Today I got on the yoga mat for the first time in just under a week. It felt so good. Why did I miss yoga? What it because I was travelling (London, Bath, Cardiff etc).

No, I took my yoga mat with me, stuffed in the back of my wheelchair and practiced each day.

I was off the mat because I am human; I have a highly busy day, miss one practice and then before I know it, it’s been three days or more.

I soon learn to live with achy shoulders, a tight back, a tense head.

Now, I focus on awareness, compassion and return.

Noticing I am away from what I need, then extending compassion to myself for getting lost, gently and lovingly returning to the path, to my practice, to my body, to home.

Putting up with pain is something I am habituated towards, living as I do with chronic illness. Moving forward despite it, that’s my default. What’s hard for me – and essential work or me – is delineating between pain I can impact, pain I can’t and taking appropriate action.

For years I searched for the teacher, the practice which would work for me – by which I mean the one that would make me work.

Now, I realise it is for me, a process. I come in and out of my practice, 98% of the time I am in it. But it shifts with me – I am after all a cyclical being.

That’s what I write about in The Trailblazing Wellness Check-In Catalogue how we notice when we are far from ourselves and what we do then.

Now, I know that I am the one I have searched for.

I still need teachers and guides, of course. But I am no longer trying to hand my power and sovereignty over to a person or practice outside myself.

Instead, I focus on staying as present as I can with myself on the twists, turns, slips and skips on this healing life journey.

What are you searching for and finding today? Let me know in the comments.

Grace Quantock is an award-winning international wellness expert, coach, author, motivational speaker, certified Reiki master and spiritual response therapy practitioner. She is the founder of Healing Boxes CIC and The Phoenix Fire Academy. Currently living – and thriving – with often debilitating illness, she is the real deal and knows, firsthand, the emotional and physical roller coaster that accompanies diagnosis and life struggle. Currently, a resident of Wales, Grace loves reading, gardening and early mornings. She firmly believes that life is meant to be celebrated, and has made it her mission to help others do just that …joyfully and on their own terms. You can follow Grace on Twitter.

Image courtesy of kike vega.