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For years I was totally hopeless with balancing asana in my yoga practice. I’d wobble, fall over and enviously look at others, wondering why I couldn’t do what they did.

Then some time ago, wobbling through Natarajasana (dancer pose) I had a realisation that changed everything… You’re not just trying to balance on one leg – you need to stabilise yourself by engaging every little piece of your body!

Oh! Seems so obvious in retrospect, but for some reason I really didn’t get that, until I did.

In turn, this taught me something important about life, in a very practical (not theoretical) way: Nothing in our lives is disconnected. Nothing.

Funnily enough, I’ve had this realisation many times – during meditation, from reading books and listening to dozens of lectures on the matter too.

Seems we don’t get it, until we do. Nothing is disconnected.

We’ve come a long long way together
Through the hard times and the good
I have to celebrate you baby
I have to praise you like I should
~Fat Boy Slim

For those of us consciously trying to heal our inner wounds, with our fragmented selves desperately trying to keep up… we’re often so busy focusing on the trauma, it’s hard to see the bigger picture.

Just for now though, I’m taking a bird’s eye view, trying to see the lay of the land, so to speak.

Why? Well, today marks the first birthday of Svasti! Hip-hip-hooray!!

To quote my last post, this blog grew as something of an impulse – a very strong desire to save my sanity. A much needed space to expel the violence, sadness and struggles I’d been dealing with all alone. Screaming into cyberspace seemed like a good idea, and I was right.

Blogging I’ve found… is sort of like travelling the world with an entirely different perspective. Instead of seeing museums and temples and the like, I find myself surveying the inner workings of people’s minds all ‘round the world.

In the process, I’ve made a lot of friends and learned plenty about myself and others.

Such as: There’s no simple cure to PTSD or depression. And there’s peaks and troughs to recovery. The peaks make me feel like I’m finally getting somewhere. The troughs make me feel like checking out of Hotel de Life.

Healing is not a one-shot deal. There’s no magic pill to solve all my ills, or anyone else’s. But the more we express, the better it gets (in the long run, if not straight away).

And given human nature is how it is, we find resonance in each other’s words. We discover we aren’t alone. We’re all connected. So, what we write can benefit others. That’s a good thing!

But I’ve also learned the assault I started writing about was only a small part of the story – a kind of bookend really, to a certain era of my life. An era I’m learning I need to write about. That’s all connected, too.

In the last twelve months I’ve: started therapy, quit a stable (but soul-destroying job), spent five weeks in spiritual retreat, conquered the worst of my PTSD symptoms (although I’m far from symptom-free), gained and lost another job, had a second niece arrive, found new friends, started yoga teacher training and struggled with a very morbid attack of depression. And I’ve spent the better part of this year unemployed, surviving on a fraction of what I usually earn.

Seems I’ve been shedding one skin after the other, kinda like an onion and with just as many tears.

But none of it is disconnected, I’m convinced of that. Where we’re at is a result of where we’ve been. There’s no plot device that led me down this path.

Gotta say this much – it’s a glorious place from which to find my balance in life, and I know I can do it.

So, here’s to the next twelve months in my/everyone else’s journey.

And thanks everyone for reading!

~Svasti