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Have you ever tried to look inside your body, mind and heart? Maybe taken a peek, and then scampered away, when there’s so much going on that you can’t make sense of it?
That’s often the case.
The simple answer is: the entry point is always the present moment.
I said that once to one of my clients who literally rolled her eyes. For her, as for so many of us, making contact with the present moment is complicated.
Or maybe we can understand it, describe it, report what’s happening in the moment – but being with it? Well, that can be a different story.
We step into the moment, this moment, and find myriad thoughts, feelings, meanings, stories, and body sensations arising so quickly that we turn away.
This present moment, as complicated as it can be, is also the place where we find connection with our soul as well as the many parts of us.
The late Michael Stone, a contemporary yoga teacher, wrote, “The only place to investigate the present moment is this moment … because this is all that is actually occurring.”
We hear that, and like my client, might easily scoff.
This, whatever this is for us, is often so big and complicated that we find ourselves shutting down or getting overwhelmed. And then we’re…back to our screens or distraction du jour.
If we can, though, begin to pay attention, in SMALL doses, we can train the body, mind and heart to make the moment granular enough to move into the hugeness of what’s going on… to meet the moment.
Kind of like threading a needle.
It’s really about navigating our fears, blocks, and resistances that have been imprinted over time. Noticing what’s there while learning to surf our way through and around them…then, slowly, we find some ease.
Of course… that’s when we’re not hijacked by our inner experience.
When we’re not hijacked we have an entrée to a dynamic flow of healing.
When we can, we’re linked up to that source of connection we might call “soul,” “true nature,” “consciousness,” “God,” “core self,” “abiding energy, “ or in terms of Internal Family Systems “Self energy.”
Those moments are what Don Stapleton, the founder of Nosara Yoga Institute, defines as a sacred relationship with Self, where everything we perceive engages a dynamic relationship, expanding and including all parts of our self.
This is where we get a sense of belonging to something larger than our insulated self.
Inherent in that is what heals the disconnect of our early wounds.
Welcoming whatever arises, the good, the bad, and everything in between…we’re embraced in the whole, where nothing is separate and everything is connected.
The yogic sage Patanjali, who wove together the strands of what we now call yoga, urges us to learn the many patterns that cloud our mind, heart and body. As we do, we reach the sacred connection with ourselves – something we need to release what veils and clutters our true nature.
It’s why I find the yogic teachings so helpful.
Yogic psychology tells us this is the purpose of our life: to remember who we are under the clutter of life and return to this native, natural connection that flows inside and between us.
What is it that has an acorn become an oak tree?
What has an infant become an old person?
There’s something pushing us inside, urging us to grow, develop and flourish.
The propellant fuel for this is the life force energy that flows consistently, persistently through everything, everyone, everywhere all the time, effortlessly, unimpeded, and with separation or distinction of self/other, and that is not located anywhere but everywhere at the same time.
The great yogi, Muktananda, points out that we experience this life force as a tension in the body, vibrating, urging, nudging us, cajoling us to remember and return to the state of union with everything, everywhere.
This powerful force that is committed to our development happens psychologically as well. Moving in one direction this force (in yoga we call it prana) is relentlessly determined to have us return to our true nature.
Like water rushing down the mountain to the sea, it cannot be stopped. It will clear out anything that is in its way in its singular agenda to return us to our wholeness.
Course, we feel that intensity inside and can easily freak out.
It can be so much, so intense, that we do whatever we can to put a stop to it.
That’s what my Becoming Safely Embodied skills are about – teaching the granular, step by step ways to deal with this inner life force. Harnessing it and training ourselves to be with what’s happening instead of shutting it down.
To find out more click here: www.dfay.com/bse
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