Oh Santosha, you wee bugger…

I read somewhere that living your best life means slowing down enough to see how beautiful it already is.

I've been forced to put this into practice recently, and the irony of that isn't lost on me lol.

I was walking through Sintra (Portugal), having the loveliest time to myself. I was admiring all the beauty around me, feeling so blessed, and thinking about how much I love solo exploring. How grateful I am for the freedom to wander around the world on my own two feet.
And then I fell off the pavement and injured both of them.

You couldn't really write it!

One ridiculously high pavement, one fractured bone, two injured feet and a moon boot later, I'm writing this from the couch, where I've spent most of the last few days.

Are you someone who gets swept up in the madness of life easily?

It's rare not to these days. Life is hectic, and I think you have to actively pursue a slower life and be pretty boundaried to keep it that way. I really admire those people!

At 42, I'm still working on it.
The one thing I do have now is awareness.
Sometimes that's worse lol.

This isn't exactly a new situation for me. I've had several injuries over the last few years - back pain, breaks, surgery - and I can't help but occasionally ask the universe:

Whyyyyyyyy?

Although, if I'm being honest I think I have some ideas.

I'm a yogi who teaches stillness, yet I often operate at approximately 1,000mph. Just being real.

A brain thinking about ten things while I'm doing twenty. An adventurous spirit who is usually getting up to something, occasionally something a little silly.

Who knows why these things happen. And I'm wary of tying everything up neatly into this happened because you needed to learn a lesson.

Sometimes a broken bone is just a broken bone.

But as someone who relies on her body to make a living, being injured is a pretty testing place to be.

So right now I'm practising something I talk about all the time:

Finding peace and contentment in exactly where you are.

In yoga philosophy, there's a word for this - Santosha.

Contentment.

I've actually written about Santosha before, and I find it quite funny that here I am writing about it again.

But perhaps that's the whole point of these teachings. They're not something we understand once and then neatly tick off the list. We return to them. Again and again. Different circumstances, different versions of ourselves, the same practice.

Apparently Santosha and I still have some work to do.

Not I'll be content when my foot heals.

Not I'll be content when I can work again.

Not I'll be content when I can get back to all my plans.

Here. Now. On the couch.
Oh Santosha, you wee bugger.
I've cancelled everything. I can't work. And in the past, I absolutely would have pushed through the pain, tried to keep going and potentially injured myself even more.

So there's progress.
Instead, I'm reflecting. I'm feeling grateful.
I'm wishing love towards my wee feet when, in the past, I think I would have been angry with them for letting me down and not healing fast enough.

And maybe that's one of the biggest shifts.

What if our bodies haven't let us down?

What if the body that's hurting deserves even more of our love, not less?

I speak to anyone who is in recovery or living with pain when I say: it sucks.
There's no need to spiritually bypass that bit.
But I also know that some of the biggest insights and changes in my life have sprung from periods of recovery.

I almost don't want to say it...but sometimes, afterwards, I'm even a little grateful for them.
Not necessarily because they happened.
But because of what became visible when everything else stopped.

So this is what I'm sitting with right now:

Can we surrender to the non-doing?

Can we love our bodies through injury?

Can we find some contentment even when we'd really rather things were different?

What opportunity might an interruption provide?

And are we comfortable receiving support when we can't do everything ourselves?

Thoughts? I’m pondering…