Rambling Yogi

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  • A meaningful life

    Let the beauty of what you love be what you do – Rumi

    As we edge closer towards the end of the year it’s natural for people to take stock of the year that was and begin to mentally plan for what they would like the year ahead to look like. This sort of reflection may then lead to the bigger picture question; how satisfied am I with the life I am living? Am I living a purposeful / meaningful life?

    It is my hope that we all figure out what a meaningful life looks like for each of us and that we find the courage to pursue it, even if that means letting others down to not betray what you need in life.

    We’re all a little lost and life requires constant reassessment. Again and again you have to find your values, figure out what matters to you and choose who you want to be accordingly. Don’t let your current sense of identity define who you might be and what you do with your life.

    So where do you start. Here’s an activity to help you assess what’s important for you.

    Imagine you’re nearing the end of your life you’re looking back fondly. You’ve experienced what you wanted to experience, done what you wanted to do and are ending as you were meant to end. Ask yourself these questions:

    What three values made your life the most worthwhile?

    What three goals have you achieved in your life that you are most satisfied with and proud of?

    What three personality traits do you want people to remember you for when you’re gone?

    Here are some examples to help stimulate your thinking

    Values: authenticity, creativity, humour, safety, excitement, fun, social recognition, happiness, self respect, status, passion, balance, independence, friendships, growth, loyalty, trust, community involvement

    Life goals: career success, financial security, travel, adventure, marriage, children, learn a language or instrument, health/fitness goals, volunteer, live aboard, start a business, regularly help less fortunate

    Personality: honest, confident, perceptive, kind, generous, brave, hard working, ambitious, decisive, enthusiastic, open minded, rational, sensitive, affectionate, calm, dependable, compassionate

    How well do you answers align with the way you currently live your life. If you find you’re happy with your answers, congratulations but if things aren’t really lining up it’s time to ask yourself what different choices do you need to make to find your true north.

    But what if you couldn’t land on answers here and you’re not just a bit lost but stuck, overwhelmed and/or unsure of what you should be doing with your life. Then I have another suggestion taken from recently watching the Srutz documentary on Netflix.

    Try working on your life force. Like maslow’s hierarchy of needs the base layer is your relationship with your physical body, the next level is your relationship with other people and at the highest level is your relationship with yourself.

    • Physical body – get your body working better – nourish your body with good food, exercise daily even if it’s just a small walk just move your body, get a healthy amount of sleep
    • Other people – take the initiative – put the effort in to build and maintain the important relationships in your life
    • Yourself – get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious – you enhance your relationship with yourself when you write in journal form and allow your unconscious to come out

    Having tired this myself I can definitely say that prioritising exercise daily and starting journaling again has made a huge difference to how satisfied I feel with my life.

    I hope something here resonates with you and you find yourself walking into the new year filled with unlimited possibilities for a magical year ahead.

    love and blessings

    xx

  • Getting things done

    Getting things done

    It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 5 years since I last wrote a post for my blog. Since my last post I’ve changed jobs, had a baby, lost touch with my yoga practice / reconnected with my practice and written 27 draft posts.

    For one reason or another I just haven’t been able to bring myself to complete a post and publish it. So I thought for my first post in a very long time it would be fitting to explore why we put things off.

    Sure all of us can put things off from time to time and sometimes prioritising things to make the best use of your time is the best thing to do. But chronic procrastination is a different beast! In my life right now I feel like I’m the queen of unnecessarily postponing things, even thought I know I’ll be worse off for not doing them . But I’m not alone – it’s a very common habit with recent studies finding that 20 per cent of adults are chronic procrastinators.

    Despite what you might think, procrastination isn’t a sign of laziness. In fact it’s more about emotion regulation than time management.

    So why do we do it? It relates to emotional self-regulation, that is it’s a way of coping with challenging emotions and negatives mood brought on by certain tasks. So in short we procrastinate to avoid feelings like boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment and self-doubt. The nature of the aversion depends on the task, here are some examples:

    • Hating the task – it’s really tedious, difficult, boring or stressful
    • A lack of confidence or self esteem – the fear of failure or being a perfectionist
    • Being easily distracted – just can’t stay focused on the task
    • Feeling overwhelmed – the job feels too big or unachievable
    • Hitting a creatively blocked – can’t solve the problem or feeling uninspired

    It’s important to take some time to try understand why you are putting something off so that you can take actions that will best support you to get the important things done.

