Yin and Yang
I lapped my huge grassy park again yesterday round and about loops up and down around… The big tractor was mowing the grass and so one field was super smooth summer cut green, and others were thick with clover, with patches that were damp delicious for my feet…
And as I ran and felt once again the feeling that I could run forever… I recognised how long my body has worked to communicate to me the imbalances within – over a half a lifetime… Where I have been holding back, where there has been lack of alignment within, reflected for me in the running step… Every year that passed I would strip away a layer of resistance, and now my running feels like when I was a teenager, running along the cliff tops in Hope Cove… Running, running , running because running was what I was born to do, with no fear…
I read many years later, when the fear had risen to clear…
‘You cannot fear what you were born to do’….
But fear had crept in back then, as I put the stakes higher and started to run looking for love rather than running expressing love… Of course my body tried to tell me… All of our bodies try to tell us who we truly are, if we listen…
The funny thing about our journey on earth, is that we might even know what we need to let go of… I certainly did, for years and years and yet even within a deepening understanding, the pain would find a loop hole, a trick, to keep its grip… and so is the power of the mind, when we let it take over…
The true state of human freedom is to be the master of the body and the mind, but so often the reverse is true, and so we hold on to what we know… It is more familiar, ironically feels ‘safer’ than leaping into the unknown, the space of not knowing, of trusting that ‘everything is all light’!
And after all the understanding, the working out of our patterns, our fear and restrictions, there comes a time to just let go… Or else the knowing of our ‘issues’ becomes the very thing that keeps us identified with them…
And so I was running in a big field, round and round and recognising too that as well as setting me free, running keeps me connected to the earth, and barefoot running at an even more profound level… I was thinking these thoughts and my inner voice was saying once again, as it has said for the past 50 years!
‘Keep on running, this is all you need to do, everything will become clear in the running steps…’
Later on, I was speaking with my friend Janey… She echoed my feelings on the morning run… And observed…
‘I can see it is important that you are in your bare feet as it keeps you on the planet or else you might just float away…’
I understood exactly what she meant…
Being in the amazing universe is a wonderful opportunity to really experience contrasts and to truly learn that there is a space beyond the ever pull of the yin to the yang… To feel beyond the duality the different experience of the planet and the universe… In every moment as we feel the pull of joy to sadness, hot to cold, light to dark, rain to sun; if we breathe and then breathe again, we will find the still point.
It’s in the breath and it’s in the rain and the sun…
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running. I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.
As a little girl I ran barefoot for many years, and then I put on shoes to race around the world. Fifty years later I am travelling the world as a nomad with my husband Anadi and I have taken off my shoes and I am running barefoot again….
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