Category Archives: healing

Sep16

To Be Held

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As a teacher I can be in control;
I tell you what to do,
and I expect you to do it.
But when I’m the student,
I get antsy…I want to fiddle with things.
Tonight I was a student
in a breathwork class.
I remembered the necessity of trust
and surrender,
allowing the teacher to hold the space for me.
It felt strange at first,
because I am chronically the one who does the holding.
As I breathed
and the layers of my emotional body were peeled back
to reveal what was percolating underneath it all,
I remembered the saying
How you do anything is how you do everything.
I thought about how LIfe as my teacher
must get so frustrated with me, my fiddling.
Life just wants me to trust and surrender,
allowing the space to be held for me,
allowing myself to be held.

Sep8

Worth It

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I’m turning toward the one within
who has been suffering so long
trying to be good.
Sitting on my cushion,
tapping on the points,*
releasing old stories,
crying tears of old grief,
something waits for me.
Behind the stories,
before the stories,
before the layers were piled on top of me,
there was just this Self,
this essence of being,
open, clear, available to the present moment.
Uncovering that Self,
listening, seeing, and celebrating her,
setting her free to live and love authentically,
this is why I do this work.
It is so worth it.
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*I’ve been practicing EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) daily since mid-May. It has gotten me throught the worst moments of terror and anxiety about the future, and grief, shame and regret about the past. It has also helped me to stay sober when I had moments of wanting to numb out with various societally acceptable ways of escaping one’s feelings. Do you practice EFT or have you ever heard of it? There aren’t too many people in my sphere who have. I have found it so helpful that I’m feeing called to share the practice.

Sep1

I Kept Dancing

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This evening at dusk
I hiked down to the reservoir,
admired the beauty of the water,
the sky, the play of light on everything,
the way the breeze was ruffling my hair…
I put in my ear buds,
played a medicine song* on my phone
and sang along.
I stepped barefoot onto some rock slabs
that sloped into the water,
stretched my arms to the sky.
Then I began to dance.
I felt so wonderful and free.
Then I noticed across the way,
on the other side of the water,
maybe fifty yards away
someone was sitting there
on an outcropping of rock with a dog,
watching me.
A young man, he was too far away
for me to tell how old…maybe a teenager?
And guess what?
I KEPT DANCING.
I thought to myself,
Well, he gets to be entertained, then.
And I kept dancing, and doing yoga,
because it felt good.
I just kept singing and dancing,
and he just kept watching me
from across the water, with his dog.
I danced unselfconsciously.
I danced for the wind and the water
and for my heart that was yearning open
in the setting sun.
I danced for the woman who grieved for two years
the loss of her husband’s love
and who is now free to love herself
better than any man ever has.
Then the breeze picked up
as twilight descended.
I collected my things, slipped my shoes back on,
ready to hike back up to my car.
I turned around to see the young man across the water
beginning his climb up the rocks with his dog.
I put my hands together at my heart and bowed to him.
I silently wished that he would find his heart’s true joy.
I’ll never know who my audience of one was…
I’m just glad that I kept dancing.
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*I listened to “Healing Angels,” “Amataye,” and “Ayahuasca Takimuki” from the Sacred Valley Tribe collection of medicine songs.

Aug26

Strong

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I’m amazed I’ve been able to keep up this pace,
2-3 yoga classes a day for two months,
but I’m not just doing this for me,
I’m doing it for my kids and for my students too.
I’m doing it for the ripples of peace and goodwill
that flow out into the world
when I make just one person’s day a little brighter.
It’s amazing how I can find the strength to go on,
day after day, feeling tired, feeling wiped out,
feeling like I have nothing left at the end of the day,
and yet, each morning I wake up,
and I’m ready to do it all over again.
This feels like I’m being trained for something even bigger.
This feels like an opportunity to flex
my resilience muscles,
my endurance muscles,
my persistence muscles,
my faith muscles.
A year ago, I felt weak and destroyed,
devastated, betrayed, abandoned…
But now look…
Just look at how strong I am now.

Aug22

I Feel Good

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More progress…
Was able to pay the dentist
right after having my teeth cleaned
(not cheap, out of pocket)
when the last two times before today
I had to say
Please mail me the invoice.
Thinking ahead about finding enough work
I reached out to my colleagues
and asked them to consider me
if they needed coverage for their classes.
I cooked an amazing dinner
for myself and my kids
and ate heartily
(yes, the woman who was diagnosed with anorexia
a year and a half ago, who was down to 98 lbs, yes,
that woman ate well and enjoyed her food)
And the biggest progress of all:
I feel good.
Let me say that again:
I FEEL GOOD
Hallelujah,
I FEEL GOOD!

Aug15

Take Your Medicine

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Focus on the positive
Keep going
Keep breathing
Even when you’re crazy tired
or feeling just plain crazy
keep going
keep breathing.
This moment will pass.
Nothing lasts forever.
Everything is temporary.
Even when you think all is lost,
it isn’t.
Flowers grow in the cracks of cement,
rains come to drench the parched earth.
The stars come out whether we see them or not
and the cicadas hum their strange song
whether or not we can hear them.
In this great medicine wheel of life
there is always something being offered by this moment.
Summon your courage
and be willing to take your medicine.