lesson from temalzcal & a wink from the universe

I know I said yesterday that I was going to write about my hillbilly yogini life lessons, but......we'll save that one for another day.

I can't even tell you the number of emails I've gotten from people about my "dying to be born" message. I can hardly wrap my mind around the support I've received. And my heart feels cradled by lots of loving hands across the land.

Clearly I didn't make the decision to cancel my yoga teacher training overnight. No, it was something I'd been debating, pondering, and questioning for a few weeks. This whole idea of push and yield repeatedly kept coming up.

Push and yield.
Push and yield.

One day I journaled about the idea of push and yield (see above).
In my journal I wrote about a specific incident from just over a year ago. Last November I was in Tulum with my dear bud Debra. We spent a week at Maya tulum. We stayed in a fabulous palapa right on the beach. We did yoga. Took long walks. Talked and strategized for our businesses. Got massages. And more massges. We ate delicious food. And drank delicious beer. Fresh mango juice too.

There was one experience I so wanted to share with Debra. I really really wanted us to do temalzcal (sweat lodge) together. We were at Maya Tulum during a really slow week. We made friends with four other gals that were traveling alone. In order to do the sweat lodge we needed six people.

Let me just say how amazingly kind the folks that work at Maya Tulum are. I adore them. Love them to pieces. They always go above and beyond to make me happy (and all guests) when I'm there. They tried to rally people for sweat lodge. Debra and I tried rallying up people. People on the beach, in the restaurants, on the street. They were all fair game. Still we could only come up with five people.

My fave healer/shaman/amigo Fabian agreed that he would lead temalzcal for our lil group. Debra and I both felt a little uneasy at this point. We totally knew that we were pushing (there that word is again) for this experience. It certainly was not unfolding in an easy way. But still we went on....

As we walked up to meet Fabian later than night I could see that something wasn't right. He pulled me aside and explained to me that we couldn't do temalzcal. Turns out they had a lot of fire ants over by the sweat lodge. To rid the fire ants someone poured gasoline on the sand. Not a good idea when you're dealing with fire.

Fabian specifically talked about how something as important as temalzcal could not be forced, could not be pushed. He didn't even need to explain at that point. I totally got it. In looking back now I can see how a part of me knew that beforehand. The universe is way more in charge than I am. Fine, I get it.

Things happen when they need to happen. I believe that. I think that we have a little control over some outcomes, but probably not as much as we give ourselves credit for.

Yes we need to do the work to move us closer to that which we desire. But we also have to detach from the end result. This is super familiar to me as it's part of yoga philosophy...practice and nonattachment. This practice is not just for the mat folks (puhhlease don't limit it to just the mat).

Now onto the wink from the universe....so I had finished writing in my journal in which I pondered the idea of push and yield, thinking back to this experience of temalzcal, and knowing deep down that cancelling the training was the best thing when I heard my phone buzz that I had an email.

I received a message from my dear friend Mia and this was part of it...
"I've been revisiting Erich Schiffman's book for some wisdom on this and I love what he wrote about "pushing and yielding"."

I stood there in disbelief. I ran to my room, took a picture from my journal and sent it directly to Mia. That's it above.

So while this has been a tough time in some ways, it's been an inspiring time in many other. It's so hard to share the part of us that is scared and uncertain. It's hard to admit that we don't have all the answers, that we're not perfect. But I think we should.

Why, because we're all human.
We're more alike then we are different.
We all have the same basic desires. We want to be happy. We want to be loved. We want to be healthy. We want to have a purpose.
We also have many of the same fears. We all get frightened and angry. We feel uninspired. We get restless. We're confused.
But none of us are alone in feeling these feelings. So why not bring voice to them? And just for the record when I sent that email I was nervous as hell. It's not easy being so vulnerable. I get that.

Thank all of you. I feel incredibly lucky, incredibly blessed to have such kind souls orbiting in my world. You truly amaze and inspire me in ways you can never know.

Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.
Peace. Peace. Peace.