Tuesday, September 28, 2010

I'm so sick of too much "stuff"! Are you?

I walk into my closet and it is bursting with clothes as new as a month-old and as old as 20 years-old. I open a kitchen cabinet and it is stuffed with half-eaten boxes of crackers or cookies whose expiration date I can't even guess. I venture into my garage and just want to cry at the insane array of furniture and crap just carried over from all of our moves.

I AM SO SICK OF LIVING WITH TOO MUCH STUFF!!!

My overhwelm doesn't end with objects. Sometimes, I eat more than my body needs. I drink more than my brain prefers. I spend more than my budget allows. I fight more than my heart desires.

Too much, too much, too much. This seems to be the disease of our times, a disease generated by the deep fear from past generations that we won't have enough. Underneath my over-eating, my over-spending, and my over-anything is the unconscious terror that I will run out of stuff that I (falsely) think makes me feel good.

But it doesn't!!! As I sit here, surveying my life, it becomes increasingly clear to me that this lifestyle has long ago stopped making me feel good. On the contrary, it has obscured what is truly important, living simply, living kindly, living peacefully. I want to stop working 60 hours a week just to pay the mortgage. I want to stop having more clothes than I'll ever need or eat more food than can ever nourish me. I want to spend time with my family, my friends, and myself.

As I close, I do want to express gratitude for the fact that I am lucky enough to have "too much". It is hard not to feel shame when so much of the world doesn't have enough. I can only hope that my choosing to live more simply will in some way help balance out some of this inequality. It is truly my deepest wish.

I'd love to know where you resonate with my sentiments!

Warmly,
Isabelle
303-817-6912

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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

How the heck can I love my body?

"You have to feel your body in order to love your body." A yoga teacher in Maui uttered this sentence last week, while I was on vacation. I have been sitting with that sentence ever since, knowing that it was life-changing and important, but not knowing quite how to fully comprehend it.

Most of us live our lives completely detached from our bodies. We live in our minds, prisoners of distorted beliefs and feelings that we've gathered throughout the years from various environments. These thougths and feelings often have NOTHING to do with who our body really is. They are just projections that creates much suffering and violence.

To love our body, we have to know it. We have to descend from the illusion of the ego-mind into the wonders of the body's feelings and sensations. This can only happen in the present. How does my body FEEL now? and now? and now?

I have become a yoga fanatic over the last year. Yoga's biggest gift for me is that it invites me again and again to drop into my body and feel it. Feel the good, the bad, and the ugly. The days where my body feels open, flexible, and blissful. The days where everything hurts. The days where I am so tight I can't even touch my toes.

And just like the yoga teacher said, feeling my body has been the only way into loving my body. I am getting to know it on a deep and intimate level and I am stunned every day by its wisdom, brilliance, and loving presence. My love has nothing to do with how my body looks or how much it weighs. It just springs forth from this knowing, this intimacy.

I invite you all to spend some time every day feeling your body. I promise you that every minute spent doing so will be rewarded exponentially by an experience of love that does not come close to anything you ever imagined. Let me know how it goes!
Have a wonderful, body-loving day!
Isabelle

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