Teaching these old toes a new trick...................

My yoga instructor went to a workshop over the weekend.... Translation..... we learned a new yoga pose last night, called (spelling this the way it sounds) toegu/toga (ha, ha, get it?). It is a two part pose, and goes like this: Place the fingers of your left hand in between the toes of your right foot (from the underside). Now (if you are able to) spead your toes apart, and then spread your fingers apart. After alternating between spreading toes and fingers a few times, remove your fingers from your toes, and then place the fingers on your right hand in between the toes on your right foot (from the top). Repeat the spreading of the toes and fingers, remove the fingers from the toes, and repeat with the other foot.

If you just read through the above paragraph, I am sure you are saying "That sounds easy/simple...... If you actually gave it a try, you are probably grimacing and maybe evening whimpering (as I was doing last night), unless of course you are one of those freakishly flexible people that I have heard of, but never actually met.

I was amazed at how much it hurt to try and spread my toes apart (BTW, my fingers are not all that fat..... I carry my extra weight elsewhere), and how resistive they were to going "into" the pose ("You try and drown us yesterday, and now your trying to rip us out by the metatarsels..... knock it off.... we are perfectly content to spend the rest of our days snuggled up close together..."). I never really thought about the need to get my toes into shape, but apparently I need to work on it.

Are you wondering why I would choose to share this little adventure with you????? It is because I see this as one more example of something that sounds easy, but maybe isn't (or at least wasn't for me) at first. The more I work at it, the easier it will become. I can make that last statement with a strong degree of confidence because that has been my experience with other poses/areas of life.

It can be so easy to allow ourselves to be defeated, before really giving things time to develop. Often, we give up before we give something an (honest from the heart) try, because of fear. Fear is an extreamly powerful emotion, usually born from a lack of understanding. If we do manage to give something (new or old) a try, at the first sign of struggle we choose to listen to that negative voice in our head and throw in the towel, with the blief the we have failed yet again. If we can figure out how to work through our fears, our greatest desires will be ours for the taking.

I have a friend that has an interesting approach (in a VERY weird sort of way) to quiting smoking. She told me "I don't have any problem quiting, because I know I can always start again." I never understood this logic (it goes against my logic that it is a bad thing to go on a diet, because when you go ON a diet, you have to go OFF it eventually, which usually leads to going back to those old habits that made it neccessary to go on the diet in the first place. This is why I am trying to establish healthy habits that I can stick with for life.), but if it works for her.........

Today, I am offering you encouragment to take the risk of trying something you want to master. Try it with the attitude of adventure, looking forward to WHATEVER comes as an experience with no right or wrong attached to it, no judgement, no restictions. Think about how freeing it might be to tackle an old problem with this new approach. I believe every experience is given to us so that we might learn from it. Some lessons can be painful (if we accidently burn ourselves while trying to iron our clothes while wearing them, we learn that there are times when multi-tasking is just NOT a good idea), but even pain serves a purpose in our lives..... If we never hurt, we will never know how great it feels to not hurt!!!!!

There are so many blessings I would not have received had I not been willing to take a risk. Your blessings are out there just waiting for you, so the question of the day is : (In the words of Jana Stanfield) "What would you do today, if you were brave?"