-informed, mental health counselor and, what I can attest to is, this year has been particularly rugged.

For everyone.

As we have questioned ourselves, judged others, felt despair, floundered in the unknown, held our breaths, and experienced loss, our bodies have shoved down the emotions and expectations we aren’t able or ready to process. Like holding a ball under water for months on end, we get more rigid. Meanwhile, under the surface, the anxiety increases. The depression increases. The chronic pain flares. The sleep becomes more turbulent and (you name your flavor) it sits in our bodies making us miserable.

And we want relief.

Someone to tell us it’ll be ok. Another bottle of wine to take the edge off. Why not buy three coats in different colors? Binge watch 27 hours of shows from the 90’s…because they’re not making new shows because it’s a pandemic. The “coping strategies” get louder. We start to believe all of this, the idiosyncrasies, the suffering, the diagnoses, the coping strategies are who we are.

But they are not.

We have an amazing resilience when we soften the rigidness of our thoughts, our stories, our emotions, our physical bodies, and let ourselves breath and heal. This year threw me off in many ways. I thought parts of me were irreparably broken. Then, slowly, I came back to the practices that I somehow forget always work. I moved my body and walked in nature. I returned to the practices of Yoga (breathing, meditation, asana, Bhakti, and more). I connected with my energy work training. I prayed.

I remembered, in small glimpses, I’m not going to find it out there.

It’s all in here: the hurt and the healing, the dark and the light, the individual and the collective. I’m not sure I would have made it to this space had it not been for years of doing this dance of suffering and remembering. From that day, over twenty years ago when I stepped into a yoga studio because I was miserable and wanted it all to stop, that yoga class started a journey I could have never imagined. It led to a yoga teacher training and a process that would invite me to get curious, become less rigid, unfold the stories that lived in my body, live deeper, heal, find my purpose, and teach me I’ll be okay. Even in 2020.

All is within.

Join Jess Ryan and Audrey for All is Within: A Practice to Anchor You, on Monday, November 23, 2020 via livestream, anywhere in the world. The practice is free. Give yourself some time to reconnect, anchor, and remember.

Stick around for the last 30 minutes and learn more about how yoga has anchored Jess and Audrey and how they are sharing these tools in their upcoming Yoga Teacher Training starting in January 2021.