Love would laugh a lot

It follows on a little from my previous blog post, still this inherent fear around safety and security keeps coming up, there are many layers to it and it is deeply embedded so it is inevitable that it will take time to truly get to the root of it. I have a feeling I am not alone here though, that it is an inherent fear for many of us, passed down from generation to generation.

I’ve noticed that the more I try and free my centre, my ‘core’, the more I go into free-fall. This is a scary feeling because it is unknown and uncertain, so I find myself grasping for anything concrete to bring certainty back again. A few days ago, when my teacher guided me to a place where I was not gripping in my core, I felt an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety, and accompanying nausea. I honestly felt as if I was free falling and I wondered if I might have to stop the practice, such was my fear.

The feeling didn’t last, and it made me very curious because the practice was taking me deeper into my feet and hips, so that I would also lessen the grip of my thighs, part of the fight, flight and fear musculature, and free more of my knees, which hold a lot of fear (you’ve only got to think of the saying, “my knees buckled from under me”). I began to realise how much my thighs hang on, and my knees and core tighten as a kind of defensive “I will not get harmed and I can run away” position. 

That’s all very well and good, but this pattern has become unhelpful. It’s not so much that I need to change my thighs, it’s more so that I want to feel more of life, not be so restricted and limited by patterns that I have developed over my lifetime in reaction to fear. I know that I am safe and secure, that we are lovingly held by the creator, but on some level, I still struggle to rest easily into this.

So when the practice did reveal more of the free fall feeling and the fear and nausea that accompanied this, I paid attention. I began to notice what I did in response to this feeling, not in that moment during the session but later, in my life lived off the mat. 

I noticed how I tried to grasp for something concrete, for a sense of security, questioning whether it was about time I got a sensible, stable and secure job, with a guaranteed monthly salary and a pension - this in contrast to the insecure job of teaching yoga and Reiki, when you’re never quite sure how much you might earn week to week, let alone month to month.

I noticed how I begin to lose perspective of the bigger picture, my world becoming smaller as I focus on my perceived threat to survival rather than re-membering oneness and being in service. I drop into ‘thinking’ brain, trying to ‘work it out’ and I start running to give me much needed (or so I feel) headspace, and although it is unconscious, I use it as a way of strengthening myself.

I become increasingly rigid in my mind, as the running makes me more rigid in body, the two a reflection, and it is this rigidity that restricts my consciousness. In these moments of perceived loss of safety, I also cling to my opinions as if they alone will make me safe. I struggle to find the middle ground and will become more argumentative. I also withdraw into myself, become increasingly serious. 

I fall out of alignment with soul, feeling separate and vulnerable. But really what happens is I get more controlling, as if this, on some level, gives me a false sense of security, as if I really am able to control the outcome, which is of course impossible, at least impossible without getting extremely stressed!

Initially I attempt to control my immediate environment, and in the past, this would have meant obsessively and compulsively tidying and cleaning. Now it’s not quite so obsessive or compulsive but the tendency is still there! 

I also try to control my behaviour, trying to live up to my extremely high and unrealistic ideals as if this alone will keep me safe. In reality, all that happens though, is the inner critic gets involved, and I berate myself with a whole heap of criticism for my various shortfalls to the extent that my spirit plummets and my toxicity levels increase. 

The inherent perfectionist does not let go easily. It was this pattern that fed the eating disorder, in an attempt to control the food I ate. It doesn’t get much more controlling than controlling your food intake and therefore your nourishment, it’s a very cruel form of self-harm, because you are never doing the job as well as you should and therefore the inner critic goes wild.

There is also the control of everyone else. Not easy for those around us, and yet we are all doing it to some extent, and if we’re not, then we’re numbing out instead. 

I notice how all of this sends me into a negative and downward spin - I’ve a sense that this embedded threat-based, negativity bias is the default programming of our consciousness.  In the past I would have popped straight into depression, but the patterns have shifted over time, I’m aware of them for a start, and depression doesn’t arrive so easily, if at all, now.

I know how awful it feels when it does though, because it is difficult to find your way out again and the negative voice is all consuming, fed by the anxiety you are feeling and that in turn feeds the anxiety, and thus it is a downward spiral where you give yourself an enormously hard time, and life can feel as if it has become pointless and hopeless, without purpose.

The spirit slumps even more and the soul is absolutely ignored as the ego has taken over complete control. All this because of that feeling, the free fall and the uncertainty that this brings. 

There is a way out though, I’m seeing it more clearly. There have been signs and I have been trying to pay attention, see more of the roots and how they might be gently eased, the soil changed, by a shift in perspective and energy. 

It’s helpful to notice the patterns and the way in which we react to what we are feeling and to our life as it then unfolds. Recognising our disappointments and giving voice to them, so that they are no longer sat inside us eating away at us. 

When the negative spiral begins, if we can catch it early enough, nip it in the bud, it’s helpful to try to do something that lifts the spirt and soothes the soul, like getting to the beach, watching the sunrise and sunset, walking on the cliffs with a friend, being out in the elements, taking a dog out, just getting outside somehow and being distracted from our thoughts by being with someone else or an animal, something that occupies our attention.

