Change verses growth

The only thing constant in life is change, and for some reason, we always seem to want to resist it. I admit to loving the comfort of a good, old routine, something that stays constant from one day to the next. But the reality is that this life is always changing, and we are either left to let life change us unexpectedly, or instead become active participants in our own lives and find personal growth to either match or spur life's changes.

I made a commitment today to a professional yoga teacher training program through YogaWorks. It was a big decision; a large commitment of time, energy, endurance and money. But I hardly thought twice. Lately, I've found so much joy in teaching and helping others, and the more I teach, the more I realize where my limits are as a teacher. I realized that if I want to continue down this path of teaching yoga, I must break down those limits so that I can grow as a yoga teacher, a yoga practitioner and as a person.

Recently, I have been resisting change. Change came along for me in the form of sore back muscles and vertigo, and yet I keep resisting. "I don't want this," I keep thinking, "I hate this. I want to get back to the way my life was before this." But that can't happen. Instead, I should be saying, "Wow! I wasn't paying attention to the change in front of me. I wasn't active in my growth to keep up. Now I have vertigo and a sore back. What are these things trying to tell me? What do they want me to learn?" I am confident that once I learn the lesson they're putting in front of me, I'll find growth and move past these hurdles.

So I asked my vertigo today, "What do you want? Why are you here?" And it said back to me, "I am here because you have been playing the victim and looking for love and companionship outside of yourself. You need to learn to truly love and accept yourself." Wow, so that wasn't heavy or anything. And hadn't I just admitted to a shopping addiction due to feeling unloved and lonely? I was looking outside myself for love, and if the addiction wasn't enough of a clue, now my body was acting up, too.

Of course, you could just say, "Well, vertigo is a medical thing, right? I mean, why are you 'talking' to it?" Because it's all energy. Energy causes joy as well as pain. A happy emotion can make you feel light as air, and a stressful emotion can cause you to feel heavy and tight until your shoulders are bound to your ears. It's all energy. And it's every changing.

So. I'm moving forward. But I'm also slowing down enough to take the time to listen to what my body has to tell me. What does your body have to tell you? Do you manifest your spiritual/energetic messages through your body like me, or do your electronics stop working and your car breaks down? Stop to find the message behind the mayhem, so that you can learn to grow with the change, rather than be a victim to it.