What I Feel On Waking
By: Nalini Macnab
Tags: Wellness, Gratitude, Self-awareness, Wisdom, Aging

Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash

In those precious moments before fully waking into this world, in the half-dream of fluttering eyelids, my body feels young, hopeful, excited for a new day. She knows the eager awareness of change and anticipation of what is to come.

And then I wake, move, feel the stiffness, or not, the unexpected weariness, or not, and take my first deep breath of another new day. My routines are fluid now. Body will tell me what she needs.

Some days I feel the many lifetimes, careers, all tucked away now…only this morning a flurry of grieving sped across my heart. For whom or what? I couldn’t say. I simply smiled and sent it on its way.

Deep cold met me at this morning’s waking. The kind that entices an extra snuggle into the covers, warming the tip of my nose before I venture into vertical. The cat does not want out. Curled in her dream world she awaits the warming light.

A duality of body experience follows me down the stairs and to the kitchen. Will each stair be taken in quiet trepidation, or will the current of happy and hopeful flow into my legs, and put a spring in my step? I choose the quiet-now spring of step, the lightness of being. I choose wellness of body and of life. I choose the joy of the sun rising from its new place on the horizon, its life-giving starlight nourishing and nurturing as it falls across my steaming cup of tea.

An Avatar I once knew told me, “I’ve given you the energy of a fourteen-year-old.” My twenty-something self wondered what made the difference and whether it was even possible for one to gift another with that kind of physical awareness. I hardly remember. What I do recall is the lifeblood flowing freely, imprinting each moment with possibility, potential and joy. My body of awareness developing along with the demands of the physical vehicle.

I am more grateful for this physical body now, no longer separate from any other part of me. Gone are the impulses to ‘whip her into shape.’ I am awed at what she has accomplished and endured, responding to my every request with as much Grace as she could muster. I am grateful for her strength and agility, for all that we have experienced together.

Now, I listen. I honor her awakening times, her need for movement, and her requirements for rest. We are partners now, body and I. We have a pact, you see, to enjoy each day, however many there may be, and to recall that “fourteen-year-old energy,” of standing on a threshold, peering into an unknown and unforeseeable future with joy and laughter.

Shakespeare wrote: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” When my body takes a cautious step or a ‘painful’ one, I pause. “Let’s flip into another version of this reality,” I council that impulse. I choose to let the once-taken-for-granted joyful movement of a younger body fill this one, here and now. She responds, my vehicle, my life partner, with a change of experience in the moment. I may not take off and run as that teenager might have done, though the longing and the memory linger in heart and limb. But the joy is re-membered. The joy lives here still. Its price is listening, choosing where I put my focus, and allowing this vehicle I have learned to love and cherish to respond as she may.

What a miracle! Today is another day.

~ Namaste ~