Holiday Yoga
I found myself this week trying to organise family members overseas, hoping to ensure that everyone was taken care of… not left out. Really I should learn to listen if someone says “we prefer to stay home” or “it’s stressful when there’s too many others.”
Why do I think that everyone wants to be with others? Why is more better? Why do I think I know what’s best for everyone? The truth is I don’t. And yet I still find myself upset that someone may be missing out, alone, or unhappy.
At the holidays I find myself yearning for large gatherings, noisy kids and animals, leftovers for days and quiet moments with someone you haven’t seen or talked all year. I think it’s from the joy-filled memories of my rural childhood, definitely sugar-coated, and perhaps not as much fun for the grown-ups as they drove from lunch at one house (my dad was one of eight kids) to dinner with the other (my mum was one of six girls) to ensure that we spent time with both sides of the family. How exhausting really.
I spent many years living abroad from my biological family so I was always so deeply grateful to be invited to join our friends holiday celebrations. And yet some of our favourite family memories are of hiking, just the four of us, with a picnic lunch.
At some point I find myself bumping into something in myself that I didn’t know was there. That I do not like very much. The desire to control what “family celebrations should be.” The yoga now is how do I process and integrate this? How do I learn from that?
My teacher Douglas shared recently… “We live in the stories we tell, that are told to us, and that have been told, whether we like them or not, whether we want them or know them or not. Before we shape ourselves, the stories told have shaped us, sometimes determined our outcomes or stolen possibilities. We can rewrite and write over these stories, but we cannot fail to be made in their image or shadow because are we made by stories, and we are not merely making them. The shape of the narrative can be fact or myth, action, or ritual, created by the somatic or the mind. It’s less crucial that the narrative describes or explains our situation as it manoeuvres us to feel and to respond, to create a sense of doing something when something needs to be done in situations of attraction or aversion (or both).”
My deepest desire is to create space for experiences that remind our families of the joy to be found in each others company. Now I just gotta learn to gracefully accept the declined invitations, set the table well and let the celebrations unfold without expectation :)
May you, your loved ones, and all beings everywhere experience the peace, joy and relaxation available now, and all season long.
Love, Denise