Friday, December 01, 2006

Detach stretch

I've been reading Lilias Folan's book, Yoga gets better with Age this week. http://www.liliasyoga.com/

I highly recommend this book for all levels of fitness and bodily conditions! Lilias gentle style and warm personality has reminded me why I love yoga so much and brought back inspiration and motivation for change; not only in teaching, but also in my personal practice.

One of the portions of the book she speaks about detachment and offers us a challenge to stretch our detach muscle.

Lilias challenges us to go through our house and get rid of or donate 20 things we no longer use or need. Then she says we should go through our closests and get rid of 10 articles of clothing. When you are finished, she asks you to witness how you feel; are you still attached to the things you released? If so, you need to stretch your detach muscle.

I found this challenge interesting as I often release things from my life. Especially clothing. I do not believe in the 'I'll keep it as one day I'll be able to fit back into it" wave of thought. My thinking is, if I do drop weight then I deserve to get a new piece of clothing to celebrate.

I remember my Grandmother have much trouble detaching from items in her life. She used to say, "I can't get rid of that thing as so & so gave it to me." Funny enough so & so probably forgot about the giving eons ago!

Maybe this is why I've a hard time getting rid of certains items in my life; its genetic! But this week I got rid of 20 things; it wasn't as challenging as I would have thought. And actually it felt really good to open the energy to allow something new to enter into my life.

Seems my detach muscle is strong..... this week.

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