COURTNEY ROHAN YOGA

I have been contemplating lately what is the kindest way to deal with old journals. I have a stack of them littering my closet. To call them litter, I have to consider what they mean to me. After years of negative self talk and negative interpretations of my experiences, I now feel the need to burn them. Do I burn the aspects of myself they appear to be holding me back from? Is it even viable that keeping them is keeping me heavy and the growth I readily look for light, above my head and out of reach? If that is the case, I want to torch them tonight!! But how do I know for sure? Lyrics and scripture come to my head, ”Bag Lady” or “Let it Go”, “…Building up treasure that rusts and a thief can steal…. ” When I cut my locks I had the same attachment anxiety. It took a hurtful experience for me to see that I emotionally needed them, along with the memories they held, gone. However gone they are from my head, I’ve held on to them for creative inspiration, making a sort-of sun out of the

Folly Beach I am continuously learning more about myself through the ebb and flow of my practice. I learn about the physical aspects of myself. My psoas and hip flexors are tight. My hamstrings continue to lengthen every practice and my core gets stronger. I learn about my aptitude to quit when I get challenged. The standing poses always give me a run for my money and I have to decide to keep going, every time. I learn about my emotion and when the stretches have built up in just the right way, I learn how to relax and release. I learn that letting go is a series of steps, not one thought and pouf; rather, many thoughts about where I am and where I am headed and how I will get there. Whether I know it or not, every yoga class I give and even get, has a focus. When I think up the class myself, I concentrate harder on the goals that will render the focus reachable. However, when I am receiving a class, the process is akin to going on retreat or to church and not really knowing how th

What is the way to the self? This path appears so often muffled with rubbish. In this dream-life, between space and time, between breaths, how do you decide the options that are best to grow you where you want to go? Not unlike a flower, how do we lean toward the sun? Do we follow the voice in our heads or the voice in our hearts? Do we follow one voice one minute and then in the next the other, moving between the two alternately? It is most important, I have read and believe, that all the options in each moment leave us inclined to listen to the heart and head and yield to the one that makes us most like ourselves. The choice to not or to do, however, does not define us but rather, refine us. It is in the culmination of our life choices, the seemingly good and bad choices, that we glimpse, in our responses and reactions, how each situation changes us. And in that, is there ever a good or bad choice? These are not new revelations or questions, I know. These are the thoughts of many,

It is not easy to share a truth or to see it, especially when someone else is sharing what they see in us. Yet, when we see a truth in someone else, it is evident. It is a bag of bad apples seen from all the way across the grocery store. However, as soon as you open to the truth in life, in others, and see their faults, you must be ready for others’ scrutiny as well. In most recent years, to scrutinize/ to be scrutinized implies a negative interpretation. However, this is the call of true change. To let one know what is seen, when conscious and walking in grace and compassion, and then allowing someone to share the same. Truthfully, we can not change alone. We were not designed to see the full spectrum of ourselves clear enough to change in this way. Though it would be nice to have people present truths in “nice” ways, “haters”, to use young vernacular, are just as helpful. We must be able to look into someone else’s eyes and words and see what we are unable to see in our own mir