I don’t know about you, but my New Year did not start off with a bang. It started off with a sneeze and a cough and a whole lotta warm tea and Nyquil.
As you may recall from my New Year’s Resolution post, I had some really wonderful ideas and feels about the new year. And then BAM! Bronchitis, sick in bed, gross times. And I hear I’m not the only one.
So what do to, what to do… Well the good news about New Year’s resolutions is that we get all year to embrace them. So whether you got sick or busy or forgot or whatever, it’s never too late to begin again. To his the refresh button. And as I like to say, come back to the mat. (AND it was a new moon last night, so we are ripe for new beginnings today!)
By ‘the mat’ I mean the yoga mat. As a yoga teacher and practitioner, I get a lot of healing and centering done on my yoga mat. It’s a place that brings me back to my body and back to myself. It’s become a sacred space for me, and when I don’t practice, everything else suffers.
But sometimes just showing up is hard. Be it a sickness or busy time or traveling, I have periods of time when I don’t show up for myself. I could go down the rabbit hole of beating myself up about it and placing all of this guilt and judgments around my lack of follow-through.
Or I could just come back to the mat. Show up and begin again. Reconnect and move forward.
Life really is just a series of beginning again. Each day is a new day. Each moment is a new moment. And it gets to be that simple.
We like to complicate it with all sorts of mumbo jumbo. Judge ourselves for not doing this or wishing you could be more like that. But I invite you to be a little more gentle. And begin again, so fresh and so clean clean, if you will.
So I will be taking some sweet time on my mat today, along with cleaning and cleansing the house (for it has become my sick times headquarters, enterers beware), and setting new goals for the week.
Be it your own yoga mat or something else that grounds you, take this week to gently come back to it. It’s always OK to begin again.