Recognising that fate sometimes takes over our life and unforeseen events happen and we feel you have no choice. We always have a choice, but this rests in how we deal with the situation that fate brings to us. It’s helpful to look for the positive outcome and where it is leading us. We might try to recognise the new direction or opportunity as it unfolds from the chaos.  If our perspective is positive then the outcome will be positive. 

The key is not to strive against the situation but to see beyond the negative. Every single thing that happens has positive repercussions, even if it is hard to see it at the time. Ayurveda supports a positive attitude as a path to healing, cultivating balance and wholeness. 

Cultivating gratitude changes things, brings in a perspective shift as an antidote to the negative. Seeing that the situation could be worse and remembering that there is always choice, always another way. 

Self-compassion is essential too. Witnessing the patterns of potential harm caused by self, and doing something about them, changing them, cultivating compassion, nurturing the spirit in the process. 

I’m finding self-compassion easier these days, and it has become clearer to me that the focus this year is about cultivating greater friendliness towards myself, more jovialness, the feeling I feel when I spend time with my closest friends, when there is humour and ease, a recognition of one’s perceived faults but in a friendly way, with laughter and compassion – a greater recognition of one’s humanness without judgement.

This is a whole other language than one of ego and the duality of being good or bad or this or that. There is only what is and a gentle recognition that the ‘what’ is marvellous and wonderful and all it that was ever needed or needs to be. There’s nothing then to berate or harm, nothing to correct or fix, nothing to put down or in any way criticise. It’s incredibly liberating.

Self-compassion is both an attitude and an action, we take on an attitude of compassion for self and we take steps to action this. I always had an issue about self-care and I think it’s because it was more of an action, another tick box opportunity, ‘massage taken, self-care done, tick box’, ‘yoga class attended, self-care done, tick box’. It doesn’t encourage us to change on the inside in quite the same way as self-compassion does. Self-care is very much doing, and self-compassion is more so about being; something has to soften within us.

When it comes to gratitude, I can hear societal voices asking me if I am really sure that all I have is enough? This, because we are always focused on wanting more; more badges, more qualifications, more money, more houses, more cars, more possessions, more stuff. As if looking outside of ourselves will bring us the inner contentment that we ultimately seek. We all want to be happy, peaceful and contented, but isn’t that something that has to come from within?

Thus the continuous looking outside ourselves is unhelpful and unnecessary. When is enough ever enough? In many respects, if we can simplify our outside world, then we will encourage a greater sense of simplicity within too – there will be less to distract us. But this does mean we have to find the courage to live our simple way, to let go of our educational, societal and capitalistic conditioning that tells us we should always be wanting more, achieving more and obtaining more than what we already have; no more striving or achieving for the sake of it!

It is all very well recognising these patterns and understanding them, but I wanted to touch them in my body too.  I have been taking regular SHEN sessions with Jo Henton, which have supported this process, it’s a good fit with my approach to yoga practice. Each week a new delight has revealed itself, more of the fundamental imbalance in the root, which has given rise to a hardness and holding in the solar plexus and the heart.

This week, the session took me to a feeling that I have been trying to uncover for a good while now, but didn’t know what it was until it revealed itself to me – it was a extremely deep yearning for my mum. I would have felt this when I was little, perhaps the drop off at play school, a temporary separation from her, and it brought with it intense sadness and grief for the loss of her in that moment.

I wondered if this might be the mother wound that people talk about; not a harm done by my mum but an intense love, so deep, so powerful, that I didn’t know what to do with it, as it brought with it the opposite pain of loss, this feeling that now revealed itself to me, like an old friend, there was a deep recognition and a relief to finally feel this again, after years of hiding from it, because of my deep love and longing for my mum and all the love she has for me, for all her attempts to keep me safe, I have never doubted my mum’s love or her devotion to me, and I know myself to be extremely lucky.

The yearning was primal, free-fall, nauseating, deep in my solar plexus and there was a very real aching, almost like a stabbing pain in my right upper arm bone.  As I felt all of this my shoulders moved without my apparent control, flicking, releasing deep tension that had been held there most of my life. 

I have always had over developed shoulders, not so noticeable now as they were when I carried more of the weight of the world upon them. I blamed surfing and netball, but as I have deepened my awareness of the manner in which our body keeps score, I have been increasingly aware of the emotional tightness and hardness that they have held. 

I suddenly realised the reason I have done all I can to avoid feeling this feeling of intense yearning, loss and sadness for my mum, because it is so very yucky and unpleasant. I suddenly realised why I had stopped letting my mum hug me or hold me; on some level I was protecting myself from having to feel this degree of loss again; the love was so strong, the loss would be strong too.

