Finding Balance, Finding Gratitude

I’ve been looking forward to Thanksgiving for weeks because I totally love thanksgiving food.  As the day draws near, I feel a sense of slowing down, of leaving work behind, and happy to be going home to my parentals to eat all their food.  At first I thought my fellow city dwellers were feelin it too, but this afternoon I feel more like they’re speeding up, not slowing down.  Well, even if folks are running around, at least we’re focusing our attention eating yummy meals and spending time with people we love, rather than responding to the endless influx of email.

As the holiday season commences, and a special kind of busy-ness ensues, how will we manage on the inside?  Emotions can come at us full-force this time of year.  This week, people will get stressed out waiting in long lines, preparing huge meals, getting ready for guests, and shopping at the crack of dawn on Friday.  It is a very complicated time of year as all this activity can send us off balance on a course towards agitation and anxiety.

So, what can we do to bring balance back?  Maybe we can start by moving more slowly, to try and savor where we stand and what we have.  This can start in your yoga practice by slowing down your transitions from one asana to the next, lengthening your breath, and focusing on the sensations of contraction and expansion as you practice.

In asana practice, we are always looking for the balance between extremes.  We want to be strong and engaged, but let go and relax at the same time.  We root to rise, we contract to expand, we find balance between the energetic opposites of activating and letting go.  Balance comes somewhere between total surrender and focused intensity.  In times of stress, we start to forget about the play between energetic opposites and find ourselves holding onto too much energy – we become rigid.  This is the perfect time to let out a long exhale, let out a sigh, and let go of the seriousness of it all.  A perfect time to find the ease that we forgot about.

So, as you face a long line at the airport or a race through the grocery store for something you forgot to buy yesterday (or both), may you breathe in a little more graciousness for your SELF and breathe out a remembrance of what you are thankful for.  When we think about gratitude from a place of balance, a place of less stress, so much more can arise.  I hope thoughts of gratitude fill you up over the next few days as family and friends arrive and depart, as you cook and clean, feast and lie comatose on the couch.  Let the festivities begin!

Happy Thanksgiving!