Remember that time, back in 2015 when we were all so young, so full of life, ability and creativity?
Those were good times. I wish, looking back, that I had been more grateful for what I had around me.
I wish that I could have the abilities that I had back then – the clear eyesight, the ability to walk freely, the ability to drive, and the precious gift of watching my children grow.
I play a trick on myself sometimes to check-in and see if I am aware of how awesome things are in the present.
We all get caught up with what might be, and sometimes we create nostalgia for things as they were.
The fact is that things never were what we thought they were, nor will they be like we want them to be in the future.
All the more reason to deeply see and feel how awesome it is that we have our life right now.
That awareness is much bigger than any cliché or slogan, as it brings us back to the humility of being alive and awake.
There is one technique in savasana that is incredibly powerful, and perhaps we can all try it at some point this month.
When doing your body scan at the start of your savasana, take some time to infuse each body part with gratitude for what it does and what it allows us to do.
If there is anything that our yoga practice brings, it is insight into how amazing the human body is.
How to infuse gratitude into your yoga practice:
- Infuse your arms with gratitude for hugging, writing, the ability to give high fives, carrying children, for reaching, for protecting yourself and for picking up things that have fallen.
- Give thanks to your legs for walking, kicking, running, balancing, jumping and dancing.
- Bring awareness to your senses and know that they have kept you alive, allowed you to eat chocolate, see a technicolour sunset, hear a powerful song, touch the skin of your lover and smell freshly-baked bread.
- Be humbled by the greatness of the brain — its ability to process massive amounts of stimuli, the way in which it figures out how to solve a puzzle, how it stores precious memories and how it gives you ideas, dreams and visions.
You are filled with epic creations of a universe that has tested and tried out trillions of permutations of a few base elements, and has come to the conclusion that you are it’s finest creation yet, and so it has provided you with a million gifts and ways in which to connect with everything in the whole cosmos.
I hope for you great savasanas, where you feel yourself profoundly alive and present, because time passes swiftly and opportunity is lost.
Very soon you will be old and your children grown. Let yourself be filled with gratitude for what is, so that you do not find yourself wishing you had paid more attention when you were young.
Remember that time, back in 2015, when we were all so young, so full of life, ability and creativity?
— Sincerely, Ted Grand