Not a bad start today, meditation was pretty arduous but Im getting used to that now. The worst thing throughout was i got this irritating itch on my left cheek and all I could think about was the itch and I was desperate to scratch it. I was counting the tick rocks of the second hand on the clock, hoping 30 minutes had passed. When she finally tinged the bell, I scratched and gosh did it feel good!!! :)

The class following was to "open our hips". I immediately felt frustrated, it is the one area I struggle and I find a lot of the hip opening poses very uncomfortable. I tried to bat those negative thoughts away but as the class continued into "flying pigeon" and "cow facing pose" I started to get really exasperated. Vidya told us that having tight hips means that you hold a lot of your stress and emotion there, so the poses that are uncomfortable to you are the most important for your body. And to be honest, as the day went on and when we did more hip opening poses in the evening class, I spoke to Andrew and mum for the first time, I felt really emotional. I was holding tears back when I went to bed, my body just felt tired and stiff and I believe, that I do hold a lot of tension in my hips hence feeling sentimental. Its obviously a place I need to work on and maybe it will help me deal with any future stresses and let them go.

In philosophy class in the afternoon, we talked about the 2nd yama "satya" which means truth. We spoke about the 1st yama yesterday "ahimsa" which means non-harming, basically how u should never harm another being (bad girl me for eating meat) but I found that more obvious than the discussion about satya. Finding one's truth, the reason for living, why are we here? Is the real truth simply something we close our eyes to, not wanting to take responsibility for things, not thinking that we are not significant enough to make a difference? Or perhaps we just want to get on with our own lives, and never ask these difficult questions? Our egos make us feel like the world revolves around us, everything we do leads to where we think our own happiness lies. Do you think you love someone? If you do, would you love them enough to walk away from them if you were hurting them? Do you give people gifts to make them feel good, or for you to feel good, or maybe you want something in return? It seems every thing we do has a way of benefiting ourselves in the long run, which ironically doesn't make us happy anyway, so how the hell do we combat this? Where do we start??!! The best quote I heard yesterday was;

"don't choose the road to happiness, choose happiness"

Happiness is right there for the taking, you just need to look at the situation differently to find it. Another issue raised is how much we rely on others, specifically our other halves, to make us happy when we have the power to make ourselves happy. I think the wonderful thing about yoga is that it makes us take responsibility for ourselves and realize that we all have our part to play in this world.

By the end of today, my brain was aching from trying to digest all this thought-provoking information, I was feeling exhausted from pushing my body and the thought of sleep was soooo enticing!! But homework first……….

So goodnight for now!!

Namaste xxx