The Yoga Lunchbox

Nourishing the Yoga Community since 2008

  • Home
  • About
    • Contact
    • Advertising
  • Yoga Articles
    • Starting
      • Foundations
      • Styles
      • Going to Class
      • Practices
      • Home Practice
      • Resources & Reviews
    • Deepening
      • Yoga & Parenting
      • Yoga & Relationships
      • Yoga & Life
      • Yoga & Healing
    • Teaching
      • Insights
      • Interviews
      • Training
      • Business
    • Awakening
      • Activism
      • The Process of Kundalini
      • The Process of Waking Up
      • KL’s Musings from the Mat
  • Yoga Videos
  • NZ Teacher Training
    • RSS
    • Youtube
    • Facebook
You are here: Home / Yoga Articles / Awakening • Creating a More Beautiful World / Musings from the Mat / Whereupon our heroine is hoodwinked into a headtrip

Whereupon our heroine is hoodwinked into a headtrip

April 7, 2011 by Kara-Leah Grant 9 Comments

Vintage Crying Smiley Gaiam Yoga Mat, no really

Vintage Crying Smiley Gaiam Yoga Mat, no really

by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat

Last week I was having a shit of a week.

I could tell it was bad because I kept having these on-going conversations in my head.

I’d be eating dinner, or sitting outside in the sun, or walking down the path… and there would be a party going on in my head.

With my ex-partner, with the people I’m working for, with people I needed to email… whoever, wherever, whenever.

Constant chatter, all of it future-focused, and it was making me feel really stressed.

Me!

Stressed!

What the hell was going on?

At first I blamed the circumstances I was experiencing – my ex-partner and I were having difficulties with communication over child access. Our own issues were getting in the way and it was really upsetting.

Many of my internal conversations revolved around what I was going to say to various people to fix this issue. Because we all know that when we fix our external circumstances we create peace, happiness and love, right.

Yeah right.

That’s one giant myth that I don’t get sucked into anymore – usually. But there I was, suckified right into it’s ugly depths, doing whatever I could to try and fix an external circumstance to try make me feel better.

Could only mean one thing folks – I was back living in my head.

My mind had surriptiously wrestled perceptive control of my life away from my heart.

God dang it, how the hell did that happen?

Oh I knew… it happened the way it always happened.

It happened because I was running away from a feeling or two. The second I don’t feel what arises in the moment, I take a step out of the heart and toward the mind. If a day or two goes past and I still haven’t felt that feeling, I’m mostly back in my head.

And if more than two days goes past without feeling the feelings… I’m bang smack right back in the middle of a headtrip.

Which feels bloody awful. Now I know what it’s like to be fully present, when I’me not, the constant mind chatter is nasty stuff.

I could sense I was missing out on the joy and peace of simply being, but I was trapped in thinking that fixing the circumstances would fix the chatter.

What to do, what to do?

Oh.

Wait.

I know what to do.

That’s right.

Yoga.

What better way to stop, still and drop into the present moment and allow whatever feelings are there to arise?

So.

To the mat.

I needed to give myself space to stop still and access whatever needed to be expressed.

So I settled myself down on the floor and flowed through a gentle heart-opening practice that involved buckets of tears. Not oceans, like once upon a time, just buckets.

And then later, after lunch, I felt more tears a’calling so huddled on the couch and cried and cried and cried and cried.

Almost lost it at this point I must admit.

The tears got to that point of overwhelm where I was getting desperate for comfort, the moment of Call a Friend, or Ask the Audience. Only there was no audience and I knew that getting comfort from a friend would just delay the inevitable. I needed to just have the guts to fully feel what was there.

What was there was mostly grief over lost love. It might have been three months since I left my partner, but with a toddler in tow, those months have been mostly survival focused.

As a result I hadn’t realised how much grief still needed to be expressed.

Sure our relationship was mega-tough, there were addictions and co-dependency, but there was also a huge amount of love and connection on both sides. I may not be able to live in that relationship anymore, but it hurts my heart to let go.

So I cried some more. And then again, later on that evening after a lovely energy reading from a dear friend, I went to bed and cried some more. May even have cried the next morning when I got up.

But you know what?

After all that crying, the conversations in my head began to quiet down again.

Oh, they were still there to a degree, but the party was no longer shouting through a megaphone, now it was just a few stragglers huddled in a corner looking my way every now and then.

What a relief.

As the tears flowed out, so too did all the stress and worry about dealing with communication and child access.

I found myself back in my heart and able to trust in the process of life, and about to trust in my ex-partner. Even though I never shared any of my process with him, our communication eased up and things were moving again.

