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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Tuesday, April 4, 2017
The last time I practiced and blogged about it, I focused on being grateful and extinguishing fear.

The effects that this had on me were positive enough that I'm going to try and focus on being grateful today, as well.  The 4 main areas of my life that I'm focusing on are......

  • My family
  • My job
  • My friends/relationships
  • My health

Those are the thoughts I'm going to keep in front of my mind as I move forward through my day.

In addition to focusing on being grateful, I'm going to extinguish and fear and anxiety I feel throughout the day.  Fear, as Master Yoda says, leads to suffering (yes, I incorporated Star Wars into a yoga blog; #idowhatiwant

Tuesday, April 4, 2017 (Part II)
I'm on my mat post-practice, and sweating like its my job.

Had an exceptional practice this morning with intention and focus on the 4 areas of my life that I'm most grateful for listed above.  When I'm moving through my physical asanas/poses I try to keep my mind shut off.  When I do catch my mind wandering (which is often), I bring myself back down by focusing on those 4 areas.

To help extinguish fear and anxiety, I "bait and switch" myself by, first, imagining my life without my family, job, friends, and health.  A world where my parents have been given 2 months to live, I've been laid off from my job, my friends and other relationships end, and I'm diagnosed with something terminal and life threatening.  While it's scary to think of that hypothetical world (and scary to type it out on a blog), I envision losing all of that and then realize that it's not real.  All of my wants and desires are not real.  I have no control over any of them, and they are not real.  This helps train me into letting go of things I'm afraid to lose.

Physically, I think I'm going to put more intention and effort into my backbends.  I notice that they're good, but not great.  My backbends are my crowning glory, when they're deep, and I feel a need to keep chipping away at myself until they're at a point where I'm happy.  #yogavanity

I'm going to shower up and enter the world with the calm and grounded focus my practice gave me.

Namaste

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