As a yoga teacher and a massage therapist, I find that I think visually and like to use analogies to help my students and clients make connections to their bodies and their lives; here are some of my favorites:

We are all teachers and we are all students.

Envision the PP’s, the DD’s and the CC’s: PP stands for paralyzing pain, DD for desirable discomfort and CC for complacent comfort. When you lift too heavy a weight, try to stretch more than your tendons can support, or encounter life situations which present seemingly overwhelming challenges, you contract, withdraw and protect – a zone of no growth due to the pain. If you never try to lift, stretch or cope with life’s challenges, you are in a zone of complacent comfort and there is no growth. Ideally, you want to be in a zone of desirable discomfort – aware of the edge, testing yourself and being uncomfortable – that is where there is the greatest potential for personal physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth.

Nothing happens in your life if you react by standing still, frozen like a deer in the headlights. Likewise, nothing concrete really happens if you’re like a squirrel in the middle of the road dashing back and forth from side to side because they can’t commit to getting either to the other side of the road or going back to where they began.

You do have a choice; you can be open, porous, flexible yet strong, like a whiffle ball, or you can be a bowling ball or billiard ball – dense, heavy, closed, hard and inflexible. Be open to possibility.