Embody Mental Health

“ They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”

Confucius

Iguanas are everywhere in Florida.  Outside my office window on any given day I can hear the tapping of iguana lips on a glass door, heavy thuds of thick scales, beckoning to be noticed and not so subtly asking, “Food Please Humans Who Sometimes Feed Me!”  Sometimes they even make squawking sounds when they become furious at being ignored–they are persistent and insistent creatures with never-ending bellies.  I have also learned that in a chill, yes they occasionally occur in South Florida, an iguana will freeze and then thaw again when in warm sunlight, completely unfazed by the experience.  How Zen of them.

Sometimes in life we become frozen in our lives, stagnated by circumstances, complacency, or just comfort.  I have spoken about this before and my own experience with this phenomenon.  I realize more every day, as I feel my life flower and bloom in exciting new ways, how much I was in such a iguana-like freeze prior to leaving New Jersey.  I was in desperate need of sunlight and a thaw and I didn’t even know it.  Surrounded by the coziness of a place I had always known, friends I had for a long time, family that surrounded me I had to try very little to effect anything in my life and as a result I effected very little. 

In moving into the sunlight and out of the freeze–both literal and metaphoric–I have shifted something, shaken up the mix, and out came all this blossoms of change that have been wonderfully rich.  I have met amazing people, adventured on many new projects, and stretched my own imagination of what might be possible.  I think we all need these moments from time to time to push us forward into the new–it is a spiritual invigoration. 

Amid all of this thawing and stretching in the sunlight (and I cannot stress how much I feel emotionally revived by sunlight and warmth in the Holiday Season) I have decided to commit fully to writing the book that has been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time.  It will be a labor of love and adjectives and it may take me the better part of a year to fully bring to paper (well to laptop virtual paper that is) but I have decided that it is something I must stop procrastinating on and start literarily enacting.  It will encompass all of this journey of complementary medicine, yoga, equine facilitated therapies, and my personal exploration of each into a memoir-like account.  I am excited and intimidated by the challenge.

I now throw out this thawing momentum to everyone to push your limits, step out of your box, and thaw a little in the sunlight.  Breathe out your inner iguana-like metamorphosis, updog into the sunlight (like the iguana in the picture above), and find how far you can stretch yourself.  Be uncomfortable, be intimidated, but be invigorated and alive by the prospect.  Dream big, think tall, and screech out loud like any impatient and persistent iguana would. 

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

Kahlil Gibran