Opening to heart
Eben, my six year old has a girlfriend. He has been referencing this girlfriend all week, but it took persistence on my part to get him to admit a name. “Do you hold hands, do you kiss?”, I asked him. “Urgh, no!”, he exclaimed as if it was the most ridiculous notion in the world. But he would like her to come for a play date!
It did make me reflect a little on the innocence and openness of love at that age, when one’s heart has not been broken and there is no armour yet. I hope Eben can feel that openness to love his whole life, that’s one of my wishes for him. Because I know only too well, how tricky it is to heal a broken heart so that one can open to love, greater love too, and let go of the defence which says it cannot be so.
I have been chipping away at that armour, cracked open by my bike accident as I have blogged previously. My left shoulder has taken me on quite an inner journey and i’ve thrown myself into Reiki, with my 8th session of the year booked next week. Reiki changes things. It heals. It helps us to understand the root cause of any loss of wellbeing or pain and discomfort. It frees stagnate energy and helps to move us forwards.
I have finally become conscious of the underlying reason for the left shoulder tension, which turns out to be about responsibility and burden and which interestingly has its root in the root chakra, not the heart. We don’t know until we know, the extent of the responsibility we take on for holding others so that they don’t need to suffer. It had gotten heavy, all that holding, and become a burden, which ironically, was all of my own making!
It wasn’t conscious but I also now realise that it hasn’t been helpful, to try to carry people, make it easier for them, not least because they have not asked me to do this, but because I am preventing them, in part, from standing truly on their own two feet. Furthermore, it is a blessed relief to know that don’t need to take on responsibility for healing mankind and this planet, that the only person I can truly be responsible for is myself. Sometimes we forget this, especially as we got used to taking on responsibility for siblings and other family members at some point in our life.
Further, I realised that this has all fed a need in me to be needed. It wasn’t conscious. I don’t consciously want to feel needed to validate my presence or worth here on planet earth, but at some point in my past I probably did. I probably wanted to feel needed for all of those reasons, so i took on too much, burdened myself with other people’s crap, and tried to make it all OK, for everyone to have a jolly lovely time without feeling pain, to make life easier somehow, without realising the stress that I was causing to myself.
I can’t tell you the relief to set this all down. To stop identifying with the rescuer and holder part of myself. Because that is not truly me, just roles I had taken on at some point, and kept identifying with, as if I have come here to planet earth merely to hold and take responsibility for others. I haven’t. None of us have. These are just coping mechanisms and traits that we develop/take on for one reason or another, that we can let go of in any moment.
The trouble with the letting go is that we have been holding on for so long that we don’t know how it might be live differently. Furthermore, we might worry what others think when we stop making ourselves to available to them, when we stop trying to prop and hold them and be there for them. Even as friends, we can sometimes overlook the extent to which we give of ourselves and make their problems our problems, and as healers and yoga teachers we have to be super careful about this pattern running into our work - we cannot do it for anyone else and to feel that we can denies them the opportunity to heal, for we can only truly heal ourselves.
What I’ve also discovered is that when we do heal a little more of the wounding to our heart, peel away a layer or two of the armour that creates a defensiveness that we barely recognised was there as we were so used to identifying with this too (this is just who we are), that we realise the extent of the capacity we have to feel love. This isn’t just love for others, although we will feel this, but what has surprised me the most, is the extent to which we reclaim and feel love for ourself.
It’s not that we awaken one day and recognise that we love ourself more than we did the day before, although I imagine that this is entirely possible, but that we suddenly realise that the choices we are now making and the way we have made changes in and to the way we live life comes from a place of deeper love for the self - the outer world has changed to reflect the changes in our inner world even if we didn’t realise that these were taking place.
My relationship with myself has changed quite a bit since the beginning of the year, others may not see this, because it is inside myself, my relationship with my heart and soul, but the changes are beginning to settle into the outer world and there is much more freedom and space and this drive towards simplicity is perhaps a reflection of this. What’s surprising is how we don’t need to make effort, that our boundaries tighten and our inner dialogue shifts into something far more positive, not because we are trying to make it so, but because it feels wrong not to allow it to be so.
The final thing I have been reminded, as I step into more of the unknown, pending p to more of my potential and allowing Beinspired to find a new flow (this after a good year now of more stepping into then unknown with Elijah leaving school and E and I splitting romantically) is that it is not until we start putting one foot in front of the other on this path of heart, that the path reveals more of itself.
Initially we may have a sense of where we need to walk next, but often this is based on what has happened previously - the past which is, for the best part, known and certain - and the new will take us into territory unknown which can be scary, but the reality is we have no choice, not if we want to continue to grow and know more of ourselves in this life time.
I know there are a few of you navigating this path of heart into territory unknown and I know that this is bringing up all sorts of insecurities and questionings and doubts. But you can do it! You have all worked realy hard to get to this point, clearing out the old and in most cases, making significant life changes to re-align you with more of your truth. Please don’t get attached to it having to look a certain way, nor lose yourselves to fear as you contemplate outcome and get attached to this too. Just embrace the courage of your heart and the strength of your soul and take it one baby step at a time, following the path as it begins to open to you.
There will inevitably be obstacles and moments where you wonder whether you might give up or go back to how life was lived previously, but really, once you have started, you just can’t stop. There will never be too many yoga teachers or Reiki practitioners and more fool anyone for believing it so and buying into that crappy notion of lack and there not being enough to go around, or of competition and that outdated business model gifted to us (urgh) from capitalism that says we have to compete with our fellow men and women. There is another way and your heart knows it.
We are all of us mankind and I long for the day when we support each other to be the best version of ourselves, where we encourage each other to share our unique gifts with the world for the greater good and realise that we are all in this together come what may and to stop, please stop, with putting each other down, judging each other and competing against each other or worse, hoping that we might each fail. There are many ways to live our life, we just need to align with the way that works for us - sod anyone else, let them carry on their way.
Furthermore, we each have this beautiful heart within us, which just wants to love, and this amazing soul which just wants to know more of itself, and to deprive the world of both is a shame, so really we have little choice but to step beyond our fear and keep going, walking the path and ignoring anyone or anything that in any way tries to put us down, disempower us or tell us that it cannot be so. This is your vision, your life, you create it and live it as you choose. From my heart to your heart, there is much love in this world, we just have to open ourselves up to it and share it when we can.
Love Emma x
P.S. for those of you who are setting up in practice, Reiki or not, then you may find my guide to setting up in practice helpful. I wrote it to share my experiences, of what I have learned over the years. You can buy it for the bargain price of £20 from here https://www.beinspiredby.co.uk/shop/online-courses/setting-up-in-practice
