Yoga with Adriene   -    Yoga For Connection
www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7f8tBtfd7w
Taking care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, or however you want to put it; doesn’t always look like the ‘grind’ or the ‘struggle’. While it most definitely includes it, its not the entire picture. Sometimes it looks and feels like this yummy yoga practice; learning to be still and work on the foundation instead ‘pumping iron’.
Like the Yin and the Yang, both aspects are necessary to achieve the total product and balance.
Namaste 😊

I love coming back to this practice semi regularity because there is something profound and yummy about coming back to the basics, and learning to expand your practice in even the simplest of poses.
We learn to bring more depth to each movement and humble ourselves.
I flippin love Yoga with Adrienne and she posted this one not that long ago either <3
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoGJXCg5yb0

With that token i also want to share something alil more mushy...


I want to thank and show my utmost gratitude to those who have helped guide me on my yogic journey. Directly and Indirectly.
 
Every one of you seriously have saved my life multiple times over.
 
Starting with the girls that offered free classes at Mentor High because they were getting their teaching certification and needed ‘experience credits’, so to speak.
I think about you often whilst sending love and positivity your way.
You helped open a door for me that would support and nourish me to grow in ways I never thought possible.
Coming full circle, I am at a wonderful place to enjoy and appreciate view and realizing I don’t think I would be alive today without this foundation.
Reasons that are probably oversharing and might get too awkward for just a general thing; BUT IT WOULDN’T BE ME IF I DIDIN’T LOL
---- If I were to portal jump to my first yoga class at my high school; we were on a small theater stage with a lot of people jammed into the room. It was just as chaotic as you are picturing lol. I was idk in 11th grade? Sooooo 16-17?
Stepping into that world looking back, I was going back and forth with an abusive boyfriend who simply just had his own issues that projected onto others. I had a narcissistic Mother with a cocktail of family issues, undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses, topped with generational trauma on both sides of the family. For me diagnoses would come later in life; ADHD (on the inattentive portion of the scale), Generalized Anxiety, cPTSD, and Major Depression.
(With this I am trying the paint a picture of a very scared, confused, hurting young woman who doesn’t know how to deal with herself let alone the world. Not list off my issues for everyone like dirty laundry. lol )
And in that class for a moment; i stopped.
Inhale. 
Exhale.
Inhale and fill your tummy with as much air as you can, hold but don’t force.
Be Still.
Exhale and bring your belly button in, and let go.
Be Still.
Inhale audibly. Be Still.
Exhale audibly. Be Still.
Now just simply pay mind to your heartbeat.
In that moment I felt just amazing love and joy; I felt life was worth living.
I got to calm my ‘monkey mind’ and simply just be; absolutely ‘divine’ in whatever way you feel that sensation.
I learned, I got stronger, and I was on a journey to a destination unknown, but something better; I could feel it in my bones.
Since then my life has been a whirlwind, a baptism of fire; for my Witcher fans out there, aye oooo. 😉                               
I began to weed my ‘Mind Garden’; removing toxicity and learned destructive behaviors; ya know all that self-improvement jazz lol
The ride it took me on was a fucking roller coaster of emotion, circumstance, and learning ways I unconsciously ‘fucked’ myself.
But through it all I have had some amazing teachers; some may not always teach me in the conventional way. But they were all Mentors and guides for better understanding, Wisdom, and Joy.
I grew up in a Pentecostal Christian church * (That’s a topic for a entirely different rabbit hole lol) and even then; I clung to the stories of wisdom and understanding. Something that you only learn by holding onto and never letting go no matter how hard it throws you. Like! Like! Riding a wild horse to tame it, idk not a perfect metaphor but you get the point.
But while you are on that ‘wild ride’ and being tossed around violently.
You learn to find that peacefulness and stillness in the thing you center on. The sturdiness of what you choose to cling to and your willingness to match it’s ‘vibration’. I mean vibration more literately than I think you guys will take at first. Seriously the atoms vibrate we all know this; on a more solid and rigid structure…well here they explain it better than me lol

Now depending on the ‘thing’ you choose to use hold onto for ‘support’, and its ‘structure of atoms’; will determine the ‘vibration’ of your emotional, physical, and mental ‘atoms’.
I am trying to give you this imagery to better understand that moment of stillness when its just you. Inhale audibly. Be Still. Exhale audibly. Be Still. There, That.
(See Clancy do it in episode 6 of “Midnight Gospel” if that is in your wheelhouse to stomach, everyone has their own taste)
There is where the magic happens. Least for me. Because since then, I have had so many amazing people help me in big and small ways; but all still just as important! =P
With this, I overcame my circumstances and became a strong and flexible person.
I chose life instead of death, I chose to become my own ‘light’ amongst the ‘dark’.                                                                             
And I continue to choose adaptation with love despite chaos.
I became water.
“I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about -- the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you?”
-Memoirs of a Geisha
 
 
After Thoughts and me trying to explain myself after the fact for more clarity, but it might in fact just make it more confusing XD
*Okay the reason I put so many things in quotes when I write and back track is because language is a messy symbol to use. There are so many words that mean different things to different people but they are all using them to try and describe an idea or experience that we all understand. So its less about the word choice and more about what I am trying to say with them.