Going Full Circle

By Kelsey
January 14, 2015

Each week we are be exploring a restorative yoga pose or breathing technique with images/video and tips. Check in at Lacuna Loft on Wednesdays to anchor your week with peace, grounding + community (and don’t forget to join the dialogue all week long by posting comments). Excited to journey together!

I got back from holiday travels and decided that the new year meant new arrangements for my house. I measured and cut little shapes to move around the paper drawn version of our living room. I talked to my husband. We cleared out all the little things like lamps, guitars, rugs, and dog toys. And we started to move. We pulled things out of one room and into the next. We tried the long couch here and there. We took everything out of one room and put it in another. We sat from different angles and took in the view. We weighed the pros and cons and all the things we value for a space – comfort, view, conversation friendliness. We got up, shifted things again.

Two hours later, we arrived at an arrangement almost the same as the original. We only decided to move the TV from one room to another and perched it on our mantle. So, two hours of work and we were back where we started. Which, it occurred to me, was like most epic journeys. The myth of the hero. We go, we discover, wrestle through challenge, meet adversity, grow, reflect, change… and wind up back in the same place, only different inside.

Like my living room, there are parts of my life that may look mostly the same on the outside over the course of a year (ok, I did cut my hair pretty short last March) but that have undergone a massive process of growth. How I think about my relationships has changed through some hard pondering and conversations. My spirituality has changed language and expression with a huge embrace of yoga though a lot of the outward expressions of who I am remain similar. How I choose to think about my husband’s work and its time demands is slowly evolving and giving me more freedom to love boldly.

But for me the process doesn’t stop there. We come back around to these ‘same’ places… these almost the same places. And then we begin again. We learn more, we grow deeper, we dig further into relationships, beliefs, our stories and patterns and choices… and we come back different again. It doesn’t stop. What part of your life has these cyclical patterns of growth in it? Use these yoga poses to spend time contemplating cycles of change and expansion in your life.

Easy Pose (Sukhasana) or Lotus (Padmasana)

Ingredients

– two or three pillows

– a blanket or soft floor

Easy Pose:

Come on to the floor on your seat. Bring your legs out in front of you with knees bent. Cross your legs and draw your ankles in towards your body (sitting cross legged). Check that your ankles are under the opposite knee. Place a pillow under each knee so that it is resting, grounded. Maybe even place another pillow under your seat so that your spine can stretch tall. Feel the energy in your body move through the full circle of your legs.

Half Lotus Pose:

Begin cross legged on the floor. Lift the right knee up and bend it so much that your right thigh and calf hug. Keep the ankle close to your seat and rotate in the hip socket to move the knee/leg wide around. Place your right foot in your left hip crease. Place a pillow under each knee and sit in this pose of ‘full circle’ legs and feet. This is half lotus. After a few minutes, release and work the left side.