Week 150: Insight With Ajna

After a long day of rumbling kids and many points of discipline, this mom needed a time out. 

Literally.

I was quite content to have all little ones under the age of five, down for a nap. 

*Sigh* - A quiet house. 

I could have sat in exhaustion and ran every crying/whining/screaming scenario through my head but instead I rushed to my mat!

The best cure for a timed out mom is yoga!

Adriene delivered once again. Her "Yoga for When You're In a Bad Mood" was aptly titled and it delivered. 

The practice hit on one thing I have great interest in understanding; yet have not fully taken the time to comprehend (note: I still don't completely understand!). 

That one thing is the yogic chakras.

From the reading I got to this week (thanks, Wikipedia and others), I see that there are many versions of chakras. For my purposes, I'm going to focus on the ones that fall under the umbrella that is yoga.

In practice, we worked on our "third eye chakra" or the sixth charkra. It is also known was Ajna, meaning  “Command Post” as it is the seat of intuition located at the brow point. This momma needed to recalibrate at the command post after multiple scenarios of frustration and anger. I assume like me that most people feel physically and mentally awful when they have many points of exasperation. 

Working on the sixth charka provided an opportunity to 
see the deeper meaning of the situation as it allows seeing everything as it is from a point of "witness" or "observer". 

Was it really THAT bad of a day?

How could I handle competing demands of multiple children under five? 

How can I be more gentle with them?

Time for contemplation and trying not to think too much allowed my physical self to calm my mental and intuitive self.

Now how did we do it?

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Well, I realized I actually have worked on the third eye charkra in past practice.  Nothing beats a child's pose where the forehead rests on the mat. As Judy would instruct, I was glad to gently rock my forehead side to side and slightly up and down (massaging the space between the eye brows). 

Adriene, too, instructed an extended child's pose using these words, 

"bowing to the big picture...surrendering to that which is greater than us. And maybe already you can find just a sense of ease or a little  joy...its't been a tough day. Things that have led me to this point, I don't necessarily have to attach myself to and I can take this opportunity to put them aside and to let them go."

Giving some space to the third eye opened up my mind to move on and let go of the earlier day. 

Who knew the power of this work? It emphasizes that yoga is much more than the asanas! More charkra learning to be had!

Insight,
LW