During the time I had stopped my practice at first I felt the fears and guilt, but very quickly I felt relieved and enjoyed sleeping a bit longer and not having this pressure on me. The world continued, my life continued even without me practising pranayama. Then I developed the flu with a very bad eye infection in both eyes and I felt miserable. It had taken me about three weeks to really get over it and I remembered that over the past five years that I practised pranayama I did not get hit with the bad flu like this. But I did not think about pranayama during this lot of flu nor wanted to be told I should practice pranayama.
I still had a lot of awareness and it was as if I started to really observe myself., I am a vegetarian but one day had a huge craving for a chicken burger and I realised that I could make my own rule, I did not have to answer to anyone and I should just go ahead and eat a chicken burger. So I did and it was horrible. I am happy now with the choice to stay a vegetarian. But a good experience it was, as I started to drop all my should and shouldn't and having too and so on. I started to feel free again and in control of myself knowing that I really was my own boss and living from moment to moment I could choose from moment to moment what I wanted to do, I could break my own rules and make my own rules. That started to feel really good.
A couple of weeks ago in the evening I suddenly felt the urge to practice some pranayama. So I sat myself down and started to practice pranayama. I felt myself smiling and I remembered how Ajay my teacher from Divine Yoga UK told me to smile while practising pranayama. The smile came naturally and I started to feel like I was getting an endorphin fix. I could not stop myself from smiling and feeling of deep joy and then I felt deep compassion for myself, this was very new to me to feel compassionate toward myself. It felt just so good. After finishing my practice I thought about it all and I realised that practising pranayama for me was a way of pampering myself, of doing something for me, for my health and wellbeing. But most of all it feels just like I am giving myself some tender loving care, some nurturing, some self-love. Since then I am back at practising some pranayama daily again, in the evening at the moment and it is just a wonderful way of giving myself some me time and some pampering.
I do not pressure myself to do it daily, or I do not look at how much time I spend on it and I do not do it at the same time each day, I just do it when it feels right and the whole experience is wonderful.
So the things that have already changed for me since practising pranayama again is that I feel so much more loving toward myself, the word compassion is in my mind and it feels very powerful. My energy level is up and I have been bubbling over with inspiration and creativity and ideas, feeling motivated to move forward again in my life.
So pamper yourself with pranayama!!
Compassion
A feeling of deep compassion for the world and myself. Compassion is deep within the heart and when it comes to the surface it creates and radiates a warm and fuzzy feeling touching anyone that comes into the space of this compassionate being. May there be compassion for all sentient beings.
