The Visitation

In September and October of this year, I went through a 4-week 200 hour yoga teacher training (YTT). Every week we focused on a different type of yoga. Week one was hatha, week two was vinyasa, week three was yin, and week four was restorative. I had no expectations for this training, but I was also ready for whatever might happen. I had heard stories of other yogi’s reactions and experiences while going through YTT, so I was prepared as much I could be.

Through the first two weeks of the training, I was coursing with energy. I felt like I was plugged into a socket, and I had an unlimited electrical current. When one practices yoga daily, I learned that it was not uncommon for the chakras to open, and the channels to clear to allow energy to flow freely. In the past, I had practiced yoga one to three times a week. During this training, we practiced six to seven times a week. Apparently, I had tapped into a continuous energy source.

It was during the third week I had a powerful and emotional experience. It was during this week, my energy changed. Yin yoga, or really any yoga for that matter, can bring about emotions. I think especially in Yin yoga because the purpose is to hold poses for an extended period of time. When we hold poses, it can help unlock trapped emotions. While I “emotionally” skated by in the first two weeks, feeling a positive emotional charge, it quickly changed in week three.

When week three began, I was looking forward to it because my body was tired of the more intense physical yoga, but I got more than I was expecting. From the very first pose in Yin yoga, I found myself getting angry especially in poses like reclined butterfly, baby dragon, twisted dragon, fire-breathing dragon, frog and sleeping swan. I noticed I was the angriest when I had sensations in my hip flexors and groin. Luckily I knew emotions might arise, but it was still alarming to feel anger taking over for no apparent reason.

When I do feel anger, I know it is not a primary emotion. There is always another emotion trailing behind it that wants attention. I just have to be willing to converse with the feelings, let them surface and uncover themselves from their hiding places, and speak.

On one particular day, I felt more frustrated than usual. As I was holding the yin postures, I felt as if I had no choice. In yin postures, we are supposed to sit with the sensations we feel, as long as it isn’t painful, and just notice what is going on. As I was in dangling pose, also known as uttanasana, I felt anger crawling up through my spine and belly and making its way towards my throat. I felt mad because I didn’t want to feel the sensations that day; I didn’t want to hold the poses for 5 minutes. But I eventually backed off of the pose. While I was hanging, I rested my hands on blocks instead. Suddenly, I felt less angry and more like I had a choice. Once my body realized that, it actually started to open more.

As we moved through the yin yoga practice, anger kept popping up, and I continued to make the choice to sit with it. In one particular pose, baby dragon, I started to struggle. As I felt all the tingly and uncomfortable sensations in my hips and groin, the anger ignited like a fueled fire. As my anger peaked, I started to cry. It can be quite maddening to experience emotions with no apparent cause why. I was also battling with the fact that I was crying in front of other people. I have no issue with crying, as I find it to be a good release, but normally I am in the safety of my house and not in front of strangers. In spite of my reservations, I didn’t want to deny this release, these emotions, so I allowed it to happen.

As my tears fell, I started to feel my mom’s presence. My mom passed away in December 2014, and there have been moments where I felt like she was around especially right after she passed away. It was usually through dreams or symbols like songs on the radio, double rainbows, and birds and their behaviors. But over the last two years, there has been a drought. I have felt alone left wondering if I had disappointed my mom or if she had just simply moved on.

As suddenly as my anger appeared, so did my mom’s love. My tears turned to joy and sadness. As I held the pose, the feeling of my mom’s love intensified. I was in a cocoon of security and comfort like being in her womb. It energetically felt as if my mom had her arm wrapped around my shoulder. I hadn’t felt a reciprocated bond in years and certainly not like these feelings I was having.

My tears continued to fall taking my anger with it. I felt wrapped in love. We moved through our practice and more postures. My tears continued to fall because I missed my mom so much. My mom was there; her spirit was tangible, or at least her love was. As we settled into one of our final poses, reclined butterfly pose, I felt my mom again. I felt the actual weight of her love like an invisible blanket had been draped across me. I was able to feel, receive and accept her love.

