Spring Cleaning

Yesterday I created some major new, open space in my body through an awesome yoga class led by the lovely Amber Shumake. I also lost 1.5 pounds in the last three days thanks to my new paleo diet. So that helped create some space, too.

I think when it comes to weight loss, you truly have to be INSPIRED to do it. You can't phone it in. I gained this weight due to a medication that I'm not on anymore and it's taken some time to find the right way to get it back off. I hope I've finally found it: a major change in nutrition (no more dairy and very few grains, if any) plus exercise in moderation. I try to do a yoga class at least once a week and also on my own at home,  I work out {also at home} with some 15-minute strength training workouts I found in a magazine, and I take the dogs on long, fast walks.

I don't think weight loss is possible without exercise. At least, not healthy weight loss. You have to protect your muscles or else that's what you'll lose. And you don't want to lose muscle because muscle burns fat.

Anyway, enough of the diatribe. Back to the space. Back to the lovely Amber Shumake. Because she said something during that class that gave me an epiphany. She said, "Send out the bad stuff that is getting stirred up when you are opening up these joints," {paraphrasing}. "Don't just let it be stagnant and stay inside you."

I was like, "OH!" Because as simple as that sounds, and as obvious as it may seem to some, I hadn't been doing that. It's harder than you might think. There are a lot of stories my ego tells me about why I can't let go of my pain. "It might land on someone else in the room. You wouldn't want them to suffer, would you?" I was noticing how I was telling myself this absurdity while lying in bed last night. I heard an airplane pass overhead. I tried to send the "bad stuff" out, out of my apartment complex into the atmosphere into the far reaches of space, never to be heard from again. Until, light-years away, an alien race in tune with such things travels across the universe to destroy us all because of my horrible pain. Or at least, that airplane falls out of the sky because of it.

I listened. It didn't fall. That's when a small voice told me, "Your pain is not that powerful." I realized this was true. Even if it did "land" on my sweaty neighbor in yoga class, it probably wouldn't even bother her much, not like it burdens me. So I am sending out, out, out, and bringing in the new and the good. Creating space. Thanks Amber.