Can a person be generous and selfish at the same time?

Are those even opposites? Are they on a spectrum? Or do they co-exist? Or something else entirely?

Does the very meaning of both of those ways of being conflict?

If I don’t accept someone else’s generosity (which I do quite often) is that selfish? Does it cause harm? I think it may do both.
In a way it’s stealing that person’s ability to be generous too.

I’m really not sure that there’s an answer. I find myself starting to see just how selfish I am as I move towards wanting to become a more generous person. Generous as in one of those people who loves unconditionally and gives unconditionally.

And yet, even in putting qualifications on it, I’m already limiting generosity.

I’ve been thinking about generosity in relation to money in particular. I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who would take people in if they needed help or a place to stay. Am I? Can I be?

At least a year ago I consciously decided to notice my responses with homeless people I meet. What happens? Sometimes I do give money or food. More often I don’t. A handful of times I’ve felt as though the money just moves out of my hand and into theirs as if guided and I think, “I can always make another $8, maybe he can’t”. Usually though my thoughts start to move towards wondering if I could make it living on the streets and where I would go. I usually decide that I’d figure out some way to survive. I then start to calculate – how much do I have in my back account? How long will that last me? Is it enough to survive? For how long? How long have I got? What happens when it runs out? And then I start to wonder – do I give to one person? Or everyone? Will it really make a difference? How do I choose? I’d much rather give to organizations that then help these people. Yes, I do that once a year. That’s what I’ll keep doing.

All the machinations of the mind taking over and moving me out of the situation at hand so that I don’t have to actually do anything at all. I’m no longer present, and am instead lost in a stream of fantasy, working around the edges of my own fear and avoiding reality.

Internally I feel myself constrict. I stop breathing. I hold on. Hold on to what I have. Don’t share. Contract. Keep it. Stop it from moving. Flowing. Don’t give. I need it. There’s not enough.

Every time I do this I buy into the belief of scarcity and the fear of not surviving as a result.

What about abundance?

When I was a kid there was one homeless man in our town (that we knew of anyway). The kids called him “Jim the Bum”. Likely because the adults did too. The story I remember was that he had a promising hockey career and turned to drugs and his parents disowned him. I don’t know if that’s true but it’s what I remember.

How’s that for learning about unconditional love? And what happens when you’re struggling?

We were taught to stay away. Why? To stay safe? Maybe. Was he dangerous? Or just needing help? Because people were afraid? Of what? And is that fear still with me?

About a year or so ago I was on my way to dance class after work and there was a pregnant woman at the top of the subway steps asking for money. My heart went out to her and yet I still walked past, trying to get to class. She stayed with me though – very strongly. When I got home I wished I had a spare room or some way to help her. I wished I could take her in or do something other than just giving her money. I decided that the next time I saw her (both hoping there would be a next time and also believing there wouldn’t be) I would ask if she wanted to come with me to have a meal. We could talk. Maybe she needed someone to talk to. I could do that. I could listen over a meal.

I didn’t see her for weeks though I looked for her every time I went to class. Then one day there she was. All the blood felt like drained out of my heart down into my feet. I slowed and nearly stopped. I wanted to open my mouth. I remembered the plan to take her for a meal. I saw images of us sitting at a table. I looked around for a restaurant. And then I didn’t want to be late for class. I didn’t want to miss class. I walked past and then wanted to turn around. I stopped and turned back towards her and then turned away again. At least three times. I wanted to skip class and go back and ask her.

I didn’t.

If I were to reference a famous couple here, it seems as though I too would have turned Mary and Joseph away.

Is it a fear of not being safe and secure? Of not having? Trust?

Maybe it’s not so much about being generous or selfish, maybe it’s that I’ve started to see more clearly my deep fear of scarcity and how much of my life that has driven. How many decisions it’s made for me. How often I’ve stayed in painful situations or suffering out of that fear and deep-rooted belief in scarcity. Maybe I’d like to let go of that fear – to live differently. Maybe that’s selfish too. Maybe not.

I was recently in a Deep Ecology workshop where I got to play the role of an ancestor speaking to my descendant – and telling her about the current state of the world and also how we got out of it.

I found myself remembering and sharing that when I was eight or nine I decided emphatically to never bring a child into this world. That there was no point because the world was doomed. Today I realized that right around that age I saw the first images of war on the TV. I saw the tanks rolling by. The bombs at night. I had heard of other wars in the past, but this made it more real. I wasn’t even living it in person and can’t imagine the impact of doing so. Was it fighting over scarcity? Next I remembered seeing so many ads for World Vision and I would always wonder why I’d been born where I had been and not where these kids were born. How did that work? I honestly remember being confused that the people in the ad had enough emotion left to cry when they didn’t seem to have anything else. I saw scarcity in images. I heard it all around me, coupled with fear.

