Approaching Acceptance

I am doing Elena Brower’s five day Yoga a Course in living “Approaching Acceptance”. This is the second time that I am doing this course and I am very thrilled because I have made tremendous shifts in my life regarding acceptance. Before acceptance was a topic that I could only understand with my mind. Before when I went through this course I was very open to the idea of acceptance however I was also very much in my eating disorder. I thought if I could control my body and get it to a place I liked then I could accept myself, but until then I can still accept others.

Through my experience I now know that I have to be proactively nourishing myself and choosing more appropriate coping mechanisms and in this process I have to remain soft with acceptance and compassion for myself. But acceptance, for me, is not like flipping a switch it took and continues to take lots of work to stay soft, patient, compassionate, and optimistic. I know see how huge a barrier the eating disorder was for my ability to accept anything. I have heard the saying before “if you can not show compassion to yourself you can not show compassion to anyone else.” Before I tried to accept all the things around me but I continued to feel shame and guilt about the person I was.

Through hard work and support from others I am starting to understand acceptance and softness in a new way, I no longer understand it mentally but I can feel it with my whole being. I am learning to accept who I am. This means embracing my whole self including my past struggles and my shame and my guilt. When I fully accept myself in this way I feel a softness inside along with peace, joy and love.

I used to love the way I felt during and after in Elena Brower’s yoga classes (thank you yogaglo) yet she talks about softening a lot and softening was something I could just grasp mentally. Now through this opportunity that the eating disorder has provided for me I now see that softness is acceptance and acceptance is an approach of softness. Now as I take her class I love them to such a deeper level because every down dog and pose I do is an opportunity to soften and learn to accept myself. I can tell you the old saying is right now that I have acceptance for myself I am actually able to accept others too.

http://www.artofattention.com/yoga-of-living-course/