"If we don't have challenges, we don't have growth.  If you feel quite comfortable, it's possible you are sitting in your comfort zone and could consider how to expand into your growth zone."

-Carol Webster

LESSON 33: Facing Challenge with Poise

by Carol B Webster

Let's start with the question:

What is your biggest challenge currently?

Does it have to do with financial worries? Work or school stresses? Issues with spouse, kid(s), or roommates? Infertility? Physical pain or chronic illness? Too much clutter? Feeling empty or unfulfilled? Worry about aging parents?

Our lives are exactly like a story or movie. There is always a pattern including

• conflicts,

• calls to action,

• journeys, and

• resolutions

  and then it cycles back again to a new challenge. 

Are challenges, problems, and trials really necessary?

Well, yes.  If we don't have challenges, we don't have growth.  If you feel quite comfortable, it's possible you are sitting in your comfort zone and could consider how to expand into your growth zone. However,

sometimes troubles find us without an invitation. 

Is there a way to move through challenges and still feel peaceful? Calm? Even joyful?

I am here to say YES! Maybe not 100% of the time, but when you learn and apply practices we teach at Holding Space Practice, conflicts that used to be intensely challenging can become less intense and the frequency of those downward episodes can be spaced out more and more. 

Yoga is one of the tools that has been very helpful to me in my life story.  With the encouragement of a new yoga student, I decided to focus the last quarter of 2023 on teaching Yoga.

A common response when I invite people to learn Yoga is: "I would love to learn Yoga. I've heard it's really good and someday I'm going to do that when I'm not so busy."

I know it seems like "one more thing", but, like we discuss in Module 1 "Being Without Doing", this ONE thing makes everything else better. A small effort yields exponential benefits.

I had known for years that Yoga would be good for me. I was curious, but I had no idea how to start. I was a homeschool mom with 5 young children. I definitely did not have time to add anything else.

It was a mystery injury to my left knee that finally motivated me to figure out how to find a yoga class. I didn't know why my knee hurt, but I was limping for weeks. I DID NOT have time to deal with doctors and appointments and some future knee replacement. What could I do that would be cheaper, less invasive and effective?

I had attended ONE Yoga class the year before with a friend. That studio was too far away to commit to. I had been looking for yoga class options for a year already. The knee pain pushed me along and I found a private class that met once a week a mile away. I was terrified to walk into a yoga studio. This was foreign territory to me even though I was sure the people would be really nice.

Since then, the changes in my body and mind have been marvelous to me. The benefits are so encompassing and obvious that doctors now recommend learning Yoga to patients. That is part of what motivated my new student to try Yoga. I invited her to join me in my home studio. She came a few times and lost steam until one day when I began to explain to her how Yoga not only helps the body, but there are many aspects besides the physical poses to study that helps the mind. Like me, she had no idea what Yoga really entailed and, like me, as she began to get a glimpse of the whole picture, her motivation went way up!

I have tried to figure out a way to help people that want to learn Yoga yet they wonder how it would be possible.

If you are not familiar with the Yoga website, I invite you to take a look at it. It is organized so that anyone willing to give it a try, can find ways to fit it into your life! I challenge you to learn about Yoga and maybe even apply it.

Go to CarolBwebster.com/yoga

Carol & Eric practicing Yoga Asana (physical poses)

Quote Corner

Practice checklist:

Looking back, I can see how much better I face challenges with poise than before I learned Holding Space Practices. If you have not formally started that journey yet, I urge you to be brave. Contact Carol via email or text and let her welcome you on this path.

• Email [email protected] with the subject "I'm ready to start"

• If text is easier, no problem: 816-213-2340

• YOUR ideas?

Have you read and actively interacted with all 33 Lessons? If yes, CONGRATULATION! If no, you are normal! You can start again by clicking here to start back to the beginning.