Hello Fellow Humans –
Someone, somewhere, once said something like, “A broken heart is an open heart”, meaning that if we can allow our hearts to be broken there may be a chance to allow in more love and connection. They are not mutually exclusive, in fact, they are part of a continuum of aliveness and feeling. In order to fully access one end of the emotional spectrum we need to be able to be with the other end as well.
I am emerging from an incredibly difficult week. I am beyond tired but I am slowly recouping. My heart was broken, I felt rage and sorrow, longing and despair. I raced into agitation and fell into shut down and overwhelm. My heart was also brimming with awe and love; feeling tenderness and pride. Through it all, I was able to accompany myself and a few others through the turbulent waters of difficult conversations and important work of facing the trauma of systemic oppression and pervasive privilege for folks in the same room. Not easy but a good reflection of the practices and explorations I am committed to. I am not one who enjoys confrontation, in fact, I have tried to avoid it much of my life. (An understandable response to the ways my family managed it when I was a small person). But it doesn’t have to be cruel or abusive. Sometimes confrontation is exactly what we need to start to feel the pain of another and see with compassion. It was not fun and I was so glad I was there. My bruised heart is bigger because of it.
Building our capacity for being with discomfort as well as being with pleasure is a tap root for our full expression of humanity. This is the process of allowing for enough space to not be taken over by the reactions, to have the ability to track the sensations in the body and to allow and encourage them to move through so there is room for the fresh and new response that is unfolding. It is a practice, just like meditation, to show up for ourselves and each other in the difficult conversations of life; the conversations that can be both brutal and beautiful.
How do you hold space for the pain in yourself or another without being overtaken? How do you allow life, horrifically beautiful, to move through you but not high jack you? What resources allow you to be bigger on the inside?
May we be willing to be with the ache and pain as well as the joy and pleasure of life
May we offer ourselves to the difficult conversations of healing
May we accompany ourselves in the moments of challenge with tenderness and awe
May we bring wild blessings and fierce love to all we encounter
Practice Prompts:
- Practice noticing the sensations in your body when you are having an emotion, any emotion. Notice the ‘feeling’ in your body, be curious, especially if it seems like nothing is there. There is a reason emotions are also called feelings:) Keep curious and track them with kindness. Notice if this begins to offer a pause or space between you and the strong emotion.
- Practice pausing before speaking, especially when upset. Listen inside as well as outwardly. Give yourself time and you may notice that what you say may differ from what you say without the space.
- A simple meditation practice…place a hand on your chest where you can feel the pulse of your heart and hang out there for awhile. Perhaps look around and notice the world around you and others from this place of heart awareness. How does it look from here?
- I offer one to one sessions, in person in Bend, Oregon, and virtually all over the world. If you would like to learn more about my offerings please email me or schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session.
Live Streaming Practice Opportunities:
- Yoga for Resilience, Mondays, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Body of Insight
- All Levels Yoga, Sundays… Aug 27, Sep 24, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Two Dog Yoga
- On Demand Yoga Practices…All Levels… through Two Dog Yoga
Inspirational Wisdom:
Let Me Be Beautiful Like Sea Glass
Let my edges that cut be stroked
by sand and salt
let my slick surface coarsen
till it’s crushed to bits
let my colors soften
as they scrape the bottom
let the waves love me
in their rough way
let me be changed by that love
let me not forget I held another
yet fully inhabit my particularity
let me be smooth enough
to be rubbed by small fingers
and slipped inside a pocket or a bowl
let me prove that beauty is born when something breaks