There are so many times I just want to share my life with my mom. I miss talking with her daily. I want to hear how her day went and what she experienced. I miss having the one person who knew me in a way no one else could; the woman who gave me life. I will never share a similar bond with anyone else. What I am left with are saved voicemails from her, photographs that just keep getting older and a peace lily plant from her memorial.

To have this momentary connection of my mom being present again reminded me of our bond: the love of two souls who agreed to be a part of each other’s lives through birth, life, death and rebirth.

Solitary Confinement

I am almost halfway through a 4-week yoga teacher training. Today my assignment is to disconnect from the world. I am supposed to try to not talk, I am not supposed to use my phone for any purpose, I should not use the internet or watch any television, and I am supposed to avoid any distractions that take me away from my “self.” I have decided throughout this day to blog about my experience because I am allowed to write, journal and read if it helps me to connect to my “self.”

I have no idea what to expect from this experience. I am not someone who shies away from alone time. I spend a lot of time in nature; I love to run, do yoga, write and journal, and I enjoy reading. But I already have this feeling of, “What do I do with myself?” I am one hour into my silence, and I have been home for 30 minutes. I already feel like I have so much time. Since I have been home, I have washed a load of laundry, I folded a load of laundry, I took my dog out to use the bathroom, I made breakfast, and I am working on this blog. My day feels like an expansive canyon that continues to spread out. I am able to imagine all sorts of possibilities and options.

I want to run on a new trail I discovered. I want to take my dog for a walk. I want to write. I want to play on a new disc golf course by my house. I want to continue working on a puzzle I am in the middle of. I want to meditate and practice my yoga postures. I want to take a nap…But I realize part of this assignment is just to be. To be an actual human “being”, not just doing. But the things I truly enjoy doing connect me to my authentic self. I am not just trying to fill my day with meaningless actions.

I think some of the problems we experience here in the States are filling our time with things that don’t matter. We just try to fill “dead” space. So we zone out on the television. We spend hours down a Youtube rabbit hole. We will be on social media for hours on end. Then we find ourselves more disconnected from ourselves, and we wonder where the time has went. Another problem we run in to is zoning out on the things we have to do. We take ourselves out of moments like when we shower, when we cook, when we walk our dog, when we do laundry and so on. We let our minds drift while we do these tasks, and we just give moments away; we just give our treasured life away by not being present. So my main focus is to do what ignites my inner flame. To do the things that take me home within myself.

I also want to allow even more time for self-reflection. I am two weeks into my training, and I am realizing and able to see how much I have grown and learned over the years. Since this training began, I feel bad ass. I feel secure; I feel powerful and beautiful. There have been some obstacles, but I feel deeply rooted in my “self.” I trust myself, I trust my feelings, and I trust the things I know. I have not wavered. This isn’t in a “I know better than everyone else” or “I am always right” sort of way. This is in a “I know who I am, what my boundaries are, and what I expect out of myself and other people” sort of way. It is a strong feeling of self. Of feeling cemented in who I am.

***

I have now been in silence for 6 hours. I took a 90 minute nap which was refreshing. I also walked my dog through our downtown area. I actually felt like a voyeur. I was peering into this world, the people moving about, and the cars driving by, yet I felt separate from it all. Besides walking through the streets and past other people, I had no tether to my surroundings. I just felt like an observer.

I also ran the trail I found by my house. I have driven past this trail for almost two years, and I just started to notice it a year ago. This seemed like a great time to actually run it, and I love trying new running routes. I love the surprise of not knowing what is coming around each turn, what I will see, and what the terrain will be like. This run turned out to be quite fitting for my current circumstance. I didn’t see any other people on the trail. The trail followed the river, and it followed the outskirts of town. While I was on this run, I was once again a voyeur. I watched the cars driving over the bridge unaware that I was spying on them. I saw my town from a distance seeing it from a whole new angle. I was really able to see each individual house that was built into the hills of the city. I was also on the side of the river I had never been on. There were herons wading. Several times they flew ahead of me leading me along the path. A hummingbird zipped by stopping at a flower. The grass has been freshly cut and it awoke my sense of smell.

