Day 7: Exploring Fear and Feeding the Body

It's Wednesday which means it's a yoga day. I am seriously thinking I need to find a class that is either Sunday or Monday- because the time from Friday yoga to Wednesday yoga seems...very very very long and I know I could do stuff at home, but it's not the same for me outside of the class.

Today in yoga I wound up exploring fear. This wasn't intentional. I can't remember exactly what we were doing- I think it started first with a simple child's pose.~~~~~~~~>

Now, typically, in this class we do Child's Pose with the arms extended in front of the body. I can handle this one. For some reason, the idea of bending my arms along the sides of my body was totally freaking me out. I'm not sure if it was the idea of weight resting on my forehead the fear that it was going to be uncomfortable. Rather than thinking "I can't do this," I had the realization that I was actually literally afraid to do it. So during one of the moves in and out of this pose I just surpassed the fear and I got my body into the full Child's Pose. I decided to play with this for the rest of class, and I acknowledged the fear of different movements in my body and I was able to achieve some deeper moves than I have before. I also got to spend some nice deep breathing time in Pigeon Pose- and I'm fairly sure I only got there by acknowledging the fear within my body.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like a little fear. I think it's a good thing in certain circumstances, but I certainly don't want to fear my body. And I want it to be able to do lots of things.

Now, onto food. Another practice I'm seeking to improve in this Lenten season is nourishment of both body and soul. So let me talk about food for a moment. I've always had an eating disorder. And saying that out loud is really scary. I was bulimic in high school and college and in general now I feel like I just have an unnamed eating disorder. I know at times my eating is out of control and at other times my eating is freakishly obsessively ordered. I'm striving for balance.

One of the ways I always seek to achieve balance is to feed myself rather than rely on other people to cook and prepare my food. So I've been cooking this week since my schedule has allowed it. My yummy dinner the other night was a Salmon Vegetable Ragout. (The beer is not mine).
So. I'm working, and I'm working on loving my body.