Okay, I’ve tried it, but I must admit that I enjoy pilates a lot more than yoga.  I’m okay with infusing some yoga poses into my pilates workout, but I do like the fact that my body is working and I understand what parts of my body are benefitting from the moves.  I think I don’t care for yoga because there are very few teachers who explain why you are doing certain poses.  I actually feel worse after some classes.

Pilates has actually helped me strengthen my core, which I am coming to realize is so very important in the overall strength of my body.  In fact, pilates has helped me become better at some of my yoga poses.  So this journal should be my pilates chronicles instead.

Aloneness is the place from which my peace emerges and then takes up residence in my spirit . . . it is the essence of my being in complete expression of blissful freedom. - Diane Pruitt

I look at all of the advertisements for Valentines’ Day and think on the days when I too thought that a day like this can only be enjoyed with “the one you love”.  Yet as I continue to meditate and spend time alone, I find myself becoming increasingly comfortable with myself, discovering that I am “the one I love”. 

Now, I love so many other people as well, my family, my friends, people in my community.  And as I continue to study compassion, I am learning to “love the world”.  Although, I am sure I am in my infancy in this area of compassion.  But I have evolved in the understanding of my love for self.

Aloneness is the joy of being just yourself. It is being joyous with yourself, it is enjoying your own company. There are very few people who enjoy their own company. And it is a very strange world: nobody enjoys his company and everybody wants others to enjoy his company! If they don’t enjoy he feels insulted — and alone he feels disgusted with himself. In fact, if YOU cannot enjoy your own company, who else is going to enjoy it? – Osho

I don’t claim to have any answers for any one else on this and can only share what I know for myself to be true; and that is, there was a time when I equated my aloness with loneliness and found them both to be intolerable.  As I sit here, the eve before my third Valentine’s day alone, I find myself wanting to be in this state and wanting to be in it for as long as I can. 

I do enjoy companionship. I love the intereaction of it, the give and take, the hugs, the kisses and the intimate moments.  But I also love the intimacy of aloneness.  My days in it pass so quickly, because in it, I am who I want to be in every second of existence.  In much of that time I take short but frequent journeys into meditation and mindfulness. Sometimes I explore new ideas about my companies. Sometimes I explore the Internet.  I read. I write. And I do so much of it in the silence.

The very best companion to aloneness for me is the silence.  I am at peace with the energies of my own thoughts and revelations. And they are not encumbered by externalities or the energies of thought forms outside my own being.  Silence is an incredible tool for connecting to a source that lies somewhere between the inner self and another state I cannot name.  Some call it the akasha or the ethereal.  Whatever it is, there is a intelligence and serenity that beckons my heart and my spirit and I am one with in in my silent aloneness.

To be able to blend time alone with time spent with friends, family, and a significant other, is the ultimate. I think it is the harmony my soul savors. 

I really have been practicing yoga. Even though I haven’t posted anything in a few days.  In fact, I think I have arrived at a new revelation as a result of my practices.

For about three months, I have been struggling with what direction I want my business to take.  Part of me wants to see it grow because of the potential it has to create income for me and for those who work for me. Another part of me questions whether I should continue building a business that does not represent my passion.  But then, what is my passion, and why is that relevant at this juncture in my life?  I want financial freedom and I also want my independence.

So in typical fashion, I started forcing myself to be productive. I started investigating my options.  I started asking myself, what do I really want to do?  Nothing really came to me. I tried the “if I could be anyone in the world, or do anything I wanted to do, what would that be” tactic.  Nothing.   Then I scoured the internet for ideas and businesses that might look like what I wanted my business to be.  Again, nothing.   Maybe someone has written a book or an article about this.  So I purchased books online and at the bookstore and read them. You guessed it.  Nothing.

After moving through my sequence of yin yoga poses at 3am one morning, I realized, that maybe my business plan for this year is to do nothing.  Not to stop working, or meeting current objectives.  But to stop “stirring the pot”.  Maybe it’s time to allow the energy of the business to settle into itself. I already have a plan in place.  It’s a three to five year plan loaded with goals and objectives and backed by several years of research and development. I am in the 5th year of this business. And at this point, there is no need to create any additional goals, but to make the ones I created work again this year, at a higher level of income. At that moment of realization, the angst was gone, the cloud lifted and the birds started singing in the meadow again. What an incredibly freeing moment for me. I found my body relaxing into an indescribable calmness. I began to feel something I had not felt since my youth, that life is wonderment in a very raw and rare state.

Now, in reality, all sorts of things can happen to you when you do nothing.  But all sorts of things happen to you when you do.  Perhaps a certain freeing comes from balancing them both.  I can assure you however, that my doing nothing is quite disproportionate to all of the doings I have been doing most of my life.  So for these next few weeks, and possibly, the next few months, I am commited to the practice of doing nothing.  I think this may be aligned in some way to the buddhist concept of emptiness, but I am not sure, so I will need to read on this a bit more. 

In the meantime, I’ll stay in touch . . . or, I’ll do nothing.

I have taken several yoga classes over the years but could never really “get into it”.  I was never quite sure about what it was I was doing or why.  And even though I was reading about the virtues of the poses, I never stayed with the practice long enough to derive the full benefits of the training. I would always revert back to my weight training because it was familiar and I could feel immediately the effects of the training.  It’s clear  to me that when I do a bicep curl with weights, I am strengthening my biceps.  When I go hiking, I am working my heart.  Before I started reading about it and taking classes, Yoga was what you did when you wanted a good stretch. Continue reading Contraindications