The trail ended up being 2 miles long, so I ran an out and back which made it 4 miles. I ended up in a moving meditation as well. I really connected to myself and my surroundings. I took turns focusing on my different senses as I ran. I listened to the sounds around me: car engines, plane engines, and bird calls. I felt the sensations in my body: my leg muscles tightening as I pushed off the ground, my arms pumping to the rhythm of my feet, the last of the summer breeze blowing through, and the air flowing in and out of my lungs. I focused on my sense of smell as well, but the freshly cut grass was so powerful it just dominated. I looked around me and devoured the sights: the shallow river with wading birds, the uneven trail with banana slugs and their slime sticking to the blades of grass, the green trees comprised of individual, unique leaves, and the mountains sitting in the skyline.

***

My evening is starting to wind down. I have some studying to do, and a meditation and breath work to do. But it has been helpful to write about my feelings and experiences as they happen. It is helping me deeply connect with the moment I am in. Writing this blog is bringing up a new perspective as well. This feels like my one link to the outside world. I have no contact with my loved ones. I have no real contact with the outside world. It is just my dog and I in this clear bubble, and I am not even conversing with my dog. But writing out my experiences knowing I plan on sharing them with others gives me a strange feeling of connection. It is like a spider web; I am the circular center and the filament branches outward connecting me to others.

I think we are also used to sharing  ourselves, our lives and our experiences with others. We either physically share moments with people, we talk, write or text our experiences to others, and then there is even social media where we can share our daily lives. Today has been interesting because at this moment, no one actually knows what I am going through or what I have done. But in this solitude, I have felt that invisible thread that ties every last one of us together.

Goddess in Paradise

When I travel, there is so much to see in the world that I rarely go back to the same place twice. But there are a few places that lure me back. (And I actually moved to one of them). One of those places is Nassau and Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Every time I visit I seem to connect with others and leave with a deeper understanding of humanity and myself.

My most recent trip was in January of this year. My aunt was looking for a spiritual getaway, and I had been to the Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island and thought it was the perfect place for her, and me as well. Our initial plan was to take the daily yoga classes, swim in the ocean, and attend a three-day workshop about divine timing and synchronicity. As irony would have it, or divine timing, the workshop we were going to attend was cancelled. The only other workshop available was one about cultivating your inner divine goddess. As the Rolling Stones said, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you just might find you get what you need.” Cultivating my inner divine goddess was exactly what I needed.

This trip’s theme ended up being about connecting deeper with other women and with myself. It was a beautiful experience but quite trying. All I have ever wanted was to be seen and understood for who I was. No masks, no hiding, just being vulnerable and honest. Even though this was what I wanted, I didn’t realize how hard it was to let it happen. There was an initial fear associated with standing in my own power of who I was. It was funny how deep doubt can be ingrained all the way to the cellular level.

The workshop was held on a large wooden platform outside as the ocean air blew through and about 20 women sat in a circle. I was surrounded by women who were powerful and beautiful and looking around this circle making eye contact with all these women created a palpable energy. I started to see more in these women than just what was tangible. Locking eyes with each individual woman felt like a camera that sharply catches its focal point then everything in the background is hazy.

The workshop leader asked many questions which we answered and shared with the group. The one question that caught my attention was, “How would life be different if I believed the divine goddess worked through me?” The question made me realize how I still felt separate from the divine, how I still felt separate from myself. I could see it present in others but somehow it wasn’t in me. But if the divine goddess flowed through me, I would have no fear of standing in my truth. All the self-doubt, criticizing, and giving my power away to others would slip away. It was a huge turning point for me. I had this moment of clarity and self-acceptance. This moment of feeling connected to myself and every person around me. To hear other women share their same stories and to hear other women share how they already honored themselves was refreshing. As these discussions continued, it felt satisfying to have these conversations with other women. To be honest without any repercussions or judgments and to feel supported.

