Aura Art Creations

Moving Through Stillness

Communications. Its the cycle of new moon in Gemini, and its all about communications, mental activity, and data processing. How do you process things? Me, I usually freak out when I start feeling self doubt or some other insecurity, seek outside reassurance, realize that I was silly to doubt myself, and then carry on. Sometimes I can reassure myself, but often I really want it from other people. I hope that this month that quality is not exaggerated!

Even though we are only two days into this cycle, I’m really feeling it! I think that this 21 day yoga/writing challenge was the perfect project to embark on at this time! An outlet for all this jibber jabber of the mind, and the yoga to keep the body in motion. Gemini is ALWAYS moving! My son has a Gemini moon, and he just CAN’T keep still. Sometimes he can for short periods of time, trying REALLY hard, but its just not his general disposition, stillness. I think that is reflecting both in my writing AND in my yoga. I thought I would just be doing Savasana all month, or just sitting still and breathing, but I’m having a hard time keeping still! I want to MOVE. I want to stretch every muscle in my body. I’m going to try to find balance (no pun intended!) by honoring what is natural to me (moving!) and what I crave (stillness!) and just be sure that when I am in “moving mode” the primary FOCUS is my breathing.

I really really really want to get better at breathing this year. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, but seriously, I am one of those “shallow breathers” that feels like she can never get a proper full-lung-expansion-and-contraction satisfying BREATH! It takes conscious effort to achieve it. I really would like it to be more of my default, this fuller breathing. Lately I’ve been dreaming of taking an aikido class. There is something that I need to learn and practice, and I think aikido is the perfect outlet for it. What is this something? Discipline. Self control, self motivation, connection between breath energy and the body. The last yoga class that I went to had a twist of a tai chi feel to it, and I LOVED it. It confirmed to me that I definitely wanted more of a “martial arts dance” feel. Freedom to move your body the way IT wants to. But also the discipline to guide it in the way that YOU want to.

Yesterday I didn’t have a real substantial yoga session. It happened in spurts. Some stretching here, breathing there, a few poses here, some savasana there. Who knows what today will bring? I love the unpredictability of all of this! Some days I know exactly what I want to write about and other days (like this morning) I just show up and have no clue what’s going down. Its scary. What if I sound dumb? What if I’m boring? Who cares?! I’m here to write, that’s my job right now, and I think I’m doing ok at 510 words. I was talking to someone about this project, and about the arbitrary word count of 800. Why 800 anyway? Who knows, but I’m enjoying the word count. It forces me to go PAST stuckness. Yes that is a word. According to the Dictionary of Michelle anyway. Sometimes at a word count of 265, I’m sitting staring at the screen like “now what?” and wondering if I’ve got anything to say that would be worth reading. And then I remember, that I’m not doing this for whomever is reading. I’m doing this for ME.

Perhaps this is why I ended up doing this on my blog rather than in my journal primarily. I am also writing in my journal a lot (I think I’m maxing out almost 2000 words a day!!) but I think there is a very good reason why I’m also writing publicly. It is representing vulnerability, to share myself, my thoughts in the raw, unedited version of my stream of consciousness. Authenticity and transparency. I think they go hand in hand. It is election year, I think some of our candidates should take head.

Today is the Mango Festival in the village of Agat. Its a two-day mango extravaganza that was created when they (I don’t know who “they” are really…the mayor’s council maybe?) began implementing the one village-one theme thing. The idea is to give each village (or each major village anyway) some kind of theme, for an annual festival. Recently, Talofofo (where I lived for 15 years) had their Banana Festival, which I regret not attending. I think Mangilao’s doing a Pika Pepper Festival or something (here on Guam, Pika means hot. Spicy hot.) The Mango Festival in Agat was the very first one to go live 3 years ago, and this years is pretty big from what I gather. We will be heading down there this afternoon and I am excited! My mouth is already watering thinking of the wealth of pickled mango varieties to choose from. Mango arts and crafts, mango smoothies, mango desserts, mango salsa, mango tree care, mangoes coming out your ears!

So something tells me that today I won’t be following the body ecology diet 100%. And that’s fine, because I have been doing a damn fine job of shifting my diet towards it dramatically, and feeling oh-so-good about it all!

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