Being Present

As basic as it seems like it should be, it just doesn't make sense to me that we have to live in the present. I mean, we just came from the past- we were just there. And as far as the future goes... we seem to be hurtling toward that at the speed of... well, time. Not just individually, either- all together. Sometimes I look around in a crowded intersection and am amazed that all the people there are aging, skipping forward in time, at the exact same rate that I am. Weird.

In any case, I have a complicated relationship with the past and the future. As far as past goes, it's there and you did it and you can know it, but you can't change it. And future, you can change, but you can't know it until it becomes present and then past.

I realized (not so recently) that my musical practice consisted of the following three parts: 1) practicing taking place in the present. 2) mourning the past in which I didn't practice enough. 3) fearing the future in which I would not be successful because I hadn't practiced enough. The problem is, #2 and #3 were encroaching on the present so much that I could barely stay focused on my present, real-time practice. Not only did it erode my playing time-wise (why bother to practice for two hours when I'm never gonna make it in the future anyway?), but it eroded the quality (I'll never be able to play this right because I didn't practice enough in the past!).

So what's a flutist/yogini (flowgini?) to do?

I'm gonna try this week to live like I sight-read- one note at a time, with my eyes looking only one or two notes ahead. If I think about what I can do that's productive and positive in this minute (and the next five minutes, say)... that's something that I can handle! In every minute, I have to embrace the present, let go of the future, and forgive myself (and sometimes others) for the past. That's a lot, but I tried it in class today, and it worked!

... then I came home and stuffed my face with ice cream.

And now I'm forgiving myself for the past and moving on. :-)

Inversions

I'm a worryer. I worry about everything, especially death. Especially health issues... I'm terrified of cancer (it's silent and hidden). I worry about car accidents. I worry about the issues that I've been having with my back (even though I knew my terrible posture would catch up to me someday). I worry about these things happening to me or to the hubby. I worry that we'll end before we're supposed to, not because we had a silly fight like last time, but because we get smashed on the highway, because cells decide to multiply out of control, because of a random event. And I worry most when I'm happy, which is most of the time lately. Last week it was starting to get out of control, to the point where I was seriously thinking about going to see a counselor (and I still might, because it seems like a good idea).

On Sunday in teacher training, we did inversions. So basically, we did headstands, handstands, and shoulder stands for almost three hours. We'd try something, then rest (headstands are hard on the neck, shoulders, and almost everything else!). The feeling after all of that inversion, though, was amazing. We were all so mellow that we were struggling to have conversations! When I got home, I realized that I felt really strange... after trying to figure out why for about ten minutes, I realized that it was because I hadn't worried about anything in hours! So I think this week, every time I start to worry about something that I can't control right now, I'll go into an inversion.