I rejected my mum in many ways as a late teenager, and caused her much harm, sorry mum, I didn’t know what to do with all the love, all her nourishment, perhaps on some level I never felt I deserved it. The trouble is, I couldn’t make any sense of it, we rarely can at the time. I know that I hardened my heart to her, and kept this all deep inside, and now I know it is because of her love, which is so strong, that the potential loss was too much, so I self-sabotaged, rejected it, as some strange way of protecting myself. 

I also suddenly realised the reason that my children suffer with separation anxiety. I’d had an inkling but it became crystal clear that I had been unconsciously transferring my anxiety around separation from my mum onto them. I knew how it felt and I didn’t want them to feel it. It wasn’t conscious. I can’t blame myself for it either, as that helps no one, not me and especially not my children – as mothers we really shouldn’t be promoting self-flagellation. 

It’s also possible, of course, that my children are really feeling the feeling of loss inside them too, of the grief that accompanies love. Love brings grief, because there is always the possibility of loss and of the intensity of the feeling deep in our centre and in our arms, as we realise that loss means never holding that person again or never being held by that person again. So we might turn away from love, for love brings pain; put up the closed sign at the heart, harden to our centre, make ours arms hard too, no holding or too much holding on.

I could see more clearly how I had closed my heart to love generally because of the fear of the feeling of loss. How I’d hardened to my brother when he emigrated to Australia, because of the intensity of the sadness and the grief of my perceived loss. How this caught me out at times, a tear slipping out as I remembered, and then turned away again. We make peace eventually, time is a healer, but we should remember that we grieve the living as much as we might grieve the dead. 

We’ll find grief in our upper arms. Like our lungs have tears that they cry, but we do not express them through our eyes, instead they collect in our arms, an extension of our hearts, like a river swollen with water, set to burst, but it doesn’t burst, it holds on tightly, the water stagnant now, there’s no room for it to move and it cannot burst its banks. Like a face swollen by excessive alcohol and sugar, how it looks like it needs to pop to give the person some release, their eyes hidden by the fullness of their cheeks, not healthy, the holding of grief.

In my yoga practice, it was the knees though that we were exploring and yet all this revealed itself to me, the knees! I was surprised how quickly the knees took me into my centre and back to the yucky feeling. Not of loss this time but of nausea. I felt sick and I asked my teacher why I was feeling like this. She said that the way we were relating to the knees, and the leg bones either side of this was likely causing me to access deeper parts of my centre, parts that are involved in the vomiting process, that help to remove toxicity from the body.

It was then I remembered how fearful I was of vomiting growing up, this to the extent that I developed a technique, involving the tapping of fingers and the repetition of some words that I had to perform each night before I went to sleep, to ensure that I wouldn’t be sick that evening. I realised how much my fear of vomiting caused me to keep everything held in. I was always in awe of my best friend who could put her fingers down her throat and vomit, I just couldn’t do this, I had trained myself not to do this, and in many respects, this was a blessing, because the eating disorder could have gotten very messy (it was messy enough, you’ll have to wait for the book to read more about that).

We found a depth to the knees that I didn’t know was there, a place in the pelvis for the skull, a spine that settled between the hands and arms and felt very alive. We found how the body might have felt propped on a mother’s hip, or wrapped around her leg, as my children do to me, and yet I find myself telling them not to. “He’s too big to be carried”, I’m told, and it’s annoying having someone hang off your leg as you cook, pulling your leggings down. But I felt that differently today, that this won’t last forever and it is to be embraced, not changed. 

I suddenly recognised the humour and joy in our thigh if we allow it, in that yuckiness, there is always the opposite of how we are feeling, excitement, joy, possibility. You cannot have one without the other, and so it becomes about perspective again and orientating away from something negative to something more helpful, more joyful, more loving. Wrap your legs around me I will tell my children, hang off my leg like it’s a tree trunk. I won’t berate you or tell you you’re too big, I’ll laugh instead, I’ll choose laughter and love instead. 

I felt into my liver too, and had a sense of the toxicity, not least from self-flagellation and the constant negative inner critic growing up, but the toxicity that comes from holding on, from resisting, from living in two extremes, the end of the inhalation, the end of the exhalation, rather than just sitting between the both, continuously orientating in the middle ground, neither here nor there, just being with what is present as it unfolds moment to moment and choosing how we are in relationship to that. 

Fear will show up in our body in different places, just as it will show up in our life in different ways. We don’t know until we start delving deeper, the many ways that it prevents us from living, truly living in this moment. I came across this wonderful quote that I think sums up this week and all this awareness gained:

“There is no escaping the uncertainty of life, nor its beautiful, ugly chaos. We must embrace its unexpected twists, dead ends and bridges, its red lights, surprises and blessings. Because without them, are we really living?” - Javaria Akbar.

So it is, the message on the new moon this week; self-compassion, cultivating gratitude, turning into love with all its potential for loss, rather than turning away from it, living our life, each moment, as if it is our last, truly living, with all the messiness, the chaos and the unknown. Letting go. Allowing ourselves to be loved and held by our mum. And laughing lots. “What would love do in this situation?”, we might continuously ask ourselves. Love would laugh a lot.