“Listen to the unstruck sounds, and what sifts through that music.”
-Rumi
As we coast through the November new moon, I think of the energy of waning, winding down, and diving into darkness. I’ve been sort of anxious lately, perhaps a combination of my own personal stresses and the collective stress of the world as humanity goes through the growing pains of change.
There is too much noise in the world, despite the isolation of quarantine. The chaos I feel is the way the events of the world swirl around in my mind, even though I spend much more time in my house than out and about. Add to that the commotion of having small children and the thing that I want the most, but seem to get very little of, is silence and solitude. I wish I could know in my bones what Rumi meant by ‘unstruck sounds,’ but I am drowning in the babble of tiny voices, crying, and the clatter of toys.
My nervous system feels a little frazzled.
Mamas, I admit that sometimes (often times) I struggle to follow my own advice for all of you. A lot of times I flail at being my ideal image of a Yoga Mama. But it’s okay, because that’s just an image and I am me, a human, formed by striving and mistakes as much as by learning and accomplishment.
And I am reminded that many things are born through struggle, pain, and trial and error. It’s not necessarily that there’s no gain without pain; it’s more that life is messy, imperfect, and full of surprises.
For example: surprise, a pandemic!
I am not a big planner. I definitely am a more go-with-the-flow type, but even so, this year has thrown me for a loop. Like many moms, I feel a sense of doing lots of things half-heartedly; not doing a good job at any one thing; and feeling spread too thin. Sometimes I even find it hard to stop and take a few deep breaths.
And then there are times that a few deep breaths aren’t enough to unravel my wound-up nerves.
So I began looking less at things I thought I SHOULD do to regain calm and instead started to think of taking away things that disrupt it. Not that I want a long list of things I SHOULDN’T do. It helps to think of it more as a self-reflection on things that can be replaced by something else.
Less is more. Letting go of things we’ve outgrown is less of a SHOULDN’T and more of a liberating moment. As light wanes and we get closer to the new moon, and leaves drop from the trees here, I take these cues from Mother Nature to let go of a few things. Every day for the next three days I’m going to write three things that I could do without. And if I don’t have something to write on, so what? I’ll at least close eyes, breathe, and think of three things to release.
For example, today I am letting go of: 1. pestering my daughter to eat exactly what I want her to eat, 2. washing every dish in the sink (okay, I admit that I let go of this all the time, but I do feel bad about it), and 3. writing this new moon post perfectly.
When I take this practice to my yoga mat it looks something like this: take 3-5 deep breaths, gradually lengthening my exhale each time. Then I ease myself into a forward bending asana like paschimottanasana, uttanasana or ananda balasana and feel how the forward bend naturally deepens each exhale. And in those moments of letting go of something as basic as the breath, it becomes easier to let go of all the unnecessary stresses of my life.