Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-jig

My mom used to say this anytime we pulled into our driveway. “Home again, home again jiggity-jig,” she’d say in her sing-song voice. I heard it as usual pulling into my driveway in Colorado.

I am home.

The final stretch of my drive through the Wet Valley, flanked by the towering Sangre de Cristo (pictured in this post) mountains and luminous grasslands textured by enormous rock formations, lit my heart like the warm sunshine illuminated the early evening sky. There is just something about where I live that humbles me to no end, fills my heart with song, brings my soul alive like no other local on the planet ever has, and keeps bringing me back no matter what adventures call me away. It is a feeling of “Ahhhhh, I am home.”

I have been experiencing this feeling simply living in my own body lately too – regardless of location. This has been a freedom I wish for all. But it has been a long, windy, sometimes-dangerous road to this moment.

Back in my own space, I moved my body this morning, warming it up and stretching in a way I have not done in ages (as was the plan for this "research project”). I have done yoga off and on and taken walks, but have been inconsistent in order to create a true-to-life feeling of heft, physical burden and limitation. And it has certainly worked! This body takes so much more energy to move through the world, and there are many moments of sadness that strike my heart that I can’t just hit the trail in my rhythmic moving meditation of running.

Exercising for me is not about forcing physical movement on my body. Movement and fitness to me are about forming the mental models that I wish to manifest in my my physical experience. I move because I desire to express freedom from a place of wholeness and completeness, not because I lack anything or need to fix or change any part of my experience.

I began with some knee, hip and thigh strengthening exercises while holding in thought ideas of foundation, healthy structure, proper tracking. Then I moved into prayer planks breathing strong and bringing to mind notions of core strength, the ability to be centered and upright. Followed by yoga, which is always a moving prayer for me – I stretch my self-imposed ideas of limitation, I open my heart and thought to experiencing more of my limitless nature, I breathe into this moment exactly perfect as it is. 

This is not an easy thing, since I have a verbally hyperactive ego always exercising its voice in my head about how limited I really am, how I would rather just do something more “comfortable,” always working to distract me from what I truly desire.

So this morning was bitter-sweet: burning pain, thoughts of “I can’t believe I can’t even do (insert any task I used to be ‘good’ at)…” raging through my head, all mixed with the sweet peace of gratitude for the body I am experiencing in this moment, and the anticipatory joy of each bit of “work” opening my world back up to the possibilities of the activities I so dearly miss.

I am home, but not because I am back in my mountains. I am home because I have discovered unconditional love for being in my own skin. Now off for a hike in those beautiful Sangres!