Are you taking care of yourself?

It is important to take good care of our body, mind, and spirit because they all assist us in aligning with our essence.

BKS Iyengar said, “Alignment leads to enlightenment”.  When I first heard this all I could think of was body alignment.  I have scoliosis so true alignment was out of the question and so to me enlightenment was out of the question.

When I began to explore “alignment” as aligning to my natural state of being, I began to truly understand Iyengar’s message.

My approach is to align my body, mind, and spirit with my natural state of being.  I do that in three distinct ways and I nurture all of these ways regularly. One does not feel more important than the other.  They all feel important because they make up our entire being.

1. Take care of your body by aligning your body with its natural structure.

Do some form of exercise that opens you up and eat foods that are alive.

Whatever exercise you decide to do, it is most important to pay attention to your alignment.  The more aligned you are with gravity, the more clarity arises inside of you because your feet are grounded on earth and the crown of your head is open to the light.

Notice the way you sit, stand and walk.  Are you slouching? Is your chin lifting or dropping?  What about your feet, which way are they pointing?

Find ways to bring the body into its natural alignment. Strengthen the muscles that need strengthening, stretch the muscles that need stretching so that your bone structure is supported by your muscles.

Everyone is different, every body is different, every approach is different. What one person needs, another does not and vice versa. Take the time to figure out what kind of alignment your body needs.

2. Take care of your mind by talking with someone who can reflect back to you what they hear in you.

Aligning our thoughts with our truest state of being is difficult. Our thoughts are powerful and have energy. What we think forms how we live.

Living in alignment with your true state of being requires you to clarify your thoughts.

Find someone who can ask the right questions to help you see clearly the thoughts that are present in your mind.  They will help you understand who you are by the way you think.  When you understand the way you think, you can begin to clarify your thoughts.

The work is to keep the thoughts that are in alignment (the ones that serve you) and let go of the ones that are not (the ones not serving you).

It is important to find someone who is sharing with you what they see and feel from an extremely neutral and accepting place.

This usually comes in the form of a therapist or coach.  It could come in the form of a friend as long as they are in service of your highest good.

3. Take care of your spirit by finding quiet.

The spirit yearns for quiet so that you can connect to it and feel it and experience it.  It is your essence, your knowing, your intuition and it is louder in silence.

It needs to be quiet to be heard, to be felt, to be connected to. This is where your knowing lives.  And your knowing knows what is truly best for you.  It tells you what is best for you, if you are quiet enough to listen.

This practice is cultivated through being quiet in a quiet space, it can done anywhere, at anytime.

My preferred form is sitting or laying down in the early hours of the morning when it’s dark.  My husbands preferred form of quiet is being in the water on a kite board by himself. Both very different but serve the same purpose.

There is no hierarchy to this work.  Taking care of the body, mind, and spirit are all important.  Each one affects the others.  Focus on all of them.