The past week (give or take) has been awkward. It began with a disturbed feeling all over – I felt energetically drained and emotionally heavy – this lasted two days. Then the disturbance moved into my digestive system – I lost my appetite – also for two days (though it still hasn’t resumed completely). Then it was as if a weight was lifted from me.
My Pranayama practice was irregular during the stormy days but over the last few days (4 at least) I have been practicing consistently. Over these days I’ve seen a gradual recovery of my breathing, which seems to be aligned with my overall recovery:
- Flow – at first the flow of the breath was shaky and that effected everything else. That was also the first thing to improve – a steady quiet flow of breath.
- Space – when the flow was better I felt that my capacity to exhale was limited – as if I had just enough breath to complete the long exhale. I know from past experience that I do have the capacity for this practice – which meant that it was again a reflection of my overall process of recovery.
- Ease – today it all came together again – there was both a quality of flow and space and I returned to the overall ease with which the practice usually comes to me.
This is an example and confirmation of my intuitive choice to not change my Pranayama. Having a steady and accessible practice gives me an anchor, something I can come back to and know myself again in this turbulent period of life.
I came out of this mornings practice with a somewhat startling realization. On March 6th I published a post celebrating two years of Feminitate in spite of feeling down and disturbed. In the first sentence of that post I wrote “is there a tsunami happening some where?”. Yesterday a tsunami hit Japan.