    Here are some things you can consider to help things along

    • Attach a reward to getting the task done. This is essentially the Premack principle – a less desired behaviour can be reinforced by the opportunity to engage in a more desired behaviour.
    • Focus on just the next action. At the start of a task can you consider what the next action would be. Ask yourself, what’s the next action I would take if I were going to do it. Maybe it’s writing the heading at the top of a document or it’s the separating of washing or opening an email. Don’t wait to be in the mood to do a task, let your motivation be built on your action.
    • Set yourself up in a distraction free environment. This might mean just putting your phone in another room or turning off notifications while you are trying to focus.
    • Enlist Help. Find someone to keep you accountable. Tell someone that you won’t do X until you’ve done Y or that you want to do X by a certain date.
    • Build your skill set. If you’re lacking confidence in a particular area are there any courses you can take, people that you can learn from, opportunities to practice and get feedback. No one is an expert at anything straight away, so try to support yourself to crawl before you walk. And if you find yourself stalling out of fear try and tell yourself the mantra “progress not perfection”.
    • Look after yourself. It’s really hard to get anything done if you’re feeling exhausted or your anxiety is through the roof. Take a look at how you are living – are you getting enough sleep? are you eating well? do you get regular exercise or send time outdoors? do you meditate or find time to decompress without technology? If you read this list and its overwhelming thinking about all the things that aren’t what they should be then try starting with sleep. That is unless of course you have a tiny human that’s in control of your sleep right now, then maybe it’s getting out for a walk with bub once a day.
    • Practice self compassion. There’s so much to be gained from being compassionate with yourself, particularly when mistakes are made or things don’t turn out the way you had hoped. Finding kindness and understanding for yourself can do a lot to help improve motivation and personal growth. Things that can help build self compassion include guided meditations on self compassion, practising daily gratitude where a least one thing you are grateful for each day relates to yourself and if you catch yourself being critical try flipping that thinking on its head by replacing it with something kind and positive. Of course it’s not easy to just change the way you speak to yourself but like any new habit if you start small and gradually build it up, that small change could build into a lift changing new perspective.

    Before writing this post I’d assumed that procrastination was all about motivation and time management. I’d never considered that it would be more about trying to avoid unwanted emotions. But once I knew what it was all about it made a lot more sense to me; I’ve never been very good at sitting with unpleasant emotions and am a big seeker of ways to avoid.

    So in light of what I’ve learnt writing this post I’m going to put it out there that I will write at least 1 post a month. Here’s to getting things done!

    With love and kindness

    xx

    p.s if there’s any particular topics you’d like to me explore and write about please do reach out and let me know

    The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now.

    Chinese Proverb
  • How Yoga Can Improve Your Running

    How Yoga Can Improve Your Running

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    Yoga is a great complement to any runners’ regular routine. Regular running will create tightness in some areas of the body and leave other areas relatively week. Yoga can help to loosen out those tight spots and strengthen weak muscles – making you a better less injury prone runner.
    Studies have shown that yoga reduces stress, improves strength and flexibility, eases pain, helps people to stick to an exercise routine and even improves running times. Below are some of the key benefits that runners can expect to experience.

    6 Ways Yoga Benefits Runners

    1. Improves strength and efficiency – Builds strength evenly in muscles, joints and ligaments. Strengthening the core will help to improve the power you receive from each stride as your foot strikes the ground meaning that you will get more bang for your buck. Who doesn’t want that!
    2. Helps prevent injuries – Helps prevent injury by increasing flexibility and strength as well as awareness of the body. Yoga helps you to find the balance between strength and flexibility and have happy muscles with a good range of movement. Increased body awareness will mean that you are less likely to push your body beyond its limits and risk injury.
    3. Enhances breathing – Breathing exercises will help you to optimise each breath and potentially increase lung capacity. Becoming conscious of your breath can have a profound impact not just on your running but your life in general.
    4. Mental strength – Cultivate improved focus and awareness through mindful movement and meditation. Allowing you to run with a greater sense of self belief and push through mental barriers while still being able to discern when you need to pull back.
    5. Loosens tight muscles and facia – Simple movement and supported held stretches help to rehydrate and release restricted muscles and facia. Increased flexibility can help to relieve nagging aches and pains.
    6. Improves energy – Helps to reduces stress and improves sleep allowing the body to get better quality rest. And really everyone needs a little less stress and better quality sleep.

