Flexibility
As we come into the new 2024 year I have been thinking a lot about what word really captures what I want out of this upcoming year. After a few years of surgeries and injuries, I realized that my body took quite a beating. Prior to shoulder surgeries and my accident where I broke my Tibia and Fibula, my body felt pretty limber. I had worked hard at yoga for a while and recognized that my body really needed the lengthening of muscles and recovery to support the other strength training and cardio exercises I did. Yet today my body feels stiff, rigid and anything but flexible.
A few weeks ago I started an 8-week Yin Yoga course online that is called Flexibility and Beyond. It has been a powerful experience to dedicate 4 hours/week to poses that are uncomfortable and require a dedicated mindset, mindfulness, and determination to stay present, focused, and not give up. The interesting part about this course is that it not only challenges my body to bend and stretch in ways it wants to resist, but it also requires my mind to let go, clear the clutter, and breathe my way through intense positions.
I’m learning that my mind wants to fight slowing down and tell me that I need to lift weights, walk, row, or do something that requires me to sweat. Yet my body is loving the way it feels at the end of my 60 minute Yin Yoga session. I’m also learning that in order to get to my physical health goals after this injury combined with menopausal hormone changes, I need to release all the tension, stress, and cortisol that lives within my body. While this feels counterintuitive to everything I’ve done my entire adult life, I am already seeing the impact.
What Flexibility Means To Me
As I think about the word Flexibility I can wrap my head around the physical aspects of this. I want to be able to move with ease, get up and down without pain, balance my adrenals, and not feel like the “Tin Man.” So doing the work to bend my body and twist and stretch my spine, joints, muscles and tendons is powerful for improving my access to my parasympathetic nervous system and get my body out of fight and flight.
The other incredible aspect of doing the physical work with Yin Yoga, is that it forces my mind to do the work too. It requires me to embrace a flexible mindset, and encourages me to focus on allowing flexibility in all areas of my life. This gives me permission to embrace space when there are client cancellations, or take time for myself on days I’m not seeing clients without feeling guilty that “I Should” be doing something else.
I want to be flexible with my schedule, my commitments, and ensure that I have room in my schedule for connection with others as well as creative business strategizing and design. I want to say Yes to things I really want and No to things that don’t serve me. Yes, Flexibility has many powerful meanings for me as I move into this new year.
What Word Resonates With You?
So I encourage you to also take some time and write all the words down on a list of things you want more of or want to improve on. Spend some time really marinating on these words and begin to narrow down the list until you find the word that resonates the most with you. Speak that word out loud. Write that word everywhere you need a reminder, and make it your intention to pause and focus on how you will lean into that word each day.
You will be amazed at what you can accomplish when you lean into your Word of the Year!