Last Sunday (11th July) the world experienced a total solar eclipse – and here’s a Vedic perspective on such things, if you’re interested.
An eclipse is a very interesting time – the earth being bathed shadows when there’s normally full daylight (even if we aren’t in the right geographic location to see it personally). Energetically, it’s a bit of a turnaround from our normal experience of the world. For example, consider how some plants and flowers close up at night, or how jetlag impacts us (different time zones and exposure to light when our body isn’t expecting it).
So I tend to interpret an eclipse as a bit of a pregnant pause and perhaps a resetting of certain energetic patterns in the world.
And in this sandhi, this time of change, I went back for my second week of yoga teaching, hoping that at least some of the people who called during the week would show up. They did!
Well, two of them did, anyway. There were meant to be teenage boys joining in, but they had that “yoga, yeah right!” look on their faces. So their social worker left a sixteen year old girl in my care while she and the boys did something else. The other lady was possibly in her 50’s and hadn’t done any yoga for around ten years.
It was so much fun! I’d arrived early to set things up (lighting some incense because the room – while bright and spacious – is a bit musty, music and getting my notes ready), but my students turned up early, too.
Teehee! I have students! 😀
So I didn’t have time to get nervous and we started with a bunch of questions – what’s yoga, what is it used for etc. I was a little surprised that even though I’d written a fairly short class plan, we didn’t get through it all. There was a lot of stopping to demonstrate things, and talk through frustrations (I’m 16; I should be more flexible than this!). I taught them how to enunciate “Aum” properly, the KYM-style breathing, some asana and we finished with a little meditation. The hour just flew by! Hopefully they are both coming back next week, and I’ve had two more calls from people wanting to come this week. So yay!
Right after that I cycled straight home as fast as I could, and caught a lift to the city with a friend who was also attending Nadine and Kerry’s yoga and kinesiology workshop. WHOOP-WHOOP!
The purpose of the workshop was to help us all get “unstuck”. Energetically, emotionally, physically – whatever we needed.
Given the imminence of the eclipse, I have to say nice work with the timing, ladies!
Nadine and Kerry opened by sharing stories, which I think is a lovely way to ease people into the vibe that’s being created. They spoke of the preparation for the workshop, their own stories of coming to yoga and kinesiology and some of the emotional/mental health issues they’d each faced.
It was a brilliant way to oh-so-gently say: Just like you, we’ve had (and sometimes still have) stuff that keeps us stuck. And it can and does get better!
Message received loud and clear, chicas!
Earlier in the week, we were asked to complete a survey focusing on the areas in our life where we feel stuck. As a follow up once we got started, we were asked to draw our “stuck”.
Then we got into the yoga portion of the day, led by Nadine. Some standing poses and sun salutations (creating heat and energy in a little room packed with yoginis!). Next, some more specific asana held for longer periods of time, specific to various meridians within the body that help us access our fears, frustrations, anger, implementing the plans of our heart (I LOVE that!), self-acceptance and love.
During this, I realised that my ongoing-nagging-refusing-to-get-better shoulder injury is tied into the heart meridian that runs out along both arms. Left side of the body is the feminine, right?
My broken heart and I have been working together for a while now, trying to plug all the gaps and heal every last drop of the pain…
BUT what I’ve suddenly realised just as I’m sitting here right now, is that there’s still a part of me that resists complete healing. Although I want to be free of this broken-ness, there’s a vocal minority somewhere in my body that says:
No! Don’t completely heal! We don’t want to go back to that really bad place again!! Right here, well, it’s manageable. So don’t go rocking the boat, okay?
Oh! So there’s an expectation of further injury. And lower than low expectations for any sort of lasting romantic happiness. Oh.
I guess it makes sense then, to create a blockage along the heart meridian in the form of a cycling accident. I mean, that’s one sure way to keep things nicely as-is.
[Excuse me while I take a moment to process this and let the tears pass]
…The same thing, I think, goes for my body’s refusal to lose weight. I mean, I do yoga, I swim, I cycle. I’m mostly a healthy eater. Regardless, my body is holding on to some of its external protection. And so I feel unattractive, which is just another way to stay safe from men being interested in me. That vocal minority of mine is an evil frickin’ genius!
Okay… let’s get back to describing the workshop now…
After a short break, Kerry took the reins for the kinesiology part. This involved holding certain acupressure points for each of the meridians we’d just accessed (kidney, liver, gall bladder, heart), and helping us tune into our own energetic states and blockages.
Before we moved on from holding one acupressure point to the next, Kerry asked us to repeat some affirmations. Some of those were harder to swallow than others (i.e. “I deserve to love my life”, “I forgive myself”, “I accept myself”, “I know I am enough”). Hmmm…
By the end of the workshop I felt very relaxed and quiet. My friend told me that “my face looked really open”. I have no idea what that means, but hey! All I said to her was that I needed to go home and write (duh!!).
After thanking Nadine and Kerry for a wonderful afternoon, my friend and I left. She was going out, but I was heading back to my warm and cozy foxhole.
That night I just wanted to sleep, and the same with the next night.
I knew that whatever was going on with me as a result of the workshop hadn’t yet surfaced. And although I started this post on Monday, I haven’t really looked at it for the last couple of days. Guess I needed more time to marinate!
Little did I realise that it was in writing about the workshop that the full realisations would come. And here they are. Probably with more to come.
So I’m just going to… ummm… go and make some more tea. Eat some (freshly made) banana bread and be a little quiet for a while.
~Svasti
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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness 