Hi there,
Thanks for joining me today.
It's Anita Kaiser here and if you're not familiar with me,
I'm a nationally certified EFT practitioner,
And I'm also a living priestess.
And today I wanted to share with you two examples from my own life about where rigidity and rules got in my way.
And the first one is about my own personal yoga practice.
So I have been practicing yoga and teaching yoga for over a decade now.
I've been teaching yoga for over a decade now.
I've been practicing since I was young.
And,
Of course,
During that time,
My own personal practice has ebbed and flowed,
Right?
Sometimes I'm practicing six,
Seven days a week,
And sometimes I'm practicing two or three days a week.
And so at the beginning of this year,
I knew I wanted to get back to a more regular practice myself because it had,
My practice had taken a little hiatus.
And so in my mind,
I had these rules about if I'm going to practice yoga,
It has to be an hour long practice.
If I'm going to practice,
It has to be really serious business.
And I started to notice that that felt really heavy in my body.
And more often than not,
I found myself struggling with that resistance.
I didn't want to do it.
I didn't want to practice for an hour.
And I don't think that it was because I didn't want to practice.
It was the rigidity around it.
And as soon as I started looking at that and offering myself a different way of being,
I'd pull out my mat for 20,
30 minutes.
I'd pull out my mat and just start.
And this space of allowing myself to practice for 20 minutes,
To practice for 15 minutes,
To practice for a half an hour on the days when it felt right.
Just in allowing myself that shift in perspective,
Where I could do what felt appropriate for me on a given day,
It made the whole practice feel lighter.
And it allowed me to come to my mat more often.
I've had something similar happen in my life around meditation,
Right?
Where initially I had these rigid rules.
Meditation has to be done in a certain way.
You have to sit and there's no point just doing it for five minutes.
I need to meditate for at least a half an hour or I'm not doing it right.
And the minute I started allowing myself to meditate for five minutes,
If that's what I felt like for that day,
Or 10 minutes,
Some days is 25 minutes.
The minute I gave myself space,
Some days I danced during meditation,
Some days I tap during meditation,
Some days I sit in silence and I'm focused inward during my meditation.
And each one of those days is valuable and important.
So I wanted to share that with you today,
Just in case that offers you an additional layer of softness for yourself.
You get to choose,
And you get to choose softness for yourself.
Your meditation practice,
Your yoga practice,
Your creativity practice,
Your whatever gets to be what you need it to be.
And the minute you start feeling that pressure coming in like,
Ah,
It has to be a certain way,
Notice that.
Those are denser energies,
And they're not serving you in the same way that the freedom and flexibility serves you.
All right,
That's it for today.
I hope that's been helpful.
And I'd love to connect and hear how this resonated for you.
Thanks so much.
Have a beautiful day.
Much love.
