This morning was one of those mornings. Both my children were tired from a big week of getting back into school for a new term as well as starting back at all their other creative expressions in the afternoons and evenings. They were both dragging themselves about to get out of bed and ready for their day at school. My little one particularly was not happy about the idea of going to school and made it clearly noted to the whole house and the bush animals in the garden, he was pissed off with the idea that he should have to be made to go.
I felt pulled in wanting to just say yes to his request to stay at home, because I know what it feels like to want to hang out and not have to do stuff. I didn’t however yield to my inner turbulence and his loud request. My unyielding made him more infuriated. He refused to brush his teeth and wash his face as a jail break. We fought. I fought for him to brush his teeth and he fought not to.
When we eventually arrived at his school, some fifteen minutes after the bell, I gave him a big hug and told him how much I loved him. I asked him why he fought with me and he answered he didn’t know. That is what tiredness can do, make you just want to fight. I felt shitty about it, and had a ping pong match in my mind rectifying what was important and what was more important. He went to school teary and I felt low that the morning had unraveled like it did. I heard my inner bitch tell me “He is going to school and you’re just going to a yoga class Lotus, you’re slack.”
I am so grateful that I was “slack” enough to just go to my yoga class this morning. It means more to me than the act of doing it and I learnt a lot about the importance of doing what you mean to do as an act of defiant self love in a world convinced you need to earn your wants and your bucket list.
I call myself an alchemist, using the principals of “The path of least resistance” to create my life. It is the most potent expression I have for making my life truly reflective of my heart’s deepest desires. I know that sounds a bit fluffy, but I’m not a fluffy kind of girl by any measure. When I say it is potent, I mean as real as flesh and bone. I use the principals that I have learnt and embodied over many years as my starting point for all that I want to have and experience in my life.
As rudimentary as it sounds, yoga has been part of my vision for my lifestyle for a good while now. But not just any yoga. In the town where I live you can go to about 100 yoga classes a day, no exaggeration. I think every second person you meet in the Byron Shire is a yoga teacher.
My vision and my choice was to have one day a week dedicated to self care and to attend specifically Tigress Yoga, a feminine embodiment yoga based on Daoist principals. There are not that many teachers of Tigress yet and so even on the smorgasbord of yoga there are only two classes a week to choose from. So today I dropped my son off to school and, as shitty as I felt, I took myself off to the first of a new series of Tigress classes.
It was the best thing I could do for myself, my health, my wealth, my lover, my children and my business. The practice itself is phenomenal in the most subtle way. Last year I attended Tigress classes when I could and cried my way through most of them. You see I was in the middle of an exhausting child custody process through the courts. In my tigress classes my heart would just break with the stress, disappointment and the pull from my womb for my children that once slept inside my body. But Tigress was not a practice that I could have all the time because of all the travelling I was doing from my new homeland of Byron back and forth to Sydney where my children were forced to stay until we went to court.
Today was a beautiful D-day for me. Another in a long weaving line of D-days. Today I sat in circle from the place of living permanently in my new homeland, with both of my children in my care, living with me and me rebuilding out of the ashes of everything, my wild business. Today I did my luscious embodiment practice in circle with other women because I committed to a full day of self care every week. I don’t coach or hold classes on Thursdays now.
My vision landed as yet another layer materialized and it felt so good that once again I cried because my heart broke with all that I have gone through to get to that mat.
Tigress is such a beautiful offering to myself that can have a real trippy nature to it. It is so good for my body and my sense of equilibrium. It is also apparent to me how important it is for my business. I unravel tangles of wonderings, join dots and loose ends and envision whole other creations. Sometimes these creations land fully formed and ready to implement. Some of them scare me with the enormity of their entirety. It really is the best business meeting I can have with myself.
I felt drawn to write about this because I am so moved to remind women over and over again, through my work that it is time to do things so completely differently to the way we have been taught, that it is time to create a whole new business model, lifestyle model, one which has our desires as the centrepiece instead of shelved or needing to be earned. It is time that we took self care off the cute list of things that would be nice to have more of and placed it smack bang down in the middle of everything as essential.
The on-flow of this level of commitment to yourself will ripple out far beyond what you think would make sense. Self care is not just doing yoga or getting a pedicure. Self care is telling the truth about what you really want, what you deeply desire and feel moved towards internally and making it your manifesto, making it as essential as brushing your teeth.
If you are interested in learning more about Tigress Yoga and finding an instructor near you, click below
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