     

     

  • Don’t look back in anger

    Don’t look back in anger

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    When my father passed away unexpectedly on Friday 3rd July 2015 my entire world changed forever. I remember the most intense feeling of disbelief, as the ICU doctor explained that he was not able to be revived, my brain when into overload.  I had been with him an hour and a half before hand, they had said he would be out of hospital next week. My brain screamed how can he possibly be gone, it wasn’t meant to happen this way, he shouldn’t have been on his own, it’s too soon, he needed more time, I needed more time, this can’t be happening, he wanted to live.

    Losing a loved one in any circumstance is traumatic, losing them before they’re ready to go is the sort of heart break that will stay with you for life and losing them under questionable circumstances can steal part of your life too if you’re not careful.

    My fathers death was referred to the coroners court for investigation because there was so much confusion surrounding this death and a cause of death was not known. At first I was relived that our concerns around the level care he received were being acknowledged with an investigation. But that quickly turned into anger as I began to form the opinion that somebody was to blame.

    For a long time I blamed myself, I was the last person to see him. If I had of stayed another hour and a half maybe things would have been different. I remember clearly the first time I said it out loud, in a session with my psychologist through my tears I told her that I should have saved him, he always protected me and looked after me, I should have done more. I truly believed that it was somehow partially my fault even though I wasn’t a medical professional. There were so many memories that  haunted me; I would constantly repay moments in my head that I thought may have changed the way things ended.

    With the support of great friends I managed to ease up on blaming myself but redirected the blame straight on to the hospital and all the staff who I felt could have done more. I believed that we had to fight for him so that some positive came from losing him.  The hospital failed him and things needed to change to protect other people. No other family should live through our hell.

    Coroners investigations don’t happen quickly, we’ve spent the last 18 months waiting to here any sort of update on my dads case. Then last Friday my family received a letter from the coroners court saying that after considering the circumstances the coroner had decided not to proceed further with the investigation into my fathers death.

    I never saw it coming. I was completely blindsided. I didn’t really know how I felt about it. My brain started to process; so they’re saying that no one is to blame, that’s bullshit, I’m not giving up.

    As I revisited all the mistakes and the distressing level of care my father received, all the anger and pain I’d been storing in my heart began to pour out. I didn’t even realise just how angry I still was. For the first time I could clearly see just how much I’d been holding onto and I started to see the impact it had been having on my life.

    As I took all of this in and became fully aware of my anger I knew there was no other choice. Fighting and holding on to this anger was having a terrible impact on my life. It was time to let go, to accept that no amount of blame will bring him back and make peace with the circumstances that he left us in.

    Beginning to let go wasn’t some simple ahhh I’ve decided to let it go and now I feel great moment. It hurt like hell. I spent almost my entire Saturday crying, journaling, meditating, listening to inspiring talk about life and then crying some more. I let myself fall into habitual patterns of beating myself up. I spent time agonising over the way I had let my anger and victim mentality drive my life and damage relationships. Then I found the awareness to see that thought patter for what it is and with kindness reassured myself that I did the best that I could in the place that I found myself.

    Sunday morning I woke up and my eyes went straight to a quote I have stuck on my wall. It simply reads “you are entirely up to you”. I felt myself filled me a new sense of purpose, I got a bunch of jobs done, went and ran along the beach and decided to end my Sunday with a delicious yin and meditation class.

