Winter: States of Trust and Fear

Trust is the word this week and it is the work of this juncture.  I have been working on establishing trust in my yoga practice and must now turn the trust lens toward my work with Ayurveda.  Trust is not an easy thing to establish—even within oneself (or maybe especially within oneself).

When I looked up the work trust, descriptors such as reliance, truth, confidence, and faith emerged in a variety of ways.   Confidence in something or someone.  Faith in oneself or another.  To be able to rely on something or someone—or oneself.  

And right now I’m searching for trust in the work I have done over the past several years. Trust that the work I have done can help me stay the course as I move into places that do not look familiar.  Yet in many ways things do look familiar.  The way we move through the world. Pressing up against the seasons. Each year winter has a similar smell, taste, and texture.  But the air is different.  The crisp cold sun that shines down is not the sun from last year.  It is new, yet the same. Winter brings with it different challenges each time it cycles into my life. New challenges.  Deeper challenges.  I want to feel like I’ve mastered the art of winter.  So I try to engage the same strategies and routines I established last year.   I seek out familiar feelings even as my body reminds me over and over that those are not what I need. I want to default to what came before because I struggle to trust what is next. I do not feel confident in myself to handle what is to come, so I look back and try to hold tight to the familiar.  I realize how much I lose myself in that process. I lose out on possibilities. I lose out when I forget that there is an art to winter.  There is an art to establishing trust and finding joy in those new winter spaces. And when I forget that, I sit frozen in fear because I am scared of what comes next. 

The opposite of trust could be fear. 

Fear has words such as dread, apprehension, distress, and danger to define it.  Impending doom, whether real or imagined, is a great definition for fear.  When one cannot trust the unknown, fear settles in. When I cannot trust myself to handle the unknown, fear settles in.  It seems that the fear of the unknown has been growing for me in this juncture.  

My routines have been shifting and I am still searching for new routines, but I’m struggling to hear what I need. I’m struggling to figure out what is going within me. 

So I go back to a photograph, capturing a place where fear and trust coexist.  Trust takes a great deal of courage and I think about my hike up the Cog Rail at Manitou Springs, Colorado this past summer.  A straight hike up. I was excited for the adventure. I didn’t know what was ahead and there was no dread.  I trusted myself to make it. At every level in which the trail grew steeper, I trusted myself to make it.  I was scared at times.  Tired.  I had moments in which regretted my decision to hike.  But I never doubted that I would make it.  And I did. In the golden warmth of that mountain, I trusted myself to face the unknown.  In the steely cold of these plains, I am riddled with fear.  It’s silly, I know.  I can trust myself to make it up a steep hill, but I am terrified of presenting my research to the community.  If only I could channel the feeling on that mountain and bring it here. Bring it here to calmly and slowly make my way through challenges.  To feel my body with each word, each step. Taking my time.  Enjoying the view. I need to figure out a way to cultivate trust in this time of year.  

The opposite of fear could be trust.