Lazy Days of Comfort

I love the unfolding of spring into summer. Sweet scented orange blossoms caressing the evening breeze and floating through the window. Lilac blossoms bursting out in a brief frenzy of perfume. The return of the butterflies. Sitting in the garden and feeling the warm sunlight kissing my skin. My lullaby into warm darkness: hearing the comforting drone of a lawnmower in the distance as the last vestiges of evening sunlight slant across the yard and porch.

These are golden moments when time stands still.

Tick Tock Tick Tock,
Jumping over the hands of the clock
Grabbing the moment and hanging on
Gently, gently…drawing an eon…
Out of the well of time.

Is time flying for anyone else? I’ll be taking an extended leave from work toward the end of the month to recover from surgery. I’ll be suspended from my usual pursuits – work, household chores, walking around the city, meeting friends. I’ll be in suspension while I heal, a cocoon of gestation as my body emerges from limitations and pain to…recovery and discovery.

I’ll have plenty of time to experience the abundant nature we have in our yard. We’re at the end of the suburbs, not quite rural, but with fields adjoining our property. Our neighbors include mother horses with their frisky colts, jack rabbits and pheasants, garden snakes, bees, mice, a scrub jay who returns every year to our yard, hummingbirds and woodpeckers and many more feathered friends. We enjoy vegetable gardens, citrus and nut trees, grapes and berries, and a beautiful new maple tree my husband planted last month that will explode in crimson color in October. Things are usually pretty busy around here. I try to stop and actually take in the abundance we have rather than flying by in passing with an afterthought of “I should spend more time with this.”

Life finds a way of giving me what I want, in this case time to enjoy what I have, even if the method is unexpected and long and painful in manifesting. Oh, if you could only hear the sigh of relief and acceptance for what is unfolding drowning out the natural anxiety that accompanies injury.

How will you enjoy your summer?  I hope you'll slow down, if only for a moment.  You can find an eternity in a moment.

Beloved One, you who made this beautiful abundant world for us to enjoy in all its sensuousness, I surrender to my body, this instrument of experience my spirit resides in while here on this earth.

Majeeda Rosa

It only takes 10 minutes to change your life

Wow, that's quite a promise.  I can hear the spirit of Billie Mays right now..."You, too, can achieve A-mazing results in only 10 minutes a day..."

Operators are standing by.

I mentioned in the last blog that injury has been slowing me down, allowing me to evaluate bits and pieces of my life - what I thought my life should be versus what it is.  Pain has been a great motivator for intraspection.  One of the changes that emerged was writing this blog.  Another recent change has been stretching and improving my flexibility...REALITY CHECK...it's more about keeping the limited flexibility that I have rather than improving it.

In my eagerness to get over my back injury, I joined a yoga class.    I got a physical therapist's release notice. I worked with the yoga instructor to modify my positions.  The group sessions were almost an hour and a half.  I knew better, but tried to keep up.  By the third session, I was experiencing muscle spasms and spinal cord entrapment all over again, thankfully not as severe as in the autumn, but significant.

I decided to honor my body's message and bowed out of the class.  For 15 days my new yoga routine was stretch gently, ice back and butt, sit up straight, lay down, groan. Stand and rock from side to side.  Repeat hourly.

Is all lost?  No.  I learned many things. I still practice Yoga, but it's not about the positions. It's about Mindfulness.  Simplicity.  Breathing.  Honoring....and it's about the positions.

I wake up about 20 minutes earlier now.  I use the Zen timer on my IPad to chime the minutes for a 10-minute session.  I start in child's pose, my forehead on the ground, gently feeling my body relax into my back.  I slowly move from one floor position to another, the positions I know will honor my body, ending in the corpse pose, arms relaxed and palms up, heart wide open.

I've only done this for two days.  I missed the routine this morning when I woke up late.

God, how I missed it!  Only two days, ten minutes each day, and I crave it - it was THAT good and it lasted all day.  It doesn't take much to change.  Just listen.

Lord, help me to keep honoring myself each day.  Help me to remember the feel of each action, each thought, each feeling that empowers me.  Thank you for using my body as another vehicle to communicate with me.  Gently remind me to listen and live in my higher self.  Thank you.

Majeeda Rosa