Tree Pose, Balance & Compassion …Random Roads to Healing & Awareness

Picture below…perhaps one view of the “elusive bridge” I refer to below…read on!  Picture is from a place in Denmark that caught my attention this summer…now I know why!

I had no intentions of writing tonight! I am actually trying to recover from a trying week of changes and am taking a bit of a break from writing part IV of the “When I Grow Up” series of posts.  More on that later!

The kids are back at school for another year and we are all adjusting to the new routine of a different way of life that comes with the freshness of a new season.  On this journey I am constantly learning to embrace change, and learning to make tiny adjustments to my way of looking at and being with myself, the people and situations in my life. In a way, it’s sort of like Mother Nature with her changing seasons … nudging us all to let go and embrace the new, as just a part of life…to welcome it no matter how much we may be attached to the way things “are” or “were”.

It’s just not my kids that have gone back to school. It seems that the curriculum that I have been enrolled in at the University of Life just stepped up things a notch or two!  This week I also started hot yoga classes.  Although Yoga is not new to me and is something I have “dabbled in” over the past few years, hot yoga in a heated room that is 39 to 42 degrees Celsius is a new experience!  I have committed to 30 days of daily practice and will reserve forming any kind of formal opinion on whether this is for me until that time. But, standing in tree pose this morning, paying attention to my breath must have done something for my awareness since I find myself up and writing at this late hour. Something in the way that I look at things…especially difficult emotion filled “things” shifted for me today!  I can’t tell if it’s just a slight shift or radical one from where I have been…it feels like it can be both…slight and radical at the same time.  Feel free to form your own opinion!

On recent posts I have written about “relationship potholes” and navigating them skilfully.  This is a difficult thing to do…especially navigating around family and some very sore and sensitive wounds.  This has perhaps been my biggest area of stress this summer and one I am constantly trying to meet with some kind of equanimity …that is when my awareness is present enough to no get hijacked by strong hurricane type emotions.

I have been realizing something this entire week but this yoga class today seems to have crystallized things that much more allowing me to see a bit more clearly.  Let me explain instead of talking in code…

There are parts of me that have been really struggling with coming to terms with the kind of relationship I have had with someone close for all these many years.   Approaching this “situation” in a new way, I am applying lessons learned from the past and learning to really trust in my own internal wisdom. Cultivating this newer way of seeing more clearly has allowed me to stay a bit more grounded and avoid a lot of the unnecessary drama that I might have previously gotten drawn into.  The thing is though, this is a situation where the wounds…the real roots of the issues… go way, way deep on both sides of the fence;  all the way back to the place where most of us hold much of our pain….childhood!  Seeing this clearly years and decades later is almost impossible when there has been layers upon layers of other “stuff” that has been built and has grown on top of all these “old hurts”.  It’s actually quite tempting and easy to just blame one another for the triggers and miss the real buttons that pushed them to begin with!  On both corners of this boxing ring, mine and this other person in question, there are minefields everywhere exploding, ready to explode, or have exploded in the past. 

How does one get to any kind of a peace bridge when the way there is littered with visible and invisible explosives!

This is what my yoga class and the rest of today helped unfold!   Not “the answer” to the above question but rather “a way”, or “one possible way” of approaching things.  When I write, my intention is to only write what I know and can speak to from having walked down that same road so the same holds true here…I won’t presume that I know another person’s feelings.  My observations are my own, seen through my own particular and I am sure… somewhat coloured lenses!

It occurred to me that in order for me to get to this elusive bridge (let’s just call it “bridge” and not a “peace bridge” as I referred to earlier as that might be a lofty goal at this point), I need to transport myself to a different point of departure!   Why? Well…let me tell you.  From where I am standing now, I can’t seem to see through all the old hurts, the anger, the resentment, even hate in some instances to see clearly through to finding my way to middle ground.  However, losing my balance in tree pose today and making tiny adjustments with my feet, wobbling, falling, making more adjustments and finally finding balance …brought into my awareness, a new way of approaching this difficulty in my personal life.  Lying in bed this evening, reviewing the day I realize that when I went over certain events I could observe myself getting  angry, mad, upset and resentful…ways of being that I try hard to no longer to fertilize or grow in my life.  The “shift” happened when I was able to consciously re-direct my awareness to another starting point.  If I approach the current situation from a real place of “feeling” instead of “thinking” and allow myself to start feeling from this different place…say childhood and allow for the unfolding of all that is stored there to come forward and reveal themselves regardless of whether they were mine or the other persons, then almost immediately I am on the bridge!  In fact, I am able to cross over it mindfully to meet compassion and caring and even love for the situation, myself, the other person…for all that we have both gone through to get us to this place of division and distrust where we are today!

Maybe I could have said this in fewer words…but I have no desire to edit at this hour!  The message if I repeated it a few times, is worth repeating.  What seems impossible and even undesirable viewed from one place has the potential to shift instantly with tiny adjustments made with awareness and the intention to heal….a new doorway with a more clearer view is then able to reveal itself.  It is elusive though…intention and awareness seem to be key ingredients.

I don’t feel that this “approach” is in any way an avoidance of the old issues or of facing reality as it is.  I am aware of the reality of the situation and of my own stormy emotions.  The skilful part comes from realizing that movement cannot come from a place when one is standing knee deep in mud.  When the gravity of the current state has too much force to sway you off balance, then it is much more skilful to notice the storm and while still keeping an eye on it, choose to start the journey forward from another place…for me this place just happened to be located in childhood!

Again, since it’s my goal to write things fresh as they unfold whenever it is possible, I can’t share an outcome for the situation at hand.  I do know though that outcomes matter less then I once thought.  The shift in me is a monumental achievement in itself!  It’s allowed me to find and cross a bridge that I thought was lost to me for the time being.  From this new place, I can really tend to this other neglected part of my garden. Compassion has refused to take root and grow here.  Tonight, regardless of “outcomes”, I feel as though I’ve been granted this tiny seedling to nurture and grow!