Walking this morning on local hiking trails, letting my dogs roam off leash, I chose a trail that is rockier than most to avoid the plethora of mountain bikes and dogs with their people out for adventure. The morning is picture perfect! The young leaves of spring have just started to fill in the negative space between the branches so there is still much clarity in the views. Over the next month, the view between the tree limbs will become opaque as the leaves mature, and the Arkansas River flowing below will all but be obscured. The air warmed quickly from the overnight chill, and I soon found myself carrying more than I was wearing. Birds sang spring songs, filling the silence with their joy.
In yoga one of my favorite phrases is to remind my students to meet any resistance in their body with openness and kindness rather than trying to muscle through it, creating strain or pain. I encourage them to accept and to welcome the message the constriction and tension is bringing to their awareness. There is actually a chemical reaction that takes place in the muscle when the letting go begins to take place. All most of us need is a little patience and compassion for that place of holding on. It's only trying to protect us. On it’s own time without judgment, the tension will begin to diminish. This is also a core practice in Yoga Nidra meditations.
This isn’t only true for physical sensations of tightness, but what you are holding on to mentally or emotionally -- a question I often pose in class. I found myself confronted with resisting thoughts this morning during my hike. Finally, I had given myself enough silence to realize I am holding on to an old pattern started in childhood around making decisions.
As I walked I chewed on the pros and cons of going to visit my daughter and grandchildren this week, feeling some pressure to make a decision.. Somehow the somatic work from my yoga therapy teacher training seemed to kick in. I asked myself where in my body am I feeling this struggle with indecisiveness. There it was – an old familiar knot in my solar plexus, the area below the heart above the belly button.
Wow! Real constriction. What am I supposed to do? – oh, yeah, just witness, just notice without judging. That’s so much easier said than done. My tendency to want to shove it away, avoid the discomfort immediately kicked in. Thoughts of how often I’d been embarrassed by not being able to make a decision floated through. I could hear, “Hurry up and decide, Dian. We haven’t got all day.” I felt it all in my stomach, then my heart center and finally the lump in my throat. This time I did just let the sensations and the frustrations weave in and out of my awareness for awhile. I just noticed without judgment. Boy, were they uncomfortable!
I recently have also been exploring opposites in the iRest Yoga Nidra work of Richard Miller, Ph.D. I thought to bring in the opposite of my current emotions. The feelings were constriction, confusion, and frustration. Asking myself what are the opposites of constriction and confusion, I got clarity and expansion. In the work of opposites, I move my awareness to the confusion and constriction, feeling it in the body, noticing the images that came to my mind. I became aware in my body the tightness of confusion. I didn’t shun it or try to push it away; I welcomed it, the messages that is brings, and let it be.
Then I switched to the feelings of clarity and expansion, asking where in my body I felt those sensations. An image of arms spread wide and head back and up welcoming the sky, the day and whatever was to come. I really felt it more in my heart and throat.
Then back to the sensations of the indecisiveness for a few minutes and then to expansion. I switched back and forth several times. Then I asked myself if I could hold both the opposites at the same time. That was a challenge, but I think I did for awhile.
So what is my take away from this? I wasn’t sure except that a little more acceptance of that part of me that struggles with decisions. And the reminder that an appropriate decision can not come in that state of constriction. I continued my walk being present with the sounds and sights and feelings of the spring morning in the woods. Whenever I started to chew on those pros and cons again, I came back to the five senses and what I could see, feel, hear and smell.
It was then that I noticed a Vulture flying overhead and a Crow began to screech. Then a butterfly flew in front of me. Vulture cleans up the debris of decaying animals with it’s small teeth that can’t get its own prey. One of my teachers, a therapist named Mary, saw her totem animal as Vulture as she cleaned up the debris in the lives of her clients. Crow caws truth; cries for authenticity and the laws that bring us into alignment with our truth. Butterfly is transformation. What a powerful bunch of animals to connect with as I released my hold on an uncomfortable but familiar pattern! What a powerful technique for transforming, for healing!
I do a powerful technique called co-meditation, which is in part the process being described above. If you have feelings, beliefs, thoughts, habits, patterns that keep recurring in your life, perhaps it could help you, too. Contact me for a free Clarity Call, and we can discuss that!
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