03/06/2023
Hello again!!! I have missed you!! Let's jump right back in!
Duality: finding balance
Finding balance within ourselves and within our lives can be tricky. Duality is recognizing the light and the dark, the peace with the chaos, the yin and the yang. We all struggle with maintaining ourselves, our lives, our houses, our *yoga practices*.... it can be difficult, but it is always worth while and can be healing to just DO when all we want to do is to give up. "Its too hard." "I'm too tired." "I just don't want to."
We've all been there. It's not fun to be stuck, but nothing will change unless we want it to change, unless we make an effort for it to change. But the good news is we can keep moving forward. We can cycle through the darkness faster (with patience and practice), and we can enjoy the ride!
The darkness (depression) can be just as beautiful as the lightness (manic) within ourselves. It has its own beauty and it has a purpose. We would most likely not enjoy or appreciate or even understand the beauty of the light if we do not understand the beauty within the dark.
So, how do we find this balance? We can physically put it into practice, such as equal amounts of work and play. We can clean and organize so that we can create (even if its just creating dinner, we feel better doing the act of cooking in a clean kitchen).
And.... we can do shadow work.... we can meditate to understand why we feel off balance and we can do physical asana yoga practices (or other types of workouts or even chiropractic care) to physically bring us back into balance.
A beautiful example of this struggle through the darkness, this finding meaning, understanding, and finding the light in the dark, is the cartoon "Over the Garden Wall." We follow 2 brothers through a dark forest and there's many things that happen to them on their journey home, some don't make sense the first watch through, some are straight up odd, but by keeping focus of "going home," they do eventually find home. Through the darkness of being lost, they grow to understand their dharma and themselves more. Yes, it's a cartoon, but it deals with heavy and downright scary things. Wort and his brother face it all and they just keep moving forward.
I hope we can always find the strength to get up and do that 1 chore that we struggle with, to do this last hour of hard work, to do 5 more minutes of exercise, to do that 10 mins of meditation before bed or in the morning. Because in the end.... it is worth it to put the work into ourselves and ALL of us, the dark and the light within us, IS beautiful ❤️
