i am woman, hear me rawr!

Today I went to yoga.

Twice.

Haha. Yes, I did two classes today because I’ve been feeling a bit unsettled and troubled about a whole lot of things going on in my head. No, I haven’t lost my  mind, but seriously, there has just been so much work pending that I can barely think straight. So today I really took the whole day to just be. I allowed myself to be “lazy”, knowing full well that this laziness is what my body needed. I allowed myself to listen to that urging in me to go to yoga, and even paid attention to the headache that plagued me all afternoon. Most of all, I allowed myself to feel the gamut of emotions swelling inside of me, knowing that while anger is such a wasteful emotion, it is necessary at times because the waste has to be expended. And as I did, I allowed myself to cry.

I realized because I didn’t fight it so much, it wasn’t as difficult. Sure, I felt the urge to run to the familiar, which is to pop a pain reliever or two. I wanted so badly to scarf down a bag of peanut butter M&M’s too. But I didn’t. And so I went to yoga. Twice as I said. Haha.

During my evening session, my teacher started the class with some wise words: pay attention to your emotions and thoughts, watch it, acknowledge it, and don’t work on changing it right now because there’s nothing you can do about it now but to just be. And I realized that that is so true about life in general. Here we are always searching for easy answers, quick solutions, we stuff ourselves with pain relievers and down diet pills and hgh supplements just so we can be what we think we have to be, and so we forget to JUST BE. And as we fight so much to fit in to the molds we set for ourselves, or challenge ourselves to do more than we can, we lose sight of the essentials.

And so tonight I remind myself to just be.

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"It has been said, "time heals all wounds." I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." — Rose Kennedy

I have come to the conclusion (or perhaps I should say to the agreement with what Rose Kennedy said about it)  that many times, old wounds never do heal. Yes, they do get better. Yes, the pain subsides. Yes, you do get over it. But despite these all, the scars of those wound remain and no matter how much time has passed, the damage is always going to be there. The thing is, even as you try to heal it or to fix what had been broken, it never completely is the same anymore.

Let me put it this way: There’s this street corner I pass on my way to work that, despite how many years have passed, still cause me so much fear and anxiety. Read the rest of this entry »

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It dawned on me today that I have been doing yoga for two months now on a regular basis. Regular meaning twice or thrice a week. It has been a truly enriching and spiritual journey for me, especially since I have discovered both the yin and the yang sides of my practice. On the physical level, I have noticed subtle changes too, especially in the way I move.

One thing that still is missing, however, is my core. Harhar. To be fair, I have always been familiar with my core, especially when I started hooping. Also, despite my size, my midsection is pretty flat considering everything else hehe. That was actually true even when I was searching for the best diet pills that work and the exercises that would guarantee immediate weight loss. Even so, I realized as I have been doing yoga that I still have so much to work on when it comes to my core.

Any tips on how to make engaging (well, keeping it engaged, more succinctly) my core easier??? sigh.

Anyway, lemme head off to yoga in a bit and see if I can get it right today haha.

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I am so excited for that little corner of sunshine, aka Forever 21, to open in Makati soon. As in soooo very excited I tell ya! I’m so glad I don’t have to lug myself all the way to Megamall anymore for my little random shopping expeditions. I don’t know when exactly the store will open though because I have decided to “unlike” the F21 page on Facebook so I don’t have regular updates anymore. It was hurting me too much (oh, the drama haha!!!) to see the latest merchandise in the store, from dresses and accessories to womens boots and bags…I wanted them all and given my change of status (also known as giving up one of my jobs haha!) I have to be more mindful about my shopping habits, at least for the time being. I do know, however, that when Forever 21 opens in Makati, I HAVE TO GO!!! Haha Here’s hoping my promotion papers and my course load for next term falls into place, then I can go back to my usual fashionista shopaholic self

See ya in the Sunshine store sooon!!!

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Today has been a strange day to say the least. Random and strange.

Strange in a good way, to be fair, but strange nonetheless. For some reason I found myself in the middle of so many things…of wanting to stay and wanting to go, wanting to sleep and wanting to be awake, and so on and so forth. Suffice it to say, there was just something in me stirring, something I couldn’t place. I don’t know where it is coming from or what it means but you know what, today, I just went with it.

