• PROCESS through PRACTICE •
Bridgett and I met 20 years ago working downtown Chicago at an advertising agency. From our first meeting, we were kindred spirits. We've always discussed the deeper things of life. We've shared so many different seasons of life, always looking for meaning with a desire to grow through the discomfort and emerge a wiser woman. Bridgett walked with me through Ethan's illness. She always showed up. She helped lead all of the Restoring a Mother's Heart Retreats and together we are developing our November Women's Workshop Day - Made For This. Bridgett is a renowned yoga teacher and a teacher of souls. Students flock to her for both their physical practice and spiritual one as well.
One of my favorite characteristics of Bridgett is the way she sits with people. She is magnificently gifted at letting people be themselves and meeting them just where they are. Her empathetic heart allows her to love and be present to people in a beautiful way even though she does not have the same experience as they have. I hope you will enjoy this post from her about the importance of the process. You can follow Bridgett on Instagram here.
"Today in my yoga practice, the feedback I experienced was a presence in both body and mind, but that is not my everyday practice. The practice has informed a great deal about myself, as it is designed to do. Renowned yoga teacher and author, Eddie Stern, talks about yoga in its basic sense as a ritual that one performs to help one remain established in awareness. One of the most transformative learnings of my yoga practice has been the direct experience of impermanence. The state or fact of lasting for only a limited time—a ‘this too shall pass’ sentiment. The irony regarding impermanence, however, it that it is very much in fact—permanent. It’s a continual process of time in life for many, a highly avertable notion. Permanence can be much more comforting, say where love is concerned, job security, or having a place to call home. But according to the yoga text, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (II.15), offers us that it is the most pleasurable things in our lives that are actually the most painful because in time we will have to let them go. Maybe you’ve heard Heraclitus, Greek philosopher’s quote—“change is the only constant in life.” But how do we embody this tenet wholeheartedly in our everyday?
My yoga practice has supported the inevitability of change in life, and the blueprint to ultimately embrace it to my best ability. The structure of poses or asanas done again and again, while they appear the same—are, in fact, never the same in practice. Engaging in a pose and diving into physical depth one day or mental clarity another, and then having it unfold or play out very differently the next holdsup the belief. Why the varying results with such a methodical approach? The answer lies within how one shows up each time to practice, and the circumstances around and beyond that are and will be different each and every day. Just as in life—you are faced with being steeped in what is and what isn’t in your present space. It’s the absence of a false narrative. That story you tell yourself. Ashtanga yoga teacher, Mary Taylor, says, “that practice becomes an opportunity to show up for those differences rather than trying to make it be the same each time. Impermanence is an invitation to experience each pose as it exists at that moment.”
A yoga practice attends to the mind and body as a continuum. No separation. Therefore, it possesses the ability not to entrench ourselves or become obsessed, and conversely disregard or avoid, but rather process life in an attentive way. *Insert life quotes here, “trust the process” and “we may not have all the answers.” Practiceis a never-ending, ever-changing, and a transformative field of self-study. Simply put, through a practice YOU process."
- Bridgett Piacenti
Sunday Love to you!❤️Jessica
