the courage to be

As the year closes and we’re on the eve of the darkest day at the Winter Solstice what are you doing? At an annual holiday lunch yesterday with a group of moms and daughters that have been together for several years now the conversation flowed, and yet I noticed it was the same conversation from the past few years. Busy holiday plans, not done with the shopping, running around, wondering how to get through the holidays, doing, doing, doing.

“We’re all in the same boat right?” my friend asked. I shook my head. They all stared at me and I felt awkward, like I didn’t fit in.

A few years ago I got off the holiday crazy train. I just couldn’t do it anymore. It felt less like a train and more like a holiday avalanche. It was my own fault, too many expectations that I’d let take over my life, most of them I’d imposed on myself. What if the kids didn’t get x, y or z? Or we didn’t do that tradition? I’m happy to report nothing happened. Nothing. Except life got simpler.

In yoga, the final, and often called the most important pose in a practice, is savasana. It’s actually corpse pose. Yes, corpse, as in dead person. It’s a “practice” of what it might be like at death. A practice to see if you could be ready to lie with what is, accept it for what it is, be with it.

In yoga, the philosophy is that man’s biggest fear is death. But is it really death? Or is it that at that moment when we realize this is it, we’ll suddenly realize we didn’t live the life we wanted. We lived the life expected of us, or a life of just doing.

In yoga we get to have that effort of the practice and then the rest and reflection of savasana, with time to make it different. The just being of savasana will shift what comes next –the chance to get back up and into the joy of a full and intentional life.

At the end of this year, can you find time for some version of savasana? My wish for you…to be fully human with the people you love instead of just doing with them.

Happy holiday and hoping you can find skies upon skies of joy in being exactly who you are, right here, right now.

Namaste!