Two days later, I was back living in the Land of Now, and it sure is nice to be Home.

Hard to believe I once spent years living in my head. Back then, I didn’t even know I was lost, nor did I know how to get back to where I couldn’t remember Being.

Now, thankfully, I can tell when I’ve lost my way. Might take a day or two to clue in, but as soon as I do, I’ve got the tools I need to find my way back – I just get on the mat, and face whatever emotion needs to be expressed.

So if you’re starting to notice a lot of mind chatter, conversations in your head, frantic future-creation or past-rehashifying… ask yourself, what is it that I need to feel? What do I need to acknowledge?

Get on your mat.

And just give yourself space to be with whatever arises.

PS. Make sure the tissues are handy.

Similar Articles You May Enjoy

  • Kara-Leah in a twisting lunge
    On the Magic of Yoga Practice to Bring You Back to Presence

    by Kara-Leah Grant I've had a rough few weeks, since moving into my new house with my three wonderful flatmates. First I caught a 12 hour vomiting bug that saw me curled up on my sister-in-law's bathroom for seven hours in child's pose, just moving to lift my head and…

  • Strong & independent or insecure & needy?
    How I Finally Kicked my Co-dependent Relationship to the Kerb

    by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat Who'd've thought? Strong, independent, courageous Moi was stuck in a co-dependent relationship. Yep, me neither. Despite getting wind of this fact about halfway through our 3 year or so relationship, it took me another 18 months to break the pattern. Which in the end…

  • Home is where the heart is, heart is what the home needs

    Home. It's a deceptively small four-letter word, but oh how much punch it can carry. Our home is our whole world when we're kids, and when we grow up to be adults, we often unconsciously carry around that childhood home inside of us, even when it's not the kind of…

Filed Under: Musings from the Mat Tagged With: emotions, headtrip, heart, letting go, release, tears

About Kara-Leah Grant

Kara-Leah is an internationally-renowned writer, teacher and retreat leader. Millions of people have been impacted by the articles, books and videos she has published over the last ten years. Her passion is liberation in this lifetime through an every day path of dissolving layers of tension into greater and greater freedom and joy. You can find out more about her, including when her next retreats are, on her website. Kara-Leah is the visionary and creator of The Yoga Lunchbox.

Comments

  1. Emma Furness says

    April 7, 2011 at 2:29 pm

    “Crying” by Galway Kinnell

    Crying only a little bit
    is no use. You must cry
    until your pillow is soaked!
    Then you can get up and laugh,
    Then you can jump in the shower
    and splash-splash-splash!
    Then you can throw open your
    window and “Ha ha! Ha ha!
    And if people ssay, “Hey;
    What’s going on up there?”
    “Ha ha!” Sing back, “Happiness
    was hiding in the last tear!
    I wept it! Ha ha!”

    Reply
    • Kara-Leah Grant says

      April 7, 2011 at 3:49 pm

      OH Emma that is SOOOOO perfect. It describes the entire post, in a helluva lot less words.

      Thank you!!!
      KL

      Reply
  2. Bron says

    April 7, 2011 at 8:33 pm

    Hi KL…been waiting on that article from you…was wondering when your grief would work its ways to the surface…may the tears cleanse your wounds. Sending you love & heart healing x

    Reply
    • Kara-Leah Grant says

      April 7, 2011 at 9:13 pm

      Thank you darling! Lovely to hear from you 🙂

      Blessings,
      KL

      Reply
  3. adan says

    April 8, 2011 at 11:57 pm

    always a pleasure and, even when i didn’t know i could use it, a kinda healing reading your work

    thanks kara-leah

    Reply
  4. adan says

    April 9, 2011 at 12:01 am

    ps – had missed the graphic of the crying mat, great touch 😉

    Reply
    • Kara-Leah Grant says

      April 9, 2011 at 2:36 pm

      Yeah, who would’ve thought you could buy a crying yoga mat???

      KL

      Reply
  5. Liana says

    April 11, 2011 at 11:26 am

    Perhaps crying is the body’s way of transferring the self from the head and back to the heart; to bring us from the past and future and into the present moment. The body and mind work in such mysterious ways! I think crying is a positive and healthy thing, despite what other people say!

    Reply
    • Kara-Leah Grant says

      April 11, 2011 at 11:31 am

      Oh Liana… I like the way you think! That feels true to me.

      Blessings,
      KL

      Reply

Leave a Reply to adan Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2022 · News Pro Theme Ham on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in