Thursday, January 06, 2011

The Year of Doing Nothing (post 1.03)

Non-striving.  Not trying to reach for anything.  Not trying to change anything.  Letting go of the desire for things to be different.  Staying in this moment just as it is.

Well, of course, as a long-time Yoga teacher and student this essentially was my practice anyway.  But I realized that making this my sole focus for an entire year was going to raise the bar a bit.  Was I ready for this? In some respects, I was more than ready for this.  In 2010, which according to some who study the effects of the planets on our life, was an incredibly tumultuous year.  I don't really understand the effects of the planets, but I can say that 2010 was, for me, and for my family, a very tumultuous year.  At the end of 2009, I got engaged.  In 2010, my partner moved in, my son went through some significant adjustments, and I completed my 500 hour certificate for Yoga Teacher training at Kripalu.  That all happened before the end of January.  Then I became sick for many months with mysterious symptoms of unknown origin which included vertigo, temporary blindness in one eye, and extreme fatigue.  Before I was really well,  I bought a condo with my fiance, then purchased a second condo before either of us had sold our homes.  We then proceeded to sell both homes and move in the middle of the summer.  I moved my son from one school system to another, my fiance had minor surgery which required about 6 weeks of recuperation and we took two vacations.  At the end of the year, my father-in-law-to-be passed away, and with some sadness we celebrated our second Christmas together as a new family.  It was exhilarating.  It was exhausting.

Perhaps I was drawn to the idea of being on sabbatical because I really needed some down time!  I knew that with a partner, a child, a business to run, it wouldn't really be about doing nothing.  There was plenty to do.  So I began the year by looking at my habits and determining where I could make more room in my life for "doing nothing".  I decided I needed to define what "doing nothing" meant.  Certainly, non-striving made sense.  We had been through so much change in 2010, it really was time to just stop for awhile, to be still, to not try to change anything else.