Tending and ending friendships

Have you noticed that friendships change over the years? We talk a lot about how to tend or how to end a romantic relationship – but not so much about friendships. Perhaps it’s because I’m an only child, but my friendships are very important to me. I nurture them and they give me great joy. My husband’s family have a habit of giving speeches on special occasions. At my Fiftieth birthday party, he gave a speech on the theme that I have a genius for friendship. I would like to think I do, and certainly we should value our friendships. Yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that all our friendships have value.

Recently I’ve seen several articles on how the Marie Kondo Method relates to friendships and this has made me think about how my friendships – and my my view of what friendship means – has evolved.

How To Use Marie Kondo Method To Break Up With Friends
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Relationships)
How to Marie Kondo Your Friends – How to Breakup With a Friend

Yoga will change your friendships

You will have different chapters in your life and different things will be important to you. Your friendships will ebb and flow. We all hope to have some super friends for life. But as we move through new chapters, different things will be important to us and we’ll look to different things from our friends. Perhaps wanting good company and being up for some fun in friendship has given way to valuing loyalty and generosity in the friendship.

Yoga gives us many tools to navigate change, and as we develop our yoga practice we will see our friendships with new eyes. I touch on this happening to me in my introductory video.

Find Your Supportive Community – Marie Kondo, your friends and yoga

There’s a Buddhist concept of Sangha – that’s your supportive community. It means you surround yourself with people who will support you and be there for you.

Thich Nhat Hanh says here :
The Sangha doesn’t need to be Buddhist. Buddhism is made of non-Buddhist elements anyway. When I met Martin Luther King Jr., in 1966, we spoke about Sangha building. We spoke a few times about the beloved community. The beloved community is the Sangha. 

Your sangha should of course ‘spark joy’ and have your back – but it should also stretch you and help you out of your comfort zone, encouraging you to be your best self. This is where yoga comes in. As you practice yoga you connect more with who you are.

Valuing Friendship

Three friends and I have a birthday club! I’ve known these people for years – two of them for over twenty years. We get together for lunch four times a year on a weekend near each other’s birthday to celebrate. Turns out all our birthdays are in the first half of year, so we try to get together once a month anyway for the rest of the year.

As you’d expect, we’ve been through a lot together and we know each others strengths and foibles. I’m the one who can be particular and rock the boat. I’m not rude or incredibly demanding, but I’ll ask if we can have a different table or mention that my chili is luke warm and would I be able to have another bowl steaming from the pot.

Recently I’ve been thinking more about this. I was a very easygoing child, and somewhere along the way I became a bit more rigid. I could do with more relaxing. In fact, I haven’t so much been thinking about it as yoga has been evening that out a bit more. It’s one of the profound changes yoga is bringing to my life.

Yoga isn’t making me fully into a go with the flow person, but it’s helping me to understand where I want to put that energy. I’m less likely not to be bothered by the things I cannot change. I am reining some of this in – sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s more of a struggle. I mentioned this last weekend at one of our birthday lunches and got a round of applause. These friends kindly rib me about my foibles but also support me as I try to grow.

At the same time, food is important to me and being able to increase my enjoyment of a meal out gives me great joy. I still want see if my delicious bowl of chili can be nice and hot – it will really enhance my enjoyment. Yoga is giving me the ability to work through things and zone into my true self.

Finding Joy in Your Friendships

Yoga helps us understand what it important to us – and important in our friendships. It also helps us navigate change so we can have harmonious friendships that we enjoy.

Interested in going deeper? Find out more info about working with me
https://bit.ly/stepintonewnormal
or email me antonia@newlandscapeyoga.com