Centered

I’ve been doing a writing exercise with a friend, and this week’s topic was centered. I thought I’d share what I wrote since I haven’t posted much recently.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what centered means to me and what I can do to feel centered. Centeredness is something that comes in waves in my life, and I’m realizing that it’s something that doesn’t happen without effort.

As I’ve reflected on it this week, I realize that recently I’ve lost that part of myself. Even a few weeks ago I felt more centered, so I’ve been thinking about what has changed.

A few weeks ago I had a very strict routine. It included daily yoga and meditation, two practices that help me in different ways. Yoga allows me time to get out of my head and focus on my breathe and body movement, while meditation gives me time to just be.

While I still feel like a beginner at meditation and can hardly sit for 10 seconds without getting distracted or stuck in my thoughts, taking the time to try still really helps me feel more grounded and centered. As for yoga, it’s a lot harder to avoid distractions while practicing from home, but I feel better every time I do it.

Reflecting on times in my life when I’ve felt most centered, there are a few times that come to mind. Yoga teacher training definitely stands out, and it comes as no surprise to me. I was meditating daily, doing yoga multiple times a day, learning about philosophy, and focused on eating well and treating my body well so it could be as strong as possible.

In addition to that, though, it was one of the most challenging times for me mentally and emotionally. I had a lot of work to do on myself, and I learned a lot throughout the month-long program.

When I arrived in Bali I was very caught up in comparing myself to others and thinking about my weaknesses and insecurities. I was constantly comparing my body with everyone else's, and I could only see the bad parts of my own body and self. I wasn’t flexible enough, I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t pretty enough, I wasn’t centered enough.

It wasn’t until a few conversations with others and some time reflecting and meditating that I finally had the ability to step back and take my focus away from others. It was a pretty profound moment when I finally looked inward and realized my true self. I didn’t have the ultimate self-actualization or realization that we had been learning about, but I had a pretty fantastic aha moment.

I realized that I wasn’t being true to myself. I wasn’t dealing with my feeling and thoughts. I was just thinking and assuming that I was inherently a failure and everyone else had everything come easy to them and they didn’t have to try as hard as me.

To help myself, I started sitting in the front row for yoga so I wasn’t tempted to look around to compare myself to others. I was harboring some nonsensical anger towards other people, but when I truly looked deeper and thought about why, it came back to my own insecurities and my projections onto others.

I’ll never forget one day when I wept during the entire meditation. I mean wept like ugly cry. I had been angry at one of my roommates for not taking the training seriously and keeping me up at night, but during that mediation, the daily chant we used - baba nam ke valam - truly hit home. It means love only. Love only.

How simple the phrase can sound, but so very powerful. It was exactly the message I needed and that I finally wanted to feel and truly embrace. It’s hard to put into words what I felt that day, but when I think about what centered means and when I’ve felt it, that moment comes to mind.

There were many moments of doubt and fear along the way, but when I finally let go of my anger and judgement towards myself and others, I felt better than I ever have. That’s what had me feeling centered.

When I think about what allowed me to get to that place, that feeling, I realize there is a lot that I was doing in Bali. It was hard work and it didn’t come easily. So when I think about why I feel so far away from that feeling today, it’s because I’m not doing the work.

I’ve been mulling over it for the past few days, and what I think will help me get back to that place is getting back into a routine and doing the work. I can’t recreate the schedule I had in Bali, but I can definitely do better than what I’ve been doing the past few weeks.

I consistently struggle with goal setting because I want to motivate myself, but I want to also be gentle with myself if I don’t meet every single goal. It can be a difficult balance to strike, especially since I have such deep rooted self doubt and fear of failure built in to myself, but I can do it. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other.

So today, even though I look back at the past few weeks and feel lost and a little hopeless, I already feel more centered because I’m taking the time to reflect. To think about it. To take action. To do the work.