I am sitting here late on a Saturday noticing how strange I feel. I am thinking about a podcast I heard recently where someone was describing how their family reacted to their beginning stages of minimalism behavior. “I realize I am getting rid of things and pulling away from some people but it is because I am removing things that don’t bring value as well as distancing myself from toxic relationships. I am being intentional...not suicidal.”
It is true - the distance between me and everything else that had become my daily life is widening. It is happening on its own. I gave myself permission to feel and to be honest and now I don’t have a taste for pretending.
In Mysore it is normal for someone to hide away in their house until the next practice. Or just not talk to anyone at breakfast. Or to have hours long conversations with strangers who become friends as the turning over of ideas continue from one day to the next. Mysore is a little city in India where students gather from all over the world to learn yoga straight from the source. I had no idea when I arrived on my first trip twelve years ago that it is also a place where people gather for deep transformation. They still do.
You can quietly show up for practice, talk to no one, cry on your mat, talk to no one, stay in your house all day. Or show up to breakfast and talk to a stranger about childhood patterns you are trying to make sense of or lie side by side on your friend’s cold floor for hours trying to figure out what you are going to do with your life. You get cracked open and you process and you look around and someone else is crying on their mat too. And you have a pretty good idea what’s going on — some similar shade of realization, understanding, or transformation.
That’s what is happening. My insides are recreating Mysore. Yoga plus one. Simplicity. Getting quiet and empty and questioning everything. In this space the toxins and pent up emotions and things we just don’t want to face and the things we hide away — they just arise. And I’m crying on my yoga mat and going to the office like its normal. As I write this and think of Mysore I remember that this is a good thing. You have to let it out. You have to feel and consider and sometimes you have to let go, leave, change, and say goodbye.
You can’t be afraid of leaving something you might need just in case. You can’t be afraid. You have to forgive yourself for the fast fashion and temporary fixes from home decor to relationships. You have to thank everything and everyone and every thought as you let them go. They were all there for you in one way or another. You’re here now. In the widening deep silence your job is to get in touch with who you actually are beyond all the shit you have collected throughout a lifetime. And focus on that. Big changes. Sweaters that last forever. Friends for life.
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