Becoming Limitless

“If you always pushing the boundary of your comfort zone, you become limitless” ???

I’m not sure where I originally heard this quote, but it’s stuck with me through the years as this concept has played an integral part in directing my life for the last 7 years. ??????

In 2013 I went backpacking through India for a quarter of a year to study spirituality and do a yoga teacher training after the man that raised me died. It was my first long, independent international trip, and I had saved up enough money making $11.50 an hour at a medical marijuana dispensary to go. ??

The full story is very long and for another time, but the piece of It that is relevant in this context is that it was really, really, really, UNCOMFORTABLE, and I was given an opportunity to overcome my greatest fears. ??????

It was my first time processing grief about someone so close, I got pneumonia right before I left, and I still decided to go. One week into the trip I got the stomach bug and had food poisoning for basically 4 months straight. After my first night in Rishikesh, I woke up with over 80 bug bites on one side of my body, and well you get the point. ??

The worst floods in over 100 years had come and 30,000 people had gone missing in the river. It was a state of national emergency, and it was all happening a 2 minute walk away from my modest hotel room. ??

When I was growing up, my two greatest irrational fears were bugs and needles. When I would go to the doctors to get a shot or blood test, there were actually times where I would pass out, wake up, and projectile-vomit on the nurse. ????

My fear of needles was so irrational, and so deeply programmed into my subconscious, that even the sight of a syringe could literally trigger a panic attack. ????

And yet there I was in India, by myself, and sicker than I had ever been in my life with *next-level* food poisoning. I ended up having to go to the hospital 4 times and get a series of IV drips filled with vitamins, electrolytes and antibiotics because my digestive system just wasn’t absorbing nutrients. ??

One of those times, I was in Rishikesh at the only hospital they had there, which was this super sketchy hospital/ashram that had blood on the sheets and half-naked sadhus hanging out outside. My doctor didn’t speak English and I had no clue what was in that IV, but I knew the needle treatment was inescapable. I could either let my irrational subconscious fear consume me, making an already shitty (pun intended??) situation even worse, OR I could view the experience as a test to transcend the limitations of my own mind. ??

When we shift our perspective that life is happening "for us" instead of "to us," we take back our power and begin to see the medicine at the heart of every challenging situation.

I have always been good at making lemonade out of whatever life hands me, and this situation was no different (albeit a bit more extreme). In that moment I shifted my awareness into my breath, closed my eyes, and allowed myself to meditate through the experience. And you know what? I DIDN’T DIE. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I had just full-on faced my greatest irrational fear while managing to maintain my sanity (and not puke all over the nice doctor), and I felt ALIVE!

This inspired me to develop a practice of mindfulness to consciously identify the difference between “fear” and “danger.” Danger is that which poses a real threat, while fear puts up mental barriers that hold us back from achieving our truest potential. Feeling fear is totally normal and okay, sometimes our bodies are really in service of keeping us safe, but allowing irrational fear to completely dictate the direction of our lives is a disservice to all of the gifts we have to share.

When we begin to tear down the layers of protective mechanisms that our minds once created for safety but that are no longer serving us any longer, we get to witness our truest potential and walk on the path of becoming limitless.

Often times the greater the challenge, the greater the reward. We can do it. I love you ????

With great love,

Isis ??????

Photo Rishikesh circa 2013 ?