I've been working with the concept of alignment lately - but not on my yoga mat. Well, of course, on my mat, too. But that's not my primary focus right now. Instead, I'm focusing on alignment in my life.

This feels like a somewhat nebulous concept to me - like something that sounds amazing and gets a big resonant yes in my body. But then when I go to explain it, much less do it, I don't really know what it means.

So I thought I'd try to break it down. 

That Feeling

My gut feeling is that I've lived much of my life out of alignment - but I didn't think that was the case (especially at the time). I thought I was doing my best to follow my passions and do what I wanted to do, what I should do. And, I suppose, that I did do that in some ways - especially the doing my best part.

But I tended to lean more heavily onto the should part of things than the what feels good and right side of things. Starting in late high school/college, my career trajectory looked something like this:

• Accounting major. Realized I'd rather throw myself out a window than continue.
• English major. Loved creative writing, fiction and poetry more than anything. Decided to pursue a master's degree in English, but didn't think an MFA would give me a "good enough" career path and opted for an MA, or the professorial route.
• Determine halfway through the degree program that I loathe the strictly academic life. After finishing, withdraw from the PhD program I was accepted into to do "more important things," like save the world. Literally.
• Begin another master's degree program, this time in nonprofit work, because I wasn't confident I could get a job without the "right" qualifications. Love this work and give 200% of myself to it, eventually landing a full-time job in a domestic violence center.
• Work for an organization I love, with people I adore, on an ideal schedule. But after a year and a half or so, grow ready for my next "achievement" and thus look for another job.
• Move several states away for a step up the ladder. Realize there's a lot I don't love about it, and I have to work way more than feels good. Persist for a while to justify the move then eventually burn out and leave at the end of two years.
• Feel the call of something that feels completely impractical but is so loud I can't ignore it. Begin working with my own business full time.

So that brings us up to today. Are you sensing a pattern here? I certainly am.

Internal vs. External

What's interesting to me is that I could have told this story very differently: "Look at me! I had two master's degrees by the time I was 26! And check out the important jobs I had with tons of responsibility!" And that is, honestly, how I held the stories myself and shared them for a long time.

But over the past year or so, my perspective has drastically shifted. Instead of a pattern of accomplishment, I see a pattern of not listening to myself as fully as I wish I would have. This isn't to discount the accomplishment because there is something in that. Instead, it's to give myself some empathy for trying the best I knew how to meet my needs and having to learn to do that slowly, over time. I feel like I'm just at the tip of the tip of the iceberg now.

New Experiment

And what I can see, and more importantly feel, from that tip is what it's like to be in alignment. To magnify my trust in my experience, as one of my teachers so beautifully puts it.

I fear that this, again, may sound a bit too metaphorical for my taste (although there is certainly something in it that goes beyond description). So I'll just say what it looks like for me on most days:

• Beginning with quiet
• Giving myself a gentle structure to the day
• Some days being so in the flow of my work that it feels effortless.
• Some days "waking up" at the end of the day and realizing all I did was click back and forth between email, Facebook and Twitter.
• Either way (or somewhere in between), showing myself compassion.
• Watching fear come up in 1000 different ways.
• Ignoring fear coming up in 2000 different ways.
• Sitting down with paper and a pen and looking that fear in the eye, whenever it comes into my consciousness (even, and especially, when I wish it was earlier).
• Building and utilizing a support network of trusted people who really see me - friends, a therapist, loving family, yogic partners in crime
• Doing my practice every dang day -- writing, sitting, yoga, feeling my feelings.
• Starting over again the next day. And the next. And the next. No matter how poorly I may think the previous day went.

Slowly, through this process of staying with my experience, I feel myself coming into alignment. It feels like a deep knowing inside that I'm doing what's right for me at this moment. It also feels like not doing much (if anything) out of obligation. And saying yes only to the things that feel like yes more and more often (not always; I'm not fully there quite yet). And being okay with all the days and ways I'm out of alignment - while knowing more and more the path back.