    As soon as I slowed down all the memories of my dad’s last few days began to flood back into my consciousness. The usual story was playing then the strangest thing happened I began to think about one particular nurse in a way I had never even contemplated before. She was the one person I felt really made the wrong decision at a critical time and I had hated her more than anyone else. As I lay hugging my bolster I was overcome with a deep sense of compassion for her, for the very first time I thought my god she must have felt awful. Tears ran down my face and I began to wonder how many times she may have questioned her decision. I was deeply concerned about the impact my fathers death may have had on her and in the moment I knew something profound had shifted in me.

    It’s been an unbelievably challenging couple of years but with the challenges has come some of the biggest lessons of my life. The most important being the value of acceptance.  I would of course give anything to have more time with my dad but longing for a reality other than the one I have is a recipe for deep seated suffering.  From here I make the commitment to try and live in a way that honours the amazing person he was by making courageous decisions, actively choosing happiness and believing in endless possibility.

     

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  • A little boost of self love for valentines day

    A little boost of self love for valentines day

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    The stories we run in our heads often don’t provide the most compassionate perspective on who we are and what we have done. We are often our own biggest critic and when we rerun stories of our perceived inadequacies we begin to believe them. These stories and negative viewpoints can lead to really miserable situations and ultimately hold you back from the greatness that is you. The mere fact that you are on this earth and breathing means that you have immense value and have something extraordinary to offer the world.

     

    This valentines day I want to offer you an affirmation for love and acceptance; a new story to replace the old rubbish. Whether you’re loved up in a relationship or flying solo, give yourself a little extra love today! Because you just as much as anyone else you are worthy of your love and affection.

     

    I am enough. I completely love and accept myself just as I am. I recognise that I have always done the best I can in any given situation and I expect nothing more from myself.  I am grateful to all the challenges that helped me to become the person I am today.  I let go of the need to criticize myself or replay mistakes of the past. I replace negative thoughts about myself with positive ones.

     

    I love and value my body. I treat it with respect. I let go of any insecurities that I have ever felt about myself. I am strong and empowered. I am beautiful and amazing. I appreciate my health and I nourish my body with good food and exercise. I am worthy of all things wonderful. I release any self-sabotage that holds me back for living my life to its greatest potential.

     

    I free myself from the things that do not support my sense of worth. I do not judge myself. I am not a victim. I take great care of myself. I am patient with myself. I allow myself to go with the flow of life.  I take this journey of healing one day at a time.

     

    Happy V Day beautiful souls

    xx

  • Easing into life

    Easing into life

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    The year just past really challenged me to start taking some personal responsibility for the state of my life. I realised just how much of a big difference there is between knowing something and actually putting it into practice. Putting things into practice requires self-awareness, a willingness to let go of current ways, a healthy dose of courage to take action and determination to keep trying. It’s not a easy thing to do and it often isn’t until things fall apart that we’re forced to stop and look at how we’re living.

    These are my big lessons for the year:

    Respect

    In a class recently I was reading out a poem I’ve read many times before but this time one passage resonated with me more than ever.

    As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody as I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”.

    My first though was my god Clare what have you been doing to yourself and to one of the most important people in your life. I’d been walking around for the last few months with zero respect for where I was at in my own journey and where my partner was at in his. I had all these ideas about what our relationship should be like and who we should be within our relationship. My expectations put a huge amount of pressure on both of us and caused a lot of damage.

    I always had good intentions but I’ve come to realise that even the best of intentions are no excuse for not respecting who someone is and where they’re at. You can’t simply ask someone to be ready and expect them to step up accordingly. In fact, trying to hand someone one of your lessons is essentially stealing from their experience and saying to them I don’t trust you to figure this out on your own.   True growth and change come naturally when the time is right and the person is ready. Needing people (yourself or others) to be different so that you can then be happy is setting yourself up to suffer.

    Accepting someone else really starts with completely accepting yourself. For me accepting myself means reminding myself every day that I am enough just as I am and there is no set of circumstances that will make me more complete.

     

    Reconnecting

    This year for the first time I was challenged about my use of Instagram. When I was asked why I posted all my yoga photos I began to realise that I didn’t really have a great reason. I was quick to defend my daily habit saying that it makes me happy and a lot of people have told me that they like reading the quotes. To that I got the response so you like the attention. And that struck a definite sore spot with me.

