Manna Blog

Take Care of Your Body 3

Take Care of Your Body 2

I live close to the lake. During this time of year, I find it a breeze to wake up just as the sun is rising and I spend some time by the water, before getting into my busy day.  This has become somewhat of a ritual of meditation for me even though it was not originally my intention.  Watching the water, whether it’s still or in motion, I realize that I am not separate from it; it reminds me of my own thoughts, my own emotions and how they change and shift with every moment that passes.

It’s very quiet at this time of the morning, the sounds of morning rush hour barely audible from Queen Street.  I feel fortunate that I am able to get up out of bed and be at the lake only within a couple of minutes.  There may be a few early risers, walking with their pets, or getting a run in before the midday heat kicks in.  It is quite magical, to watch the seagulls, the squirrels, the Canada geese with their goslings. Sparrows are my favourite for some reason: they are so small, but persistent and they emanate complete happiness or just……. completeness, I’m not sure which.

I got into yoga about eleven years ago during a time when I was going through a physical and psychological depression.  A few years after that, I had a car accident which left me feeling fragmented and incomplete. For months I searched for something I felt I had lost in those twenty seconds that changed the course of my life,  the perception of  my life and I ended up walking away from a fifteen-year corporate career.

By that point, I had been to a few psychotherapists who believed in helping me to become conscious of the root cause of my depression. But most of them only wanted to shove pills down my throat.

When we talk of depression, we think of it as solely a mental or psychological condition, but I have discovered over the last eleven years, that the state of our body’s health depends greatly on our state of mind.  One is not separate from the other.  It is becoming more and more difficult to live consciously, awake, aware, with eyes open to all that is happening around us.  It is only in this way that the mind can be clear, focused and healthy; the body will have no choice but to follow.

Today, our senses are constantly bombarded by noise, gross and subtle.  It seems as if we cannot live without this constant hum,  the constant need to send a note to someone, to lose oneself in “reality” television while the reality of our own lives seems to be slipping away.

The sounds of nature by the lake are musical and I can’t help but feel gratitude as I stare at the ripples out on the lake. They remind me that when I attach myself to a particular emotion, thought or circumstance, I create that vicious, tangled circle within myself called suffering. The sparrows remind me that my true nature is complete happiness or just………completeness.