I had a lot of things planned, you see, but none of them happened the way I expected them to, nor wanted them to, or even imagined them to. For some reason, I feel like things are just spontaneously combusting all around me, internally and externally, but to be fair, like I said it’s been a good kind of strange day.

I woke up today from yet another round of dreams and when I did, I decided to not even think about what it meant. Typically my initial response to dreams is to try to unravel it, to ask myself what it could mean and where it was coming from. Today I decided, don’t even bother. Just let it be.

Then in yoga class my teacher talked about how we, as human beings, often tend to overthink things. This came while she was trying to break down the downward facing dog for me into smaller more manageable chunks in order for me to get to the end of the asana correctly by showing me the bits and pieces that would lead to the final pose. I realized that the reason why it was so hard for me to get there is because I was often too consumed about getting there, worrying if I was doing it correctly that I was not allowing the flow to happen. When I just let the breath lead me, however, and stopped questioning whether it was right or not, I would find myself in a better pose.

The rest of the day was filled with more randomness…like having the sudden urge to swim for strange reason, to not being able to make it to movie night because I couldn’t get things done because of all the random interruptions and so on and so forth. And so as I often tend to do when things don’t go the way I plan them to, I start thinking (over thinking again, should I say) and asking why it is so.

Just as I was trying to figure that one out, I suddenly remembered something my wise sage told me in the days of my darkness. She told me to read Rilke’s Letter’s to a Young Poet and there, I came across a passage that talked about how, by not asking any questions and letting it be, living for the moment, you will will find yourselves in the answer.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke”

And so for tonight I will stop asking and just love the questions in my head. living them, leaving them be, knowing full well that at some distant day, I will be experiencing the answer.

Gnyty peeps.

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aminin….we all have our guilty pleasures right???

Well, granted that we all have guilty pleasures, let me share one of mine today.

Much as it makes me nostalgic and sometimes a wee bit (weeeee lang, just a little!) envious, I can’t help but look at random wedding photos. Be it celebrity weddings or that of friends, or even that of strangers especially since so many photographers have their own websites and Facebook pages, I get a rush looking through these photos.

Recently I stumbled upon Nice Print Photography and it was just…love I saw the John Estrada and Priscilla Meirelles celebrity wedding photos and it was just beautiful. You know how people say “damang dama sa litrato yung pagmamahal” (you can feel the love with the photograph)? With these photos, it’s true. See, look at it:

What would a wedding be without the AVP, right? Nice Print Photography also makes such great on-site videos that are just captivating. This is the one from the Estrada-Meirelles nuptials:

When I do get married, I would love to have an international destination wedding photographer to capture all the special moments of that momentous day and although that may not be in the near future, I will keep Nice Print Photography in my list of possibilities. Like they say, when you send out messages to the Universe, it listens, right? So this is me saying: on my wedding day, I will have a rockin’ good photographer to shoot me Yey.

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Almost of my adult life has been about teaching the three “R’s”: reading, writing and arithmetic. However, I have come to realize these past few months that perhaps it’s time I taught myself my own three R’s: reworking, redefining and reframing.

Over the past few months, I think I have begun to discover how valuable these are in being able to  maintain my sanity in a world that is way beyond comprehension, control or reason at times. This is especially true since I really struggle (and at times I still do!) with change and losing sight of what’s familiar so when these things happen, I find myself free falling in a frighteningly fast pace, spiralling down into a place of fear, anxiety and deep, deep pain, resentment and anger. Because of the fact that I hold on so dearly to these preconceived notions and beliefs, I become consumed by it, almost entirely. As such, I begin to lose sight of what is real and meaningful. When this happens, it feels to me that the only way out is to never wake up again and to just live in my dreams where everything is safe and sure. Now I have come to realize the value of standing in the middle of things, and just letting things happen or fall into place, without me having to sift through the rubble so much to find that one sure answer. I’ve also come to believe that by taking a deep breath, taking everything in and redefining the experience for me, or giving it a new meaning, will do well enough.

