Leaning into discomfort …

beautywalk Sandra Butel discomfort yoga self care love grief loss Saskatchewan coaching — *Leaving the nest ...* Photo by Sandra Butel

I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk.

beautywalk is all about facing the wholeness of who we are, in all of our idiosyncrasies, in our impatience with what is, in our moments of joy and peace and our moments of discomfort.

Niche

Today I sit on my yoga mat and lean into my right leg pain at a lovely little yoga studio called Niche in the prairie capital city of the province of Saskatchewan, where I was born and grew up and have lived for most of my life. I settle into the support of the room full of people around me, making the assumption that everyone else is also struggling to be with their own aches and pains and, in the recent tradition of yin yoga, they are pausing to breathe, to accept and to choose in each moment to be with the discomfort instead of moving to get away from it.

I also assume that they all, like me, very much want to move away from their discomfort and find themselves in a more relaxed position once again.

To the edge …

I look up from my mat towards Kate, our intrepid yoga teacher, who has such a gift for making each one of her students feel seen and understood. She is kind and gentle and there is an edge of no nonsense about her that sometimes comes out as a bit of tough love.

In today’s session she notices that I am struggling to get my sore and stiff and slightly longer right leg into the pretzel-like pose of Swan. She says, “Sandra, you can do Dragon instead,” and when I reply, “But I hate Dragon,” she quips, without losing a beat, that, “It is not about hating or not hating Dragon, Sandra, it is about being there with whatever is going on in the moment and pushing ourselves to sit at the edge of our discomfort.”

I know all this and groan a bit as I move my legs from my awkward attempt at Swan pose and put them into the heat generating Dragon pose. One of my fellow yogis says, “I will go into Dragon too in solidarity with you.” That feels great, even if, to be honest, she is much more flexible than me and while I appreciate the heart of the gesture I imagine that the pose is not as much of a struggle for her as it is for me.

What do I know of what is going on inside other people’s bodies?

How can I know how much discomfort others are feeling (or not feeling)?

To be with what is

Next up is box pose and contrary to many of the other times box pose has been announced there is no auditory collective groan. I am not sure how the heck I will make box pose happen with my stiff right leg and hip and when Kate suggests we can do it on our back as a figure 4 I choose that option for the first position of the right leg folded over left. I get as much stretch out of that position as I can, willing my right knee towards the front of the room and lifting my left foot from its tripod position on the floor to get as much of a stretch in the right hip as I can.

When it is time to switch our legs and have my tension filled right leg on the bottom, Kate comes over to help me with some props to give me the possibility of lasting longer than 30 seconds in the pose. I indicate with a head movement that my right knee is feeling pressure as I have folded my leg with my right foot towards my left butt cheek. Kate puts a bolster under my knee and in reply to my, “I still feel it more in my right leg than in the back of the left hip where it is supposed to be stretching”, says, “This is what you have to work with right now. You just have to be with what is and get what is needed by your body out of the pose, whatever that might be. The object is to be with what you are dealing with in terms of your body’s limitations, until they aren’t there anymore.”

Tears rush to my eyes at both her kindness in acknowledging that I am struggling right now with an out of the ordinary bodily challenge and with her influx of hope that this is not going to be this way forever.

How often are we caught in that place of not being able to hold space for where our hurts are?

How much can we learn from the practice of yin yoga?, which is, as Kate explains:

“All about being with discomfort as it is each time we arrive on the mat, not expecting it to be the same as it was yesterday, or the same as it might be tomorrow, but just being there with what is in this moment.
It is about not trying to get around the discomfort but rather focusing on breathing and closing our eyes and doing whatever we can to just be with the level of sensation that our body is producing in each pose, each and every time we do it.”
Kate Rivard, Niche Yoga & Therapy Regina

Bittersweet Memories

I have been experiencing a larger than customary level of emotion these last few weeks in Saskatchewan. With my Mom’s memorial and time with her memory and with extended family, friends and townspeople from my home town of Southey, I have had a trip back down memory lane that has been full of love and gratitude but also of grief and loss and reminders of all the hard times that have come to pass here too.

My arrival back in my estranged city of Regina and into the walls and ceilings and floors of my long lost home on Athol Street has been filled with much the same mixture of bitter and sweet. I have been facing up to a whole lot of sentiments and objects from my past life here as I go through (and no longer around) the myriad of choices that I have to make about which people and items and beliefs I will carry forward with me into the next phase of my life.

The Ugly First Draft

I have started the process of going through my journals from the early years of my difficulty with the non-profit board of directors at the organization where I dedicated over 21 years of my working life. I am resting face to face with the anguish and confusion that my past self was feeling as all I believed was solid and true broke into tiny particles that disintegrated like dust and ashes between my fingers. I was left grasping the air and I am here now to go back into that time with as much clear eyed compassion as I can muster so I can get the words down on paper and do justice to what I experienced in the first years of my exile.

I have taken the giant step towards sharing the “ugly first draft” of what will become my memoir of the last 5 years of my life; my shift from there to here; from doing to being. I feel vulnerable and shaken as I open up my words to the eyes and ears and advice of others as part of the book creation process and learning.

I have removed the dulling of my SSRIs prescription as well as the balm of distance and time and have brought myself back into this place where my life as I knew it was blown up by someone who was hoping to do me harm.

I feel the full impact of all of the emotion, the full force of what my former self has gone through and I am here and ready to be with it, as it is, in the form that it is in, until it changes to the next form, as it most certainly will.

I can do hard things

So I sit, on my mat, or propped up in my King sized bed, and I encourage myself with soft words and determination to be here with the ‘what is’ of the moment. I remind myself that I can do hard things and that the more I learn to be with the discomfort, the more my abilities will be stretched and the more fluid my movements will be in the future. I remind myself that it is only through being with, and accepting of, the conditions of the life I am currently living that I will be able to free myself from the limiting beliefs that are keeping me from reaching the next level of my existence.

I take comfort here in a story I was told by one of my clients, of the Muslim belief that when our soul enters our body on the 40th day of our gestation inside the womb of our mother the whole story of everything that will happen to us in our lives is written upon that soul.

If everything has already been written,

who am I to resist the chapter I am engaged in at present?

Faith

It is time for faith. Faith in the power of the universe to bring about incredible things, faith in my ability to lean into discomfort and to turn it into gifts of growth and learning and an ever increasing expansion of the depth of love that lives in my heart.

May all beings be at peace with the discomfort of the present moment.
May all beings find the strength to be with what is as we endeavour to go through and not around the things that cause us pain.
May all beings find ease in the truth of our existence.

I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk. What’s yours?

Resources for Further Study and Personal Growth

Yoga has been such a blessing to me in my beautywalk journey. You can probably tell that already from the number of times it has come up as the focus of my contemplations. There are some amazing yoga teachers out there. A couple that I hold dear to my heart are Kate Rivard at Niche Yoga and Therapy in Regina and Fiji McAlpine who offers in person yoga in BC, at retreats set in beautiful places or online at Do Yoga With Me.
My offering as Coach Sandra is to listen and be open as we co-create a space where you are seen, heard and understood. If this sounds interesting to you please do not hesitate to reach out to chat about how we might best work together on making your life a little bit more the way you want it to be. Sign up for a free beautywalk session.
My program From Worry to Worthy offers you an opportunity to move yourself from being ruled by the lizard brain to being guided by the wizard brain. Check out the full program details and book your first free session with me to get started. Friends and Family discount applied to all newsletter subscribers and your friends and family too! I am open to creative barter offers as part of my dedication to the advancement of the moneyless share economy.
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