For Love and Yoga

I recently had a long conversation with my daughter's father and our "conversation" quickly deteriorated into our usual round of complaints about a lack of attention, communication, and disregard for the other person. My newer self recognized these patterns. My old self wanted to rail and scream and cry. We worked through what we had to do and we were able to find some common ground, even though we still disagreed on some points. I have put in a lot of work into how I handle my approach, my attitude, and my thinking when I disagree. I was being asked to test these new skills when they really matter. The rubber hit the road. After all was said, I felt sadness; sadness for our lost marriage, sadness for the man I once loved, and sadness for our daughter. I am not faultless. I have acted out of fear of rejection, anger and I repeated patterns I learned in my dysfunctional family of origin. But this conversation was different. I kept my focus on trying to build a relation...

I often say the relationship we build with Self is the most important relationship we nurture through Yoga. Once we have established a connection to our inner self we can explore who we are without fear or obligation to change for the sake of someone else. We have the freedom to explore the meaning of our choices and the people we write into the script of our lives. I am also a firm believer that people come into and out of our lives for very specific reasons. Their presence, or lack of, is always to help us learn more about ourselves. Relationships are not about how to change, fix, or alter another person. That is the work of the Divine and although we all have divinity within, we can not be responsible for the growth or evolution of another. Our responsibility is to attend to our own needs first and foremost. We can't be in good relationship with others until we are right with self. I have found, as with most people, it is imperative to look at the relationship patterns we...