What is essential, however, is the realization that I cannot do this all in one day. I cannot simply redefine and rework old habits instantaneously, it takes time. I guess I can like it to someone who would like to give up a bad habit, such as smoking, for example. Quitting cold turkey may not be the best for some people, or the most effective, but they can rework the habit by slowly extinguishing and replacing it with something for the meantime, such as those durable electronic cigarettes that have become quite popular nowadays. And when you’re ready, then you can let go of it completely. In my case, I have learned to rework my response to things and situations that come my way by consciously taking a step back and not reacting immediately to what happens. While I still find myself ranting and complaining to a choice few, I have learned to stop immediately posting my feelings or thoughts on my blogs or social networking sites, for example. Although I still make the choice to rant about things every now and then, I guess my point is I am slowly making my way to extinguishing bad habits that actually do not solve anything in the end.

Rework, Redefine, Reframe.

Yes, life will always bring with it lots of complications and twists and turns, but for me, I am beginning to believe that these aren’t bad things and though it may hurt in the meantime, they are essential as long as I can rework the present, redefine the situation and reframe my perceptions on these.

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Before I left this morning, I had to write myself a note. It said

breathe.
streeeetch.
smile.
let go.
repeat.

I had to write myself that because I knew today was going to be a day of stretching for me, one that would surely tap into bits and pieces of my anxieties and little insecurities, that despite my constant effort, still exists. It’s not that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing old friends, it’s just that everytime I do, there’s still that little part of me that feels like I’m not good enough, or I haven’t done enough. It’s funny that over lunch, that’s what we were talking about as one of them was telling the rest of us about how, when she went back to her old high school for a career talk, she couldn’t help but feel those old high school insecurities creep in. That’s exactly the way it felt for me. And so I had to find a way to quiet those voices in my head, and so I wrote myself that note.

Over lunch we talked and laughed about the old days, thought about future plans and for once, I readily admitted that, yes, I’m a little afraid of what comes after my preschool job ends and that because of that decision, and others that soon followed, I kind of find myself in caught between that proverbial rock and hard place right about now.

When we said our goodbyes, I started walking back to my car. For some reason, I had decided to park in Greenbelt 5 today, even though I knew we were meeting all the way in Greenbelt 2 (which ended up being in Greenbelt 3 after all was said and done, but that’s a whole other story haha). Anyway, on my way back, I remembered something my kindred spirit told me. She said, you should go see this exhibit in the Hans Brumann gallery in Greenbelt 5. She said she had a strong feeling that the paintings by her cousin, the artist on exhibit for the time being, Jinky Reynoso, would speak to me. And so it dawned on me that perhaps, that’s why I had an urge to park in Greenbelt 5 today. In many ways, I’d like to think it was really serendipitous that I found myself there because After all, not only was the exhibit was supposed to end on the 8th of March, I had actually no idea where it was, so I just said, bahala na. But as I was walking to the elevators, I flipped my hair to the side and saw it in the corner up on the third floor, where I had never seen it before.

And so I went and stumbled upon the most hauntingly comforting words ever…”darkness is about to pass….I am no longer afraid”.

"Look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still -- that up above beyond the cloud is still sunlight and warmth and cloudless blue sky." -- Charles Kingsley

I felt my breath get caught in my throat when I read that because over the past few weeks, I have been finding myself treading in darkness, teetering on slippery slopes, both in eager anticipation of what lies ahead and with a foreboding sense of fear about what I have done and what may come, often with a gripping ache in my heart squeezing so bad that I wake up breathless and in pain. This has been accompanied by such marked losses of what is familiar and comfortable and sure in many, many facets of my life, and so yes, I was feeling like I got lost in this darkness, fearful of what I could no longer see, albeit being able to cling to bits and pieces of bright sunshine that keep me afloat.

In one of the paintings, the artist wrote, “blur the boundaries”. That too, spoke volumes to me as I was reminded that there one end of the spectrum isn’t better than the other, and working to hard to make it to one end is just too exhausting. But to stand in the middle, just being and believing, there is quiet. I’ve come to think, however, that darkness, nor sunshine for that matter, never really comes to pass. They’re constants, after all, swinging from one end to the other in a continuous flow.

I guess I’ve been learning to do…to stand right smack in the middle knowing that I am not in the darnkess nor in the light, but right where I belong, no boundaries, no lines, going with the flow. And as I said Just last night I am making a decision to embrace the the freefall knowing that the earth will catch me. I am trusting that in uncertainty eventually there is clarity. I am believing in both what is said and what isn’t. I  am letting go and letting be in all ways, shapes and forms.

At the end of the day, I now believe, I will be okay. And it’s not just because things always, always fall into place. But because I am no longer afraid of the dark unknown.

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