I've been reading Wayne Dyer's "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life," for quite a while now. It's one of those books I try to read a passage from daily but sometimes that ends up being more like weekly or bi-weekly. I picked it up today and the passage was an aha moment for me. It was called, "Living By Bending," and the last line of the verse was, "The hard and stiff will be broken; the soft and supple will prevail."
This was so profound to me because as laid back as I may seem I'm not very flexible. I don't do things at the last minute, I plan my steps to a T in my head or on paper before acting. By the time I do something for real, I've already replayed it 7000 times in my head. I've become so adept a that skill, it happens very quickly and seems as if I'm acting spontaneously - I am not. Physically I'm not that flexible either. I do yoga, but my favorite style focuses more on the breath than the poses. I did study Iyengar which is ALL about the poses, but I responded it to the style because it is all about doing the poses correctly. You learn the pose and do it until you perfect it (that speaks to my perfectionist nature and not my desire to be more flexible). I do recall every class I've ever taken the instructor told me I'm too tight in the hips - the body part that exposes inflexibility.
Dyer gave the example of palm trees in hurricane force winds - they appear weak because they sway entirely to their side in the face of the wind. The reality is that "weakness" is their strength because the trees are so flexible they are able to bounce back into place once the winds subside. The mightiest oak can not bend that way without snapping and breaking. I tend to think that when I'm not being flexible that I'm being stronger. In reality, I'm being stubborn and stagnate. I want to be more fluid, more flexible, more go with the flow. So its time to get my stretch on - literally and figuratively. Physically, I think its time I give yoga another go. Emotionally, I think it's time to really examine the places I feel stuck and see if it is because I have been being fixed in my thought pattern regarding it.
Time to stttttttttrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeettttttttttccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
This was so profound to me because as laid back as I may seem I'm not very flexible. I don't do things at the last minute, I plan my steps to a T in my head or on paper before acting. By the time I do something for real, I've already replayed it 7000 times in my head. I've become so adept a that skill, it happens very quickly and seems as if I'm acting spontaneously - I am not. Physically I'm not that flexible either. I do yoga, but my favorite style focuses more on the breath than the poses. I did study Iyengar which is ALL about the poses, but I responded it to the style because it is all about doing the poses correctly. You learn the pose and do it until you perfect it (that speaks to my perfectionist nature and not my desire to be more flexible). I do recall every class I've ever taken the instructor told me I'm too tight in the hips - the body part that exposes inflexibility.
Dyer gave the example of palm trees in hurricane force winds - they appear weak because they sway entirely to their side in the face of the wind. The reality is that "weakness" is their strength because the trees are so flexible they are able to bounce back into place once the winds subside. The mightiest oak can not bend that way without snapping and breaking. I tend to think that when I'm not being flexible that I'm being stronger. In reality, I'm being stubborn and stagnate. I want to be more fluid, more flexible, more go with the flow. So its time to get my stretch on - literally and figuratively. Physically, I think its time I give yoga another go. Emotionally, I think it's time to really examine the places I feel stuck and see if it is because I have been being fixed in my thought pattern regarding it.
Time to stttttttttrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeettttttttttccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
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