CHAOS IS A LADDER.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a hard time focusing. Sitting still and staying “in my body” never came easy to me. I have learned, and I have learned well, that in order to focus on something I need my body to be involved. We all do. When I was 21, I turned to yoga. It wasn’t easy but I kept showing up and over time I noticed that I had moments in class where I found myself completely still and without struggle. Not only that, it felt amazing. It felt like peace.

I found a pattern of what happened to get me there and I paid attention to that pattern. What got me there every time is when I touched  a part of me on the inside that I haven’t touched before. I tapped into the mystery inside myself and I went to a place where I felt afraid. The most beautiful things are on the other side of fear. When I arrived inside that fear, I focused on the chaos that came with it. My heart was pounding. My breath was wild and integrated. All parts of me showed up. Chaos does that. Chaos often equals change. It makes us pay attention. It’s mysterious and therefore it asks us show up.  

I practice every single day and I find it challenging  every day, but the underlying theme isn’t that it’s challenging or that it’s hard. It’s love. I have learned how to love myself enough to stay. These days I meditate every single day. I love myself for it.  I just do.

These lessons remind me of my ex-husband. He’s a brilliant man who was diagnosed with ADD and was told he was dyslexic. This diagnosis made him believe that he was incapable of focusing on anything. As a result, he never read a book all the way through until he spent two years in prison where he was forced to re-examine the stories he had believed to be true about himself. During those two years of solitude, he read over 50 books. Some of them were over 1,000 pages long. To me, he is a beautiful example of this same truth.

Chaos is a ladder you can climb towards wholeness.

Focus is not a gift you are born with, it’s a skill.

xo,

Diana