Wednesday, June 3, 2009

ripples in the pond

It has been a while... right?! I was a wee bit m.i.a. or so it might have seemed. Here is why...

I found myself floating in murky thick water. I was losing my focus, how to execute it and the reason why I was engaged in such a daunting fundraising goal. I lost what this meant to me and what it would mean to our community. Fear was settling in and making everything that much harder. I felt jostled around by something I really couldn't identify at the time. I felt myself affected by the turns of other people's moods and challenges and realized that the strength I was depending on was not my own...

So... I tuned out, dropped off and got out of it to get into it. And it worked... it just took a while.

Weeks later, months even, I finally identified what was going on with me and heard some helpful words, from several teachers, that reminded me of the following: that life sometimes moves you fast, jostling you around with such energy that you forget you are not engaged and then life becomes more of something that is happening to you. Sometimes the wave you are riding with such vigor is not your own and not even realizing it until you are thrown from it. And that a stone thrown into choppy waters does not produce the beautiful interconnected ripples it would if the water was still and calm. A lot of analogies there but they all helped me.

After the initial excitement of signing up for the Seva challenge and the flood of ideas and support that poured forth I rode the wave of this life changing experience for awhile. I made plans, hatched ideas, got the ball rolling... I rode that wave for so long I forgot what I was doing and why, where I was or how to do what needed to do done. Yikes! I floundered, floated and then wound up thrown out onto the beach mouth breathing and staring into space. I skipped yoga. I stayed home. I was left out to dry so to speak... and there my perspective changed and lightened. I realized what parts of this challenge were important to me. I was finally able to answer some of the whys I was throwing at myself.

I sat back and sat down and calmed the waters of my own inner pond and waited to see what would happen...

So hello world, Stella has her groove back.

A big part of this challenge is what comes up for the participants - not unlike what happens in the practice of yoga. There what comes up for you on the mat is just as important as the pose itself. What came up for me was that working two jobs, keeping up with life's little and big chores, working on the fundraising and going deeper into my yoga practice was spreading me thin - really thin. So much so that it seemed I was racing around after things and accomplishing very little. And then I realized that it is ok. It is all part of it. You find what works, what is sustainable for you and then work that. So that is what I am doing. As my father always says ... plan your work and then work your plan.

... let's see what happens now. There are many things in the works... t-shirts and totes are being hand screen printed in my basement, Uganda Rocks benefit concert is coming up at the end of July, a Brooklyn based chamber music group will be preforming sometime this summer, I am launching a change for Change project and some yoga workshops are in the works... not to mention a film series that fingers crossed will work out and a lecture series.

Stay tuned and thanks for hanging in there with me.... namaste.

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