I have just come off a weekend intensive, and my world has been smashed open, again, as it often does at trainings like these. It usually starts with me walking into a room shaking with fear (why am I so nervous?) to lay out my mat with dozens of strangers. Then I practice integration with them, which, let me say, often feels just plain exposing. It's all of me, right there on my mat for everyone to see, exposed.
Since my first yoga class EVER in 2007, as a newly engaged young adult, at the Bayview & Sheppard YMCA, I have sought out this integration. Of course I didn't know what it was then, but I've stuck with this yoga-thing through all the ups and downs. And believe me, there have been ups and downs. Tears, anger, intolerance, swearing to myself that I must just walk away because it's too hard, and yet I have always known deep down that I must stay with and hold on to the integrity. Do what feels integral & strive for unity - every part of my body looked for it then and continues to look for it now. And another small piece of it was found this past weekend.
This journey of integration, or to make into a whole by bringing all parts together, is what Appleseed supports in this world. It's why I practice and it's why I deliver these teachings to your kids. It's the pursuit of finding integration, in all parts of our lives.
So if you're on this page, join me. Let's see what our kids can look like as integrated beings. And let's try our best to not let them lose that integration, as we throw them out into the world little by little. Because it's damn scary, this world of ours, and we ought to give them the greatest chance we possibly can of spreading the light we all know is there.
For the pursuit of integration,
Megan