The Worry Habit

Who knows how to worry?

If you attended a Saturday class recently you might recall I asked the room,  "Who knows how to worry?” All hands went up. 

I then asked, “Who is good at worry?” Most hands stayed up. 

And finally, “Has worrying ever helped the thing you worried about?” All hands down.

There’s a pillow in my mother in law’s home that reads “Welcome to the shit show.” Everyone laughs when they see it, and they instantly feel at home because, let's face it, we are all a mess of worry, sadness, or unhappiness. 

The only thing I’ve found that makes worry easier is knowing that I’m not the only one. 

Dr Paul Joseph Fenelon 7.27.1942 - 12.12.2022

We die loved.

The thing I've been fretting and worrying over these past 18 months has come to pass. My father died peacefully as one can ~ surrounded by us all, as a winter sunset arrived on December 12th. For a man who loved numbers, 12.12 seemed appropriate.

My mother calls numbers like these angel numbers. When I looked up the meaning of the angel number 1212 it said, “This is a sign that you do not need to worry about anything.” Yes, that is what it said. 

The yoga sutras tell us Pratipaksha Bhavanam - when a difficult thought arises, choose another thought. And yet I don't know what other thought to choose when worry arises. I don't know what thought to choose when sadness takes over. I don’t know a thought to counteract unhappiness. So I go to the mat and try to use the discipline of the practice: find movement, breathe, be still, honor ritual.

 
Wintering

This month I've been reading, or I’ve been trying to read, Katherine Mays Wintering while sitting for many many hours with my Dad. I’ve come to understand that Winter, with a capital W, is an essential ritual. Nature performs Winter - the days grow short and the air grows cold, animals burrow in and conserve precious energy. Winter is also a ritual that the body performs - we slow down, we need less, and we conserve precious energy. Nature herself reminds us we all grow older and if we are very lucky, we die loved. And of course, Winter is a ritual that the mind performs - worry and sadness arrive and we either spin and waste our precious energy or we sit and recognize what is arising in us. 

 
As this season has gotten colder and darker my father has slept more and more. Such a fast-paced busy man all his life, he started to turn his focus inward, choosing the interior of his mind and heart for most hours of the day. Now I find myself too in an emotional Winter where I crave sleep, quiet, and solitude - conserving my energy as best I can. 

And although the angels say I do not need to worry anymore, I still worry. 

In fact, I’m getting pretty good at it. 

In Wintering I read this:

“Sometimes the best response to our howls of anguish is the honest one. We need friends who wince along with our pain, who tolerate our gloom, and who allow us to be weak for a while, while we’re finding our feet again. We need people who acknowledge that we can’t always hang on. That sometimes everything breaks. Short of that, we need to perform those functions for ourselves: to give ourselves a break when we need it and to be kind, to find our own grit in our own time.”

I’m writing today to share with you all my tremendous loss. And to acknowledge each of our individual pains and anguish this season. 

Thank You to my team and all our community for your kind words and notes. 

Being still and breathing seems to be all I can do at the moment. 

Our code YELLOW is still being offered to anyone needing the rituals of movement, breath, and stillness this season. Worry sadness and unhappiness seem to come with the Winter season. Please share this gift of yoga from us to you.

an offering

The only thing that has made this time better is looking around at all your hands in the air and knowing I am not the only one. 

Sending back to each of you solace and peace,

Linda