The theme of today’s practice is courage, and I was definitely feeling courageous as I woke up at 6am to practice before work.

This is the first yoga session I’ve done in roughly 20 days.

For me that feels like a long time mentally, but my soul feels like it is no days at all.

I wrote here about why I was slowing down on my yoga practice, and I will talk about it a little now too.

I go through periods of practicing yoga every single day, then having weeks off and starting again.

I’ve been doing this now for almost 5 years, and so I no longer struggle with poses after a break, I just seem to get right back into it.

Yoga has just become such a part of me that my body is kind of always there with it.

My mat welcomes me when I return, and nourishes me when I step over it in favor of rest or more sleep.

I’ve learnt to listen to my body at a time in society when we are actually encouraged to do the opposite, to push forwards, to keep on going, to achieve the ultimate in…what exactly?

In this way, as Adriene points out in the video below, just showing up for yourself is an act of courage.

 

The Oracle card I pulled to accompany the practice is one that has come up at least once before in this Yoga Oracle series, Electric Eel Spirit:

 

Electric Eel Spirit, Spirit Animal Deck by Colette Baron Reid.

 

This is such a dynamic card and energy at a time of the year when most of us feel a bit sluggish.

The weather is extreme and we can feel overwhelmed with goals we want to achieve.

Yet Electric Eel reminds us to go for it with courage. We can have what want, and it all begins with mental clarity.

Exercise of any kind has a way of clearing the mind like nothing else. Its in those moments when we are walking through a park or cycling down a country lane, that we can experience some of our most profound insights.

This is what we are being asked to recognize today – those ideas that just seem to come to us, out of the blue, about what our next steps should or can be.

Electric bolts of clarity. 

I hope you get some of those today.

It is also important to note that we may receive messages that we don’t want – sometimes getting what we want looks very different to what we imagined…

Much love Txx