The Lonely Wolf, or SAMSAKARA.

Namaste,

Dear community, as you open this newsletter today on the 18th of June, I am traveling to ExCel Center in London to Meet, Mingle and Meditate event with Sadhguru. This event did come at the right time (as always) as I had lots of reflection to do during the past week when my body sent me a signal I couldn’t ignore. 

*A quick disclaimer, this blog post is based on a personal story.

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have seen that I have mentioned a massive neck spasm that basically stopped me from doing any physical activity, affected me mentally, interrupted my sleep, and turned my mornings into agony… Ouh, and have I mentioned the amount of painkillers and anti - inflammatories I have been taking? Well long story short, I immediately re - prioritised my well-being and added more quiet time for self reflection. I am 100% confident that it is my body’s response to the tremendous amount of stress I have been under that just got a little too heavy for my neck to handle.

Somewhere during that ‘week of pain’, I was sitting in the garden barely able to move my head. All of a sudden I felt this longing desire to run away to any yoga ashram and just hide from all the things that are happening at home. If any of you have done a huge several months lasting renovations while working on a few projects and having radical life changes, you would hopefully empathise…It is a little too much. So I turned to Mother Nature for help and went walking barefoot as it is my ‘go to’ therapy for grounding. 

These daily walks always help me to create a space to relax and to be open to the wisdom coming from within and from the Ether…I started thinking how humbling pain is and how it can change all of the Mind’s big plans into nothing within moments. So one thought led to another and here I am observing my life now and over the last 38 years and seeing it as the phenomena called Samskara. 

In Sanskrit, Samskara means the imprints or impressions of the mind, according to yogic philosophies, Samskara is something that we inherit from our previous lives, an imprint in the mind that can help us in this life or, on the contrary be on the way of living our full potential and stepping into our purpose  - Dharma. 

Samskara is like a seed placed into your subconscious mind waiting for the right conditions to sprout. It can be a behaviour or a thinking pattern that feels like a loop that we keep repeating until we become aware of it and …change it. 

Let’s say we start from a thought process which, obviously where everything begins followed by actions and then our reactions to those actions or emotional response that we have to our actions. In order for us to fully step into our purpose we should use Samskaras as a way to navigate through our life. It is important that we become aware of those that are there for our growth and those that we can benefit from. But before we do that, we need to recognise it and once recognised, we can create new modifications of the mind.

The recognition of repetitive patterns comes with consistent practice of reflection upon your thoughts, actions and reaction. Without effort you allow yourself to become an observer of your thoughts, and through meditative and reflective experiences one is able to recognise where there is “a hiccup” or “a glitch”. We then can take actions towards what needs to be changed. 

Based on the chakra system, action is initiated in our Solar Plexus centre, or Manipura Chakra. The element of this chakra is fire, and we know the qualities of fire which combine both destruction and nurture, pain and transformation. It can wipe out cities and it can power the process of creation of a new one. 

Coming back to my story where I recognised my desire to run away when I feel helpless and vulnerable. I don’t like pain! Who does, right?! However, I think people have a different relationship with it. From a desire to be looked after or as a call for attention, to an excuse to escape from responsibilities for one’s life or hiding behind it. My Samsakara is being a Lonely Wolf. It is easier for me to be alone yet at the same time I feel abandoned when there is no one along my path, even if by own choice. So whenever a situation presents itself where I feel the echo of abandonment, I immediately feel worthless and want to destroy all I believe in and run away. Yes, I have done many years of work and practices and of course, nowadays I recognise this pattern and know how to work with it, BUT it still sneaks up on me and sometimes it comes as a wolf wearing a sheepskin pretending to be a sheep…  A metaphor but so simply describes how all of a sudden I missed an opportunity to reflect on a situation and came back to where I started. It is almost like years of Yoga Practices and teaching countless students never happened…Ahhh… “Always have a Beginners Mind’ is what I would wisely say to my students in the same situation. “Remember you are nobody until you embrace a role of somebody. No one cares who you were, but rather who you are”.  Ok..here it is! Practice what you preach and somewhere in the process there is a lesson you were searching for. 

Circling back to Samsakara and the Fire element which we embrace to burn through it, so that we can create space for new experiences instead of feeling stuck. 

This Summer, Love Life Day retreat is dedicated to Reconnection to the Power within! It is about finding that flame within you, whether it's a small flame that you can barely feel and have no energy to live your life or on the contrary, it is so all consuming, that you struggle to manage it as it burns through what you are trying to build. 

We're going to learn how to work with this element, and how to use it intentionally. Let it be a transformative experience that can fuel your actions towards betterment of your life and life of humanity. 

Book your space HERE.

And of course, should you have some comments or your experiences to share, comment below. 

Yours Victoria Zimmer,

Director and Founder of Love Life Retreats.