One of the things I love about visiting the Ashram is the questions people ask one another. When we normally meet someone in our everyday lives, the first question we ask, after getting someone’s name, is “What do you do?” This question bothers me so much. I have always felt we are so much more than our jobs. It is a surface level question; it is safe. It probably doesn’t help either that I don’t have an answer that most people understand. But at the Ashram, the first question asked, after we get someone’s name, is “Why are you here?” It is such a simple question, yet it always has rich answers. Everyone at the Ashram is on a journey and seems to have an amazing story.

I remember one morning after breakfast I headed to the beach. I was wading in the water watching the cool waves roll into my thighs then pull the sand and small shells out from under my feet. A beautiful young woman was standing 10 feet away doing the same exact thing as me. We made eye contact and smiled. She said, “I will do it if you do it.” We both had been standing there for quite some time deciding when the ripe moment would be to duck under the surface of the waves but neither one of us had made a move. I let out a long sigh through a puckered lip smile and hesitantly said okay. While the sun was sitting brightly in the sky, the ocean still had a chill to her. But we counted to three and both bobbed under the surface. I stayed under for a while to let my body adjust to the new temperature. I popped back up and the young woman was floating close to me.

We started with the “Ashram” introductions as we treaded water. Her name was Erin, and she was on escape from life. She visited the Ashram at least once a year because it replenished her body, mind and soul. Right now her life was hectic, and she needed some quiet reflection time. The Ashram always offered that to her. She was a successful business woman who moved from New York to London. She was single, never married and didn’t have any children. She had spent her 20’s traveling the world then she settled in London and started her own business. She could have fooled me. I thought she was in her 20’s still, but she was in her 40’s. She had a youthful, gentle energy and a radiant smile and skin. She said she loved owning her own company, but it took so much of her energy. She wasn’t able to travel and do all the things she loved like she had been able to in her 20’s. She thought about selling her company so she could be freer, but she was afraid she had become too accustomed to the lifestyle she was living.

She shook her head with a smile on her face then asked about me. Why was I here at the Ashram? I told her this was my second visit here. This time I came with my aunt who needed an escape as well and wanted to have a spiritual getaway. At the time, I didn’t call myself an Adventurer Explorer, so I always said I wasn’t actively working because I had been afforded some opportunities that allowed me to take some time off. In actuality, and this applies now as well, my job is me. My job is to rediscover myself, to take time to have fun with myself, and truly experience the joy in life. I normally didn’t share much more than that, but there was a rapport with Erin. There was an ease to our conversation. My story began to unfold right there in the ocean. I told Erin both my parents had passed away from cancer in 2014 six months apart from each other. While my parents didn’t leave me with millions of dollars, I was still left enough money to be able to spend some time traveling and exploring and following my whims.

Death is always an abrupt wake up call to life. Watching two people pass away who wanted more time to live is unnerving. When they passed, my mom was 61 and my dad was 65. I don’t think I ever took life for granted, but I think it is easy to get lulled into auto-pilot when cruising through life. And I don’t want to miss the ride.

After I finished my story, Erin nodded voraciously understanding the need to not just live, but to experience life. She was a fellow life traveler and appreciated others who shared that common interest.

There is power in connecting with another human being. Erin and I talked for 30 minutes in that ocean. We shared hopes, fears, joys and concerns; we were vulnerable; we were honest; we were our true selves. In that short time, Erin inspired me, and I was in awe. She had amazing experiences of traveling that she shared with me from spending time with monks in India to experiencing an intense Native American ceremony in Oregon. It made me crave traveling even more. To hear her story of how she started her own company and moved to another country, another continent, alone elicited excitement in me for all the possibilities that life has to offer.

She was proof of what could happen when we take chances and risks and believe in ourselves.