When you are on vacation the beauty of it is you lose a sense of time. You don’t know what day it is or even what time it is until you have to leave. And, even in everyday life we find ourselves losing our sense of time when immersed in a project we enjoy. But when it’s unenjoyable our sense of time changes and we tend to count the minutes. Minutes seem like hours; hours seem like days.
Using running as an example, while I was marathon training there were days when a 2-hour run felt good, light, easy, fun and time flew. Other days it felt heavy, slow, tedious and I was looking at my watch every 2 minutes.
When you are tired you are thinking about what’s next and lose sight of the present moment. When you are stressed you are thinking about what just happened and again lose sight of the present moment. In the moment, is in the NOW and time flows because you want nothing else; expect nothing else; anticipate nothing else but what you are doing right now and here’s where joy enters.
So how do we bring in joy and flow in a project or activity? Similar to holding a pose in yoga that feels a bit uncomfortable we keep breathing and notice what is happening, be the observer of the discomfort; the observer of our feelings. See the discomfort emerge and let those feelings go, surrender them up to Spirit. It doesn’t mean you have to instantly feel amazing in this pose or task; but it is the acceptance of how you feel that day and the surrendering of it. This changes the feeling, allows joy to enter, little by little; allows the flow in little by little. Because time is a feeling, how you feel dictates how time feels.
If you’ve enjoyed this blog, please consider donating to the Bending Tree Expansion Project to help us expand our resources to live your yoga. Our goal is to help people find their strength and creativity from the inside out…meaning finding their joy and living it fearlessly, from the heart.
Thank you and Namaste, Karen
