What to Put Down

Happy Monday. I hope you are all doing well. As I have shared, these last couple of months have been a bit of a whirlwind for me. There have been lots of lasts in preparation for new beginnings for both of my children. It is a lot to hold.  As I look ahead to my new beginning; one without either of them at home with me, there is a heaviness that encompasses the joy, pride, excitement and nostalgia.

This passage below is one that I read often, especially during times of transition in my life, and it is the message I shared with students last week. 

All Fall Down– Mark Nepo

It was a snowy night, and Robert was recalling the time two springs ago when he was determined to paint the family room. Up early, he was out the door, to the hardware store gathering the gallons of red, the wooden mixing sticks, the drop cloths, and the one-time brushes that always harden, no matter what you soak them in. 

He mixed the paint outside and waddled to the door with a gallon in each hand, the drop cloth under his arm, and a wide brush in his mouth. He began to chuckle in telling what happened, “I teetered there for minutes, trying to open the door, not wanting to put anything down. I was so stubborn. I had the door almost open when I lost my grip, stumbled backward and wound up on the ground, red gallons all over me” 

At this point, he laughed at himself, as he has done many times, and we watched the snow fall in silence. I thought of his little story the whole way home. Amazingly, we all do this, whether with groceries or paint or with the stories we feel determined to share. We do this with our love, with our sense of truth, even with our pain. It’s such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door.

Time and again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this. We cannot hold onto things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside. It’s a basic human sequence: gather, prepare, put down, enter. But failing as we do, we always have that second chance: to learn how to fall, get up, and laugh. 

On the mat is always a place to practice. We can feel in our bodies what we are carrying; where the burdens are stored. In my classes this week we focused on the shoulders, hips and back because those are places physical tension is often stored. The idea of “putting things down” being active versus passive seemed to resonate and it became a mantra both on the mat and off.  

We all can relate to those moments when we can’t carry it all and we fight putting anything down. It is our ego and our stubbornness together that hinder our ability to move forward.  With emotional “baggage” it can be equally hard to give ourselves permission to “put some of it down”.  This is the practice for me at the moment; all the memories and so much of my identity has been dedicated to my children over the last 22 years. It is now time for me to put down what I carry, open the door and take only what I need to bring into the next chapter. Just know that I am always practicing right along with you.