With Ottawa’s morning sun streaming in my aunt Peggy’s kitchen solarium I’m taking the first quiet moment I’ve had since leaving Nova Scotia last Thursday. It’s cold out there! I’ve been on the road for 4 days and this past week—the last whole month really—has been a marathon, getting ready for the big trip to Thailand.
It was last Summer when I noticed a desire I’ve had for years growing in me. It was coming straight from the heart. “Go see your original yoga teacher.” But to be accurate, the heart’s voice doesn’t really use words, it just seems to point you in a particular direction and then fills you with joy when you start moving towards it.
It seemed like such a long shot, so radical, and such a great distance to travel since David now teaches only in Thailand and the Phillipines. I started writing him and asking questions…. One day I received a reply that captured my attention fully. David mentioned offhandedly, “practicing within your comfort zone can limit your evolution.” These words echoed with me for whatever reason and the desire to go simply grew. Life was asking me to step fully out of the box.
As time went on, the decision to go just kept becoming more clear, a kind of destiny it seemed, and from that moment forward, the game was on. What game? The game in the mind of course!
When it comes to growth, change, and transformation, the mind will come up with infinite reasons why it can’t, or won’t, or shouldn’t. Not only does comfort limit our evolution as David says, but it keeps us doing the very things we say we want to do differently. And then we keep asking ourselves why we keep doing the same old things, even though we seem to really want something else. Upon closer inspection however, we can find a very deep comfort in the familiar. When it came to this trip, the heart’s desire remained while the mind was thinking up of every trick in the book to prevent it.
So even though the course starts January 25th, my deeper dive in Chakra Yoga began the moment I knew I was going. There was resistance from the mind, a thousand reasons and logistical challenges of why not to follow the call. My life went deeper into practice right then and there as getting ready for this trip has really shaken all the dust out of the closets and showed me all the things I still need to breathe into. Yoga lifestyle sounds glamourous, but really the truth of it is to watch your mind in every moment.
So all this to say I’ve learned so much already, and I’ve not even gotten on the plane yet!
Fascinating. One week to go before take off!
Montreal –> Bangkok (through Tokyo) Jan 18th.
namaste’
Mandee