An Undoing

Undo all of the tension.  Come to your mat, every day, every week; move and meditate and breathe in the way that you always should but rarely do.  Be alive inside your body and luxuriate in that.

Undo all the tales you have told yourself about yourself, all of the times you got angry or upset, the times you gossiped and were unkind, the hurts that still sting, the day that went wrong.  It’s ok, you are human: you make mistakes and you make amends.

Undo the harshness, the struggle and the striving.  The world can be a difficult place, you have had a lot to do and you have done it with as much grace as possible.  Rediscover your gentleness and vow not to let the hardness of the world work its way into how you live your life. 

Undo the limitations.  You alone set your restrictions (nobody else can do that) and you alone can expand them too.  Broaden your idea of who you are and what you can achieve (on your mat, in your life).  You will surprise yourself.

Undo the tightness in your body and brain: stretch out your muscles, flex your mind, remember how strong you really are, in heart and in body.  Move with grace and power, surrender and discipline – always that fine balance between the two.  Pay attention and you’ll know when you get that balance wrong.

Undo the judgement.  You are not too fat, too ill, too injured, too stiff, too weak.  There is a practice of undoing for every moment, for every season of living and there is a way of accepting all that you are with gratitude.

Undo the sadness, the disappointment, the little knocks that life will give you.  Release your own innate sense of joy and gratitude.  Your feet on your mat, your arms stretching upwards, the way you can move this way and that; there is beauty in this simple thing.  Sitting in meditation, you breathe and you watch your busy mind doing its busy thing and remember that you are part of something much bigger, perfectly small, yet absolutely integral to that great and wonderful whole.

Every day you are busy doing, accumulating stresses and strains as you go. 

So let there be a daily undoing: a practice in which you shed your accumulated tensions, stresses and judgements and find your whole self again.