Contributing Factors

"Life is contributing factors" said a very good friend of mine, just when I needed to hear it.

Sometimes in life we just feel like we are overloaded with factors that contribute to our inability to do things or accomplish goals. This has been the story of my last couple week.   I could spend my day listing all the road blocks and obstacles that ended up in my way, however what good would that do.  On those days where we are just over the top with issues of health, family, work, school etc. we have two choices:

1) Fight to go beyond all the obstacles to accomplish the goals no matter what. 

2) Let the river flow and accept that the universe may have other plans for us than what we wish.  

The real challenge is in knowing which path to choose.  The majority of the time I choose number 1. However on those rare occasions when the deck is just too stacked against me I have to give in and go for door number 2.  

So this has been my world over the last couple of weeks.  It has been an entire week since I did hot yoga.  Not sure that has happened for many months.  The combination of hip pain, Passover, visiting friends, work overload, and family commitments pushed me over the edge.  I got to the point where there was just too many factors for me to ignore the message from the universe that said "SLOW DOWN!!!!".  Something had to give and it was my personal needs.  

To add to the situation it is currently Passover which has necessitated me to go off course on diet.  In the Jewish tradition we have two Passover dinners that include lots of wine, food and discussion.  This is one of my favorite holidays as it really makes you think about the things in life that hold you back and keep you from your personal freedoms.  

So at these dinners I drank wine and ate some sugar.  Each time I drank wine and ate sugar, even in small amounts, my feet would swell and I would feel fatigued.  The next morning I felt even worse as if I was running up hill all night.  Sustained deep sleep was hard to achieve and overall I felt mildly poisoned.  Some of this was natural exhaustion from contributing factors like the hard work of making a dinner for 16 people but most of it was directly attributed to input and output of the body.  

It has been two days since these dinners and I am just now starting to feel like I have some energy back and can go back to my yoga practice. I have learned much from being off the no-sugar wagon, so to speak.  I felt like my mind was cloudy, my body was sore, and my spirit was low.  The moral of the story is I need to stay away from sugar and other contributing factors.  

What this has all meant for my challenge is that, I finished up my challenge two hot yoga's short of the 30 in 40.  I stuck to the gluten free and the blood sugar maintenance diet. I felt tremendous movement in my goals.

Now that my overload is behind me I am back on track and will consider what the next goals should be.   I certainly have every confirmation that staying away from sugar and gluten is essential for my progress and my personal freedom.