Being true

Sleep deprivation has taken its toll.  Fifteen months now without a whole night of sleep, without sleeping in fact for more than 4 hours between wakes.

It feels relentless at times, more so with the relentless nature of life in the office at the moment.

I have noticed how it affects my ability to think, how my memory is definitely not what it used to be, how more impatient I have become with certain things, how I react more quickly when things do not seem to be going my way and how my mood is not always as uplifted as it can be - essentially I am aware how much more stressed I am.  It is interesting, because this is the very reason I started yoga in the first place and so it is quite strange to find myself back here.

But life is a series of cycles so that we do see/feel the same things again, although I always believe we gain more awareness each time until we make the changes and begin to create new cycles of being instead.

It is all about being honest with ourselves, which is so very easy to say and not so easy to do.  It reminds me a little of something my Reiki Master said to me shortly after I began Beinspired and was trying to find my way.  She urged me to be authentic and at the time I thought I was being.

But I wasn't really I see that now.  I was trying to be how I thought I should be as a yoga teacher, so that I kept various aspects of myself hidden, even from myself.  I was ever so hard on myself, setting very high standards to try to be the person I felt I should be as a spiritually minded yoga teacher.

This meant that I felt I had to look the part so that I strictly controlled my diet and added fuel (as I later realised) to an earlier eating disorder (not healthy at all and a common trap for yoga practitioners who enjoy the fact that yoga gives them an excuse to embrace eating disorders).  I lived a very controlled life so that I shut myself away from friends and a social life (for fear of losing control) and tried to live the life I felt I should live to be more spiritual and pure, that actually made me feel very lonely and sad, rather than connected and whole.  I certainly wasn't happy on the inside, even if others thought I was from the outside.

I believe this all comes down to the mind being a powerful thing and believing we, our lives then, have to be a particular way to be something, whatever that may be. Not only that, but also how we so easily stick to the comfort in our lives, to the way things are, even if we have outgrown them. And this ties in rather nicely with this whole idea of being true to ourselves.  Being authentic thing.  Being honest.  Only that we are often so caught in our zone, routine, comfort zone, our own denial then, that we have no idea.  We don't really see what is getting under our skin, what is draining our life force and what is making our spirit sink.

Until one day something shifts, or gives, or whatever it may be, so that we realise that perhaps, just perhaps we are not being true, or real or authentic in our way of being, living, thinking. And I guess that is when the change occurs, when the cycle begins to take a new shape, as we find ourselves and our way again.

So for me now, the sleeplessness is relentless and exhausting.  But so too the life that I live, the way in which I live, with all its toing and froing and studying and working and doing and running and rushing and simply not enough pottering and being.  So it is therefore no surprise to find myself here again.

And with this a realisation that being authentic really is about being true to the self, acknowledging when things need to change and having the courage to make those changes so that the energy flows, the spirit lifts and life seems filled with more "being" again.

Hoorah therefore for the Aquarius new super moon which takes place late on Wednesday evening. This new moon is certainly making me feel a little wobbly and I shall very much look forward to it waxing and us springing forward again.  Have a read here for more on what is in store! http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=bf3182281c10722c7eea99902&id=981d30f481&e=eae0fe6be6

Be true. Be happy (as someone I met only hours earlier told me on Saturday)

With love and gratitude.

xx