Okay so here’s the thing, and I can say all this woowoo stuff with confidence because I am, after all, a yoga teacher: The body is the moving temple of the soul.
That makes it pretttttttttty important. Now I know getting the marketing report to the CEO by COB is also important but is it more important than the Temple of your Soul?
I learned this one the hard way: I put everything before the needs of my body. My work, my bosses work (she was not nicknamed ‘The Delegator” for nothing) making sure the house was tidy, making sure all my 50+ staff were happy and productive, keeping on top of all my email, going out and socializing even when I was dog tired because I didn’t want to let anyone down, running my own business on the side, and teaching in the evenings after a full day in the office. The Pre-Body To Do list was mighty long. Down there somewhere at item 342 was ‘exercise’ right after items 341 and 340 ‘look after self’ and ‘rest’. The upshot of this madness was that I eventually ended up with severe Adrenal Fatigue and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was bedridden for a number of months and sick for well over a year.
Whilst I was bedridden I had a lot of time to ponder the error of my ways. I had clearly neglected my Moving Temple of the Soul and it was letting me know in the clearest possible terms. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome= bitch slap from MTotS.
So, what I realized was this. My body (AKA, Moving Temple of the Soul) needed to be Number #1 on my To Do list, because without it I had nothing. Being bedridden is no joke: I couldn’t even shower or dress myself for a few months there. It was a dark time. And yet I can see quite clearly that all the millions of tiny choices I had made the years before to prioritise everything else before my body had led me to that place. The great irony being of course that now I couldn’t do anything for anyone including myself. I had nothing to give because I had neglected to give to myself first.
This was a big error. And the bottom line is that EVERYTHING else can wait. It’s the classic scenario of putting on your own oxygen mask before you help your children: if you don’t take care of you first then you may not be in any condition to later take care of the people and things you care about.
Learning that President Obama exercises every day (45minutes minimum) was a real penny dropping moment for me. How on earth could I think I was too busy to look after my body and find time to exercise? Sure I had a demanding senior level executive job and my own business to run but was I actually saying I was busier than the leader of the western free world? Kind of embarrassing right?! So right there you have it: the next time you think you are too busy to commit to that weekly yoga class, go for that swim or play ball with the kids ask yourself: Am I busier than Barack Obama? If you are not then lets face it you have the time to go to class or the game. You owe it to yourself, your family and to your Moving Temple of the Soul.
