The Story.

In between five to ten second conversations with whoever is going through the lobby, playing on the timesuck that is facebook and watching tidbits of family guy while I laugh to myself like a crazy person; there are moments when I look out the window and have deep thoughts. Thoughts about life, the meaning thereof, and how to be a better person while I am here on earth being the boss of the lobby.

After a rough couple of years in my personal life including losing my Mom to cancer, having two huge fights and breaking up with two very close friends that I had known for over ten years, financial issues, burnout, weight gain, and no love life, I decided that maybe therapy was a good choice. Due to the financial issues, I decided to take the money I had been using for my yoga classes and put that towards therapy for however many sessions it took to get me back on track, get me happy and moving forward in my life again. It has been a little over four months now and last night's report, even after a pretty rough day, what that I was doing just fine. So that's good...
What is going through my mind these days, when I stare out the window at the snowy day and contemplate my life in this snow globe moment, is keeping the balance between all the things I learned in yoga and therapy. They appear to me to be two completely different ways of living a life. In therapy, I report what has happened, I keep a journal of my dreams and of course, listen to what the therapist has to say or sometimes just cry or figure stuff out, you know, depending on the day - sometimes I even do all of those things. Because the goal of therapy, especially according to Jung is individuation.

"Individuation is a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious is brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, active imagination or free association to take some examples) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche to take place. Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically. Besides achieving physical and mental health, people who have advanced towards individuation tend to be harmonious, mature and responsible. They embody humane values such as freedom and justice and have a good understanding about the workings of human nature and the universe."

Yoga takes a different approach. It's about going in, going deep, but with your heart and your breathing, not with your brain. The moments in those poses that are the most difficult are the times when "we must remember that we are not our bodies, we are spiritual beings in a human form" we are told to resist the temptation to give in to the ego, to the story. Of course, this is the time when the inner monologue, for better or worse, is turned up to "11". The tape that has recorded all the "I'm no good at this, I'm too fat for this, that girl is SO SKINNY, that girl is SUCH A BITCH, HOW DOES SHE DO THAT?, what am I going to eat for dinner? Should I even eat dinner? When the hell is this pose going to end?" with practice, our yoga teaches us to let go, release ourselves to the pose, surrender the story to the science of pigeon or warrior or even savasana and turn the dial down to a good 5 or even 3 and sometimes, when you least expect it and when you really aren't trying, it turns off. These moments are few and far between, but it is these moments that you learn to strive for when you are balanced in tree, or holding onto your leg in dancer's pose.

Since it's been a week from when I began this entry until now, I have had time to contemplate a third option. As you can see from earlier entries, I made a commitment to volunteering when I began this writing process. I have since been to the food bank at least once a month since I started this blog and it has been great for me. The reason I wanted to volunteer was because I knew it would get me out of the house, out of my head, and thinking about people other than myself'; being grateful is a huge windshield wiper for your brain when it's clouded by self-pity. I had the time, the energy and the willingness to do so and it was about time since the last time I did it was probably sometime in high school (not counting all of my theatre work, that was more like a labor of love). Last week, I decided to go to the Chabad website, just out of curiosity to see what Judaism has to say about the 'ego' and true to form, the directions were to do a mitzvah. A divine command as communicated in the Torah. Doing a good deed takes us outside of ourselves and reminds us that we are here for one purpose and one purpose only, to be of service, to G.d and to our fellow humans, not for some great reward in the afterlife, but to make the world a better place now, while we are here.