Power: The Eye of the Storm
A windstorm blew through the property today.
I looked out the window and saw the giant chicken longhouse blowing, basically on it's side. It wasn't going to survive. Dust blew in drove, chairs flipped over, buckets seemed to grow legs and sprint away, tarps uprooted from the rocks holding them down, doors flew open. The wind blew, fiercely and ferociously, howling and roaring and taking no prisoners in it's path. Wind is a powerful force of nature to be reckoned with. It can be destructive or productive. When unharnessed and free, it blows, often with no care for anyone else, and takes whatever it wants to in it's pathway. When harnessed, it provides power for thousands through wind turbines, often generating enough energy to power a home for a month in just 1.5 hours. Similar to the wind, we as humans, are powerful forces of nature, and we have it within us. How we harness said power makes all the difference. Power has many definitions. The one that stood out to me was the "ability to act or produce an effect. The capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events." With power, we are able to act and to produce. We can power OVER someone and produce the effect of domination and control. We can stand powerfully FOR someone and produce the effect of support. What we say has power. Our actions have power. All the things we do as we go about our day either add to our power or take away from it.
When you choose to wake up in the morning and look at your phone first thing, consider it is an act of you giving away your power.
When you choose to set a boundary with your child, consider it is an act of standing in your power.
When the voice in your head says you are not enough, and you listen and add to the story off all the reasons why you are not, consider you are giving away your power.
When you choose to speak up with your partner and share why their words hurt you, consider you are standing in your power.
When you choose not to speak up when you hear a comment from a coworker that is offensive, consider you are giving away your power.
When you listen to your body and go to yoga even though you think you don't have time, consider you are standing in your power.
When I go away on trips, I always get up early and have some alone time to meditate. It's a way of me choosing to stay powerful. When I choose not to meditate, I give up my power. I end up grumpy, tired and resentful, which is the last thing I want to be around friends. I was thinking about this as I practiced yoga in my shipping container studio, listening to the wind blow things around and over the metal space. I listened to my breath and thought of myself as the eye of this crazy windstorm, in the center of it all, meeting life and my circumstances just as they were.
It can be easy in the storms of life to give up our power.
It can be easy to forget that power doesn't have to look big and grand and mighty and knock things over (though it can and there is a time for it), it can also look like a steady, solid rooted tree. A tree that stands tall despite the wind trying to knock it down. A tree that digs into it's roots and uses the power of the earth to support it. A tree that owns that it is a birch tree and not a redwood and yet it still has value and things to offer to the world.
Consider you are a contribution to the world and the people in your life when you are choosing to be powerful. And... the world needs that. It needs YOU.
When we are powerful, we are authentic and real and honest and we cause others to be the same. Remember, power is the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. Power is our chance to create CHANGE. Where are you seeing all the places you let the wind knock you down? Where are you allowing yourself to be messed with? Pushed over? Shoved aside? Where are you not speaking up for fear of being heard? Where are you diminishing your own voice because others are too loud?
Where are you not standing in your power, but rather giving your power away?
Every time you step on your yoga mat, it's a chance, an opportunity, to step into your power. When you feel off balance in airplane and your mind goes to all the reasons you suck at yoga, you get to choose what happens next. You can live into the story that you suck at yoga, or you can see the thought for what is it, just a silly thought, and focus on your breathing instead. When your mind says, "there is no way I can look up at the ceiling in tree, I'll fall," you get to choose what happens next. You can say, "yup, mind you are right- that's never happening," and stay comfortable, or you can choose to look up and see what happens. You might fall- and- you might not. The falling or not falling is irrelevant.
The question is, do you have the courage to go beyond what you thought might be possible for yourself and see what lives beyond the edge of your safety net?
Source you power starting from your own physical body on your mat, and know that in practicing what it looks like to stand powerfully in a yoga pose, you are creating pathways in your body so that when real life kicks in, you're ready. So that when you get the news that your mom has cancer, you grieve and you feel sadness, and maybe even get the wind knocked out of you, but you have the ability to keep your head above water. So that when life changes for what seems like the thousandth time as we come out of the pandemic and you think you're going to lose your mind, you are able to pause and take a few deep breaths and get grounded. How can you choose to be the center of the storm and stand powerfully there? What will it take to live from a place of being grounded and unwilling to be knocked over by life? Know that you have all the power within you to create the goodness and love and joy your heart desires... and you get to choose how to harness it and what to do with it. If you want more tools to help harness you power, and to be a powerful person and leader in the world, consider joining me for Teacher Training. The link to apply is below. Don't wait... stand in your power and sign up NOW!