[blockquote source=”Rumi”]”Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”[/blockquote]

I noticed something in my yoga practice yesterday.

While attempting to execute a ‘balance posture’, I kept tumbling over to the opposite side of my mat. And though, I had successfully completed the posture many times before – there was something there, on this day, they kept nudging me over.

It had such a palpable texture to it, sharp and uninviting – certainly, replete of promise. And, with each failed attempt I felt as if this awful ‘beast’ was growing.

I was really discouraged – thinking this problem of balance to be a potentially irreversible part of my disease progression.

I caught myself becoming entangled in those million threads of possibility:

What will the future hold?

How will I manage?

Is this the end of my spiritual journey?

Oh, my goodness – how quickly the mind may create an overwhelming something out of nothing.  It’s as if our brains are ‘hard wired’, desperate to fill in the gaps where our internal logic may fail.

We are so unsettled by this energy of uncertainty, that we begin to create our own distractions. We tell stories, we attach meaning…we water down, we distort. All in a futile attempt to escape the fear associated with these feelings.

In Gayle Ferguson’s book, Natural Wakefulness, he offers that “distraction is married to discontent.” That our degree of distraction is directly proportionate to our very own unsettledness.

For me, distraction serves as a sort of internal mindfulness bell – as, there’s no better reminder than being swept away into the habit of emotion.

You can feel it, can’t you? That moment when you begin getting worked up? Our chest may tighten, our breathing may change – the precursor to our ‘fight or flight’ tendencies.

As Pema Chödrön mentions in her book, How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind ,

[blockquote]”There’s nothing as real and direct and counterhabitual as being present with yourself, just as you are, with your emotions just as they are. As difficult as that can be, the result of that training is nonstruggle: not rejecting your experience, fully engaged with yourself, with the world, there for other people. Another result of coming back to being with yourself, just as you are, is that emotions don’t escalate.”[/blockquote]

As counterintuitive as it may seem, the fact that we are able to recognize when we are spinning out of control – is actually a very positive thing.

As, within that moment we may discover our greatest capacity to change.