Reflection and Gestation

Quarantine reminds me of reflection and gestation. Learnings from past experience. Breathing in the here and now. Listening to baby goats, the sounds of birds and the gentle waves on the shoreline. Sunrise coffee on the rooftop. Throughout the days, imaginings, visions, ideas percolating and surfacing. So many, what ifs? Opportunities to dream of possibilities! 

Gestation is a time of internal growth, development, maturation and preparation to live in the external world.

“Accepting the challenges of creating the outer mandala allows the inner mandala to emerge and the inner path to unfold. By embracing as much vision as possible, one discovers higher motivation, deeper commitment, stronger faith, and self-confidence.” Tarthang Tulku

I keep this phrase and mandala image on my altar as a reminder of the inner journey that is inherent to every external creation. A reminder to focus on the experience and let go of attachment to an exact  outcome, and at the same time remember, there will be an outcome.

Years ago, a friend asked me this question:

Are you process or goal oriented?

I am both, process and goal oriented. 

Experience is a good word. Experience leads to learning. Embodied learning leads to integration and wisdom.

Think about all the experiences in your life. Every experience is part of an unfolding personal story. Each experience has led you to this very moment in time and place you are on earth. Where you are now - your inner and outer world - will influence how your life unfolds when the quarantine is lifted.

Have you thought about experiences and wished you’d done anything differently?

I do. Sometimes. Who doesn't?

Then I remember. One experience leads to another. If one thing happened differently, I wouldn’t be exactly where I am now with the understanding earned. Every day there is an opportunity to learn. I cannot go back and change anything. Life doesn’t move backward. It does give us time to reflect and integrate. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we get second chances.

Imagine this time as an opportunity for reflection and gestation.

What do you want to create?

What is your motivation?

For a designer, drawings are conversations on paper with lines that tell a story. They inform the designer. What does work and what doesn’t? I am always looking for the bugs. These bugs represent the challenges that will require a creative solution. Thinking outside the box. 

Before building our home and over the years, as we built in phases, I drew stacks of drawings. Developing a myriad of ideas into practical scenarios and working through the bugs informed the beautiful home we live in now.  Nothing is lost in the experience. Learning is embodied and influences how I see the world.

I am a tactile and visual learner. 

How do you learn? What kind of learner are you?

What experience do you embody? And how does that awareness affect how you see the world through your unique lense?

With a design mind, I see the world more clearly. My vision and mind are sharper when I think like a designer than when I do not. That is the inner mandala at work. I sidelined this perspective for a handful of months. Going into quarantine, I opened a door to see from this perspective once again. The design lense relies on keeping that part of my mind open to possibility, integration and owning this part of myself. Keeping it alive adds a certain spark to how I see now and imagine a future.

Integration leads to wholeness and healing.

I reflect back on this past winter. Lots of Yin and Restorative yoga. Last winter was probably the the coldest in Baja history. I think of all the blankets we used to stay warm during a practice that naturally lowers a person’s body temperature. Everything in me said, keep doing what you are doing. That didn’t make sense to my previous approach, which was, adapt a practice and class to the current temperature. Now, the quarantine. It makes sense. The practice of stillness, letting go and being in preparation for a time of reflection and gestation. 

Yin is the art of letting go. 

Restorative is the art of being. 

What happens to all the drawings, writings, conversations, traveling, creative endevours, lessons, imaginings manifested and unmanifested? They live within each one of us, informing how we see the world, broadening our inner landscape, opening our minds and hearts to further experiences unfolding. Experiences we may not even imagine, we are preparing for, with each day and encounter or solitude experienced.

I keep the Yogatantra mandala on my altar as a reminder of the marriage between my inner and outer world. One is continuously informing the other.

The poem below was inspired by a friend who was pregnant several years ago and regularly attending my classes. The writing was intended for an expectant mother, as well as, for those of us who are not carrying a new living being within us. The reminder of possibilities and new ways of being in the world.

Pea in the Pod

In honor of any and all new life 
growing within you.

Whether this new life 
is another being
or another way of being,
an idea, a vision or other.

Rest and renew.

Allow this life to gestate
sheltered, loved and 
supported within.

Every in breath nurtures,
every out breath allows.

This new life may carefully grow,
blooming into new possibilities.

A new way of life,
intimate being.

Tehroma