''it's all a sukha dukha rollercoaster!!''
i love that phrase, courtesy of one of my darling yogini friends, it basically means, a ride of both the uplifting sweetly delightful (sukha) up moments as well as the unpleasant suffering (dukha) down moments too!...
this last weekend, as the seasons shift of the cyclical year marked the autumn equinox, i attended a weekend long dance workshop lead by the softly souled andrew holmes, which was all about the landscape of the heart...we were exploring this realm of feelings, namely, fear, anger, sadness, joy and compassion...you know, just the usual human range of emotions :-)
the rollercoaster analogy served me well as the dance opened the doorways to delve deep into the hues and timbre of each of these feelings and their corresponding presence in the texture of my body...so much was learned, felt, uncovered and discovered and like the proverbial accordion, time will open out and reveal further insights
however i was struck by something that permeated through the weekends diving...the echo of which whispers its way through the weave of all my beloved practices, whether yoga, meditation, art making, writing or dance...and it's this:
that everything we experience, all that we feel, is simply a colour and pattern of energy that momentarily wishes to move through us...if we allow it to, it shifts and changes into something else; if we resist it or deny it, or get soo fixated upon it, then it gets stuck, cant move for love nor toffee, its presence overstaying its welcome and creating a possible distortion of the pathways within us...a bit like a traffic jam (is it just me that is fascinated by how traffic jams begin?? is it really the fault of one slow rolling vehicle that a few miles trailing creates a startling out of proportional backlog of barely moving traffic???!! does anyone actually even care???!!!!)...anyways i digress!
so...the point seems to be, whatever we feel, requires us to meet it with a sense of curiousity, acknowledgement and kindness...if we soften into it, breathe into its offerings, treating it like a welcome guest, then we allow it to almost use our body as a stage...a space for it to express itself, perhaps wordlessly, with its own innate choreographer, showing us the greatest performance of soul with us as front seat ticket holders!! in giving what we feel space, and allowing this space to grow from the core of the feeling, out to our fingers and toes, and ultimately beyond our very physicality into the world around us, we become a host, a body almost possessed by the pure spirit of the particular energy...it is through the expression of this energy, that nothing can get stuck, or outstay its welcome!
this is what always amazes me post yoga practice..when once more connected and engaged i feel the vitality of my being right at the edges of my self...its when i feel that those edges have expanded even further, that i am not simply this blessed physical corpus, but that my essence expands further and beyond the realms of my edges...holding onto feelings, through shame, guilt, self consciousness or other tricky demons of doubt, denies our very humanness, and in a way stops us from offering ourselves, all of ourselves, to life!
i was struck at the weekend, when having the gracious priviledge of witnessing others dance and express each of these emotions, how we all show these human feelings of the heart in such different ways, and how mesmerizingly beautiful and touching that was to see...so my lovelies...dont hide away how you feel, dont stop showing others your hearts silent murmurs and cave deep screams...as you offer yourself, you become art, a vessel of spirit, and in that raw vulnerable place of saying 'this is me', we get to wow in wonder at the beauty of your soul
xxx