    The likes, the comments, the shares I loved it all. The instant little hits of gratification really had become addictive without me even realising. My life had become so focused on my Instagram. I would spend entire days thinking about what I was going to post for the day and looking for the perfect quote. Whenever I would go somewhere new I was always looking for the perfect photo opportunity.

    At first I went into heavy denial. People like the quotes I share, I enjoy taking all the photos and so what if I like the attention. But there was now a sense of guilt with each post. I was now stopping and asking myself why you are actually doing this.  From there I started to get pretty depressed about it. Something that used to make me feel so happy with now making me feel pretty miserable.

    I felt miserable and struggled with this sense of guilt for months. It just didn’t bring me the happiness it used to and I felt like I’d lost a huge part of who I am. That then started to make me feel awful; that a social media account felt like such a huge part of my identity and it became a pretty negative spiral from there. It wasn’t until I really hit rock bottom that I started to get some perspective.

    I decided it was time to do away with the negative frame of mind and time to think creatively. Which brings me to the opportunity cost (the accountant in me comes out). The things you choose not to do, the stuff you miss out on. Basically I began to ask myself what are the alternatives, what can I now do with my time. What does less time on Instagram give me? It gave me a lot more than I expected but the most precious thing it gave me was more space to tune into life and  be mindful. Mindfulness has always been important to me but I had lost touch with what it meant to actually live it.

    While it was hugely confronting initially and I was quite angry, I now see this as one of the greatest gifts I could have been given. It’s balanced me out and helped me to realise what’s actually important to me.

    Uncertainty

    One of the biggest things that brought me undone this year was a fear of uncertainty and change. After having lost my dad this fear got a lot bigger and more real. Having to confront the fact that life is always in flux and the only certain thing is that things will change…well I just wasn’t ready for that. I invested a huge amount of time and energy trying to control things and focusing on what I thought I needed to be happy and secure. In that pursuit I started to lose perspective on the bigger picture and the smallest things became huge issues.

    Things that I knew would help me felt too hard and out of reach.  I didn’t want to accept that I was the only one who could calm myself down and refocus my perspective. I thought that the answer sat with getting certain things in life. Thinking if I just move in with my partner and get a cat then I’ll be happy….really seriously that is what I thought. I need the house, I need the cat and then everything will clam down and I would be happy. I got so stuck obsessing about these life conditions that I stopped being able to see the good things in my life.

    In the very narrow world I created for myself I began to get super anxious whenever I felt like things were out of my control and my needs were under threat. In fact I began to get super anxious about everything, my mind always went to the worst possible scenario, everything was a threat, the smallest things made me stressed off my head and I felt like I had no control over my reactions.

    As it got worse I started to get really overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure what I should do anymore, I just wanted it to stop. I was desperate for some sort of quick fix so that I could get control of my life again. I investigated every possible reason for why it has gotten so bad. I tired changing the pill, quitting coffee, reading self-help books, doing online courses… you name it I was looking into it. I briefly tired a few yoga classes and meditated a few mornings in a row but when there was no instant fix from these things I dropped them again.

    I was impatient as impatient could be, it had been months of things building up to this point and I wanted to find something that would make me better in a day. I wanted there to be one simple answer. In the end it took things falling apart and losing what I was trying to protect for me to see the root of my anxiety.  As is the case with most emotions there was never just one simple thing, there was a complex web of things that contributed to my anxiety and while I hated the place it took me to I value what it has shown me.

    It showed me how trying to control things in order to create a sense of security was actually driving me insane. From there I was able to loosen my grip on trying to control things and ever since then I’ve relaxed my need for certainty and have been able to enjoy life a lot more. Accepting that life will change and I won’t know how or when has made me a lot more engaged in everyday moments. I now feel more able to simply to appreciate life and all it has to offer without expectation or promise.

    It’s been a big year and the biggest lesson of all has been to compassionately accept that I am imperfect and there will be times that I will fall back into old habits, there will be times that things don’t work out and there will be times where I am not my best self. Letting all of that be okay is hard but amazingly liberating. Accepting that I will stumble and it won’t be perfect helps me to cultivate the courage to show up just as I am and keep trying in the face of uncertainty.

    xxx