A New and Improved Normal

It feels like longer than a month since I last wrote to you.  I've been feeling up and down - some days I'm loving my time at home, other days I feel anxious and frustrated.

Learning to lean in and embrace the uncertainty is not easy - but all the most important and worthwhile things in life rarely are...

I started reading Joan Didion's, The Year of Magical Thinking for Uni - before all of this isolation stuff started. On the back cover of the book is a simple yet profound quote:

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." 

If you're not familiar with the book; it's about the year following the sudden death of Joan's husband and how she coped or didn't cope with the grief. It's certainly not a light read, but its clearly and cleverly written, raw and insightful - and of course super relevant now!

While I haven't personally lost someone in the same way, I think we are all experiencing loss and grief to some degree.

We've lost our freedom to choose how, where and with whom we spend out time. Some of us have lost jobs and income. Plans and dreams for the future have been cancelled and no one really knows when or how it will end... 

It's no wonder we are experiencing a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions right now!

Breath in, breath out - let the fresh autumn air move through and refresh you. Let your mind flow along with the earthy brown of the river, sway with the greens and yellows of the trees, and spread out and soften with the white empty sky.

Images from my afternoon walks by the river - how are you staying calm and grounded throughout isolation?

What we do know, however, is that change is the only constant and this too shall pass. And while we cannot control our situation we certainly can try to control how we respond and move forward (this may be the most cheesy and cliched paragraph written, I know, but it's true).

So what about all the positives?! There have been so many benefits and opportunities along the way.

Look at how quickly we have been able to adapt to doing things online, for example. I've been lucky enough to attend multiple classes with my teacher who is based in Sydney, along with my fellow yogis from around the country and the world. Plus it seems that many of us are connecting with family, friends and colleagues through apps and video chat more than ever now.  

I will admit, that week or so before online classes started - was blissful. Despite all the fear we were being constantly fed by the media, I felt steady and grounded. With no where to go, fewer options and distractions and all the extra time I was really able to embrace my home yoga practice. It's almost a shame that we have Zoom to entertain and attract us now...

All this stillness and uncertainty has also provided us with the chance to reflect and re-assess our lives - the daily choices we make, our values and our goals. We can now find some space to more clearly see and work out what's important and necessary, and what we can do without.

Unless we do things like go away on retreat, it's not often we get to look back on ourselves and our lives in this way. It's a blessing in disguise... And maybe some of the losses and changes will be positive and endure for many years or even the rest of our lives?!

Join me on the mat (online) as we navigate these strange and challenging times to discover and create our new and improved normal...

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

- Thich Nhat Hanh