40-Year-Old Mantra
I just celebrated completing my 41st trip around the sun, my mother successfully birthing me into this embodied life, and a year of being 40. I remember the day my mom turned 40. Amidst her background fairy jungle, she proclaimed “I’m 40, and I don’t have to do ANYTHING I don't want to do.” My brother and I thought this was super funny at the time - like, what could she POSSIBLY be doing that she doesn’t want to do? Now, as a 41-year old, I GET IT. She was proclaiming her devotion to herself.
Up until our 40’s, and, well, just IN GENERAL, many of us are possessed by this idea that we are supposed to DO or BE something that someone else has determined to be “the thing”. We follow the lead of our parents, society, the media, our friends, our neighbors, our partners. We rebel at times, asserting our individuality, but a different kind of rebellion often happens around 40. Women’s hormones (and men’s, to a lesser degree) drastically shift, and suddenly we are TIRED. We are tired of drama, tired of doing thankless work for others, tired of fighting the good fight, and also just physically TIRED. We need a break.
Some of us make drastic life changes (the good ol’ mid-life crisis!), and some of us increase the caffeine, nicotine, hormone therapy, B vitamins, exercise - you name it, and we keep on keeping on. We treat symptom after symptom. We keep saving face and keeping up appearances. But, not many of us choose to listen to the tired and STOP long enough to dig down deep to the root of the dis-ease. We don’t CHOOSE to slow down unless our bodies or life circumstances force slow upon us.
This year, I chose to learn how to slow down.
Studying and practicing yoga and Ayurveda, my internal road signs were all pointed toward overwork and overwhelm. Too much movement, too much self-imposed stress, too much VATA - the quality of air and ether - which often showed up in my life as anxiety, dizziness, exhaustion, digestive upset, and tears of overwhelm. No amount of “self-care” was going to tip the scale if I kept moving at that pace. So, this year I slowed down my āsana, slowed down my lifestyle, slowed down my speech, and slowed down my breath. And, I meditated, listened, and observed more, and I started writing.
I learned to linger more comfortably in the pause.
I found that in the pause, I began to see myself more clearly - full spectrum. I saw my darkness, my light, and many colorful shades in between. And, I let myself stay there long enough to feel the intensity of all my colors, holding myself along the way. This process of pausing and exploring myself is not easy. At times, it has felt like walking, blindfolded, down a path through a thick forest with my hands tied behind my back. So, I learned to navigate with my feet - feeling the earth, the ground, and slowly stepping forward - one foot in front of the other. As my teacher, Manorama, says to me “Pade, Pade” or “Step by Step”.
This year, my steps led me, in tears of awe, to the feet of my guru, on the shores of the Ganga. It led and continues to lead me to a deeper devotion to Self, deeper surrender to Reality, and a deeper trust in the inner realm.
It turns out Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras were onto something In Chapter 2 speaking about viveka (discernment, discrimination).
Sutra 2.26 viveka-khyātir aviplavā hānopāyah
Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati translates this sutrā in his book “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” as “The unwavering practice of discrimination between what is real and what is unreal brings about the dispersion of ignorance.” B.K.S. Iyengar translated the same sutrā as “The ceaseless flow of discriminative knowledge…destroys ignorance, the source of pain.”
In my practice, I find that meditating on my own truth (who I am, my inner light, my deepest Self) allows me to see myself, my actions, my emotions, and my thoughts more clearly. I learn to understand my desires - what pulls at me, what makes me tick - and be really honest about my needs and priorities. Reflecting this weekend on 40, I thought about my mother’s proclamation, and asked myself, “What would I proclaim at 41?” I landed on this:
I’m 41, and I deserve to be still long enough to see myself and the world clearly - to find the best way to nourish myself and align with truth and love. (Bold because that seems more proclamation-al)
I wish the same for all of you - may you all have the privilege of slowing down, lingering in the pause, and finding something worth proclaiming out loud.
