Bit of an eclipse, sans vampires

Tags

acupressure points, banana bread, Broken heart, eclipse, energetic patterns, evil frickin’ genius, expectation of further injury, foxhole, Hanuman, Healing, heart meridian, Kinesiology, meridians, solar eclipse, unstuck, vampires, Yoga

Last Sunday (11^th 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

Freshwater

Tags

Anxiety, Broken heart, Fear, Freshwater beach, Harbord beach, Healing, Heart, Love, Love story, Manly beach, mermaids, Northern beaches, Recovery, sandstone, Sydney, Truth

I am awash. Deeply, soulfully and to the bone. I’m surrounded, but not attacked. I am sinking, yet rising too. Opening painfully, my heart speaks a thousand stories at once, most importantly it tells me – Thanks.

Not that I really did anything. Although, I didn’t realise just what sort of load the ol’ ticker had been carrying. As usual.

Yet somehow, the pressure’s been undone.

What remains surrounds me like a warm bath, with ever-so-gentle caresses, asking no questions, and breathing so much easier.

Kinda like this one endless summer day, when, living on the northern beaches of Sydney (paradise, and hardly anyone heads further north than Manly, the least stunning of the beaches on that peninsula)… I strolled the fifteen minute walk to my local – technically, Harbord beach, but colloquially known as Freshwater.

Not very large, as beaches go. A smallish but perfect cove dwarfed by rugged sandstone cliffs, tucked around the corner from north Manly’s shores. Crescent shaped, regardless of high or low tides. And, for a stretch of sand and water not far from the big ol’ city, incredibly beautiful and clear.

That day was one of many lazy Sundays I joyfully wasted inhaling the glory of the world.

It was soooo warm, but not too hot or humid. Just incredibly pleasantly warm. And Freshwater on that day (but also many others), lived up to its name: fresh and clear. Not too salty. And perfectly bath-water warm.

Even better though, since this bathwater never gets cold, doesn’t leave you shivering with a sudden need to get out. And the sun is pleasantly shining. There’s no wind. A perfect beach day burned into my hard drive, filed under “utter perfection”.

Ahhhhh…

I tarried, swimming lazy laps the length of the beach, floating and doing back flips. Strolling the edges, spying on fish schools and lying across the smaller cliff flats, soaking up the radiating warmth, easing tension from my shoulders.

Stone, sky and water and I was blissfully happy, wanting nothing else. Perfectly content just to be.

And while it’s not quite like that now, there’s an evocation of that particular day going on. Not that I’m trying to get back there, just, remembering the comfort it gave my heart, broken as it was at the time.

Actually, I’m convinced my heart’s been broken for years and years on end now, never really healing as I plunged headlong from one inappropriate romance to another… and reaching the end of that line with a violent punch in the face.

My heart, while it’s still managed to break since then (but not over romance), hasn’t been available for the past few years either – and to this day it wears its ‘Closed for Business’ sign, truth be told.

But finally, its telling me stories, many stories, and I’ve pulled up a comfy chair, cat on my lap, having grabbed the largest pot of tea I can muster, to sit there and listen…

~Svasti

Extracting splinters

Tags

Assault, Broken heart, Bunnings, Extracting poison, Moving home, Pain, Post-traumatic stress, PTSD, Repressed memories, Trauma

So… perhaps this is what it was all about?

[Imagined conversation with imaginary surgeon dude]:
“Okay Svasti we’ve just gotta take your heart out of your chest for a while. We’ve just spotted another infection and we need to get it out. But sorry, we’ve got to do it right now and… we don’t actually have any instruments with us. So what we’ll do is just rip your heart out of your chest, locate the piece we need to remove and then, it would just be easier if we used our teeth to cut it out. It’s gonna hurt but trust me, it’ll be worth it.”

Whatever, friggin’ Dr. Surgeon! Go ahead and just don’t mind the screams from my aorta whilst you do your thang. So that’s why I’m having a little trouble breathing right and why this incredible tower of rage continues along its merry way? Geez, give a girl some warning next time…

Shit, shit, fucking shit. Stupid-assed crap fucking brain! Why oh why did you choose right now, huh? Why? WHY? Right, because I didn’t have enough going on, what with the moving house, and trying to settle my cat and find the scissors and a clean plate for dinner and shave my legs for Monday. Not to mention my washing machine, which, somewhere between being moved into storage all those months ago and arriving here – has stopped working.

Then ofcourse, there was the trip to Bunnings. I must’ve thrown away my rubbish bin (that’s a trash can for you Yankees) and somehow I lost my broom. And where the hell did my doormat go? Anyways, I’m driving back in my hire car and I realise I’m not gonna make it back by 3pm so I call and they’re cool with me bringing it back in the morning. When…

So. What happened that night, after he’d left, Svasti?

Shit. Shit! Oh, crap. I guess that one got repressed and hadn’t bothered to show its face again til now. Right now in the car driving back to my new place with a brand new broom and flip top bin.

After I caught my breath, after I was sure he’d left and I’d called the police and they’d blown me off… He sent me a text message. “Hey, I’m really sorry about that. But thanks for all of your love”. Furious and sad and scared I fired back:”Don’t you EVER come near me again or I’ll have you arrested you fucking PIG!”

He thanked me – what the fuck?!! He threw me against the wall, punched me in the face and when he finally left after all the shouting, aggression and threats of further violence… he thanked me. WHAT THE FUCK?!!

What was that? Like he lost the plot, smacked me around and thanked me like some sort of prostitute he paid for rough sex? Like it really wasn’t such a big deal, what happened? He thanked me??!!

It’s only small isn’t it? Just a few seconds or minutes…

So why did this cause my heart to be ripped out so roughly? Why is there this big gaping fucking empty space in the center of my chest right now??

I. Don’t. Understand.

Yet.

I’m hurting. I’m hurting. I’m as mad as a cut snake. I’m furious, gulping large breaths of tears and hot fiery heavy oxygen causing pain on the way in and out… There’s no music soundtrack for this. I feel like puking. Am I wearing leaden weights all the sudden? I feel like screaming. I’m trembling, damnit!!! I don’t know what this means yet, I don’t know why it hurts so much. I’m livid, then I’m numb. Then I’m bawling. I’m not okay. I will be okay. But I’m not okay right now…

If anyone sees that surgeon dude, tell him I want my heart back please. I’m off to… unpack some boxes…

~Svasti

(Next part of the story. Read on!!)