Being taught to never be like Jim. To get as much as you can because “you never know” to take care of yourself because no one else will do it and when you can’t take care of yourself, no one else will do it. To live in isolation and not ask for help (but somewhere in there being told to help others – if they met some unknown criteria and then only indirectly). It’s confusing even now to think about. How was that all meant to work?

It never occurred to me to see life as abundant.

It never occurred to me to see the belief in scarcity as a belief.

It’s the same with knowledge. As a kid and for a good chunk of my life, I’d hide it, hold onto it. I learned and believed that being smart was the key to surviving – so it must be kept scarce too. Don’t let others get it – this “intelligence” or knowledge. I remember hiding my answers behind a 3-sided blue folder that stood up on my desk – my arms covering the pages as I hunched over them. No one was going to take it from me. They weren’t going to get what I had. It was mine.

Only now I see that’s now how knowledge works. Give it away! Let it circulate and flow and evolve and cycle back through.

Much later, when I decided I might one day want to have a baby, I was gripped with fear that they’d run out of them. That all of a sudden the supply of babies would run out. Seriously. There wouldn’t be any more left for me to have one too. That someone will turn off the valve like they were turning off a faucet. The flow would end. That’s honestly the image I could see. Completely illogical right? Yes. I knew that too and also couldn’t quite believe it was false. Apply the fear of scarcity here and it’s a completely logical statement. (I want to be mindful here of the many people who have difficulty conceiving or can’t and how hard that can be and to not discount your experience).

Seeing that makes me see how illogical the other scenarios sound too. It’s all part of the same fear. So why does only one of those situations seem irrational?

It brings to mind the yamas of ahimsa (causing no harm) and aparigraha (non-grasping or non-clinging) and in particular Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.39 (aparigrahasthairye janma kathanta sambodhah) which is translated in many different ways. Three that I like are:

“Becoming established in non-greediness gives you knowledge of the how and why of birth (your own, others, and the world’s)” –Translation by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

“When the inner light of intelligence illumines the state of mind that has firmly rejected all greed and there is contentment with what life brings unsolicited, there arises knowledge of the mysteries of life and its why and how”. –Translation and interpretation by Swami Venkatesananda

“Acknowledging abundance (aparigraha) we recognize the blessings in everything and gain insights into the purpose for our worldly existence.” –Translation by Nischala Joy Devi, The Secret Power of Yoga.

I like that aparigraha can be interpreted as non-greediness and also as the ability to acknowledge abundance. Two ways of viewing the same concept – almost as if the antidote of non-greed is seeing that there is abundance.

In acknowledging abundance and practicing gratitude for what is, eventually greed may fall away. Clinging to the fear of scarcity may fall away. I think that it already has started to.

There’s still more to be worked through like becoming trapped and stuck in the emotions that come up when faced with having or not having. Giving or receiving. Choosing to withhold or limit or block in order to keep ahold of something. To have. I wonder if I can fully trust in the abundance of life to the point that I no longer believe in scarcity. It’s all really just sensations in the body. Responses. The cutting off and holding that happens inside because of this fear is then manifested externally as well. Attaching itself to money or possessions or knowledge. Attaching itself to limiting life. When it’s all just sensations and as those sensations can shift (and have) from fear to feeling full – to feeling that my cup runneth over – things shift externally as well.

There is evidence of abundance surrounding me daily – internally and externally. I only have to observe nature to see evidence of abundance. Is that true of everywhere? Am I speaking from a place of privilege? Yes, probably. And yet, the more I practice seeing the abundance in all that is (and not what could be or might be), the more I trust in the flow of the world. The more I give away, the less I have to carry. The more I let go, the more authentic I can be in giving. I see how these sensations don’t seem to come up as much as they used to with friends, family, people I know. More often than not it just flows. Inside and out. Without thought or conditions.

And still, I wonder what more will fall away if I can shift this relationship to scarcity and come at every interaction as though abundance abounds. Will my relationship to generosity shift? Will I still be so selfish? Will I find even more corners of fear? If I can choose to look at all that is around and all that I get to be a part of by being here at this moment and be grateful does that then is that enough?

I’m starting to see that it’s all energy – money, knowledge, life force – whatever it is and it moves and circulates and has a current all its own. It goes where it goes and it’s futile and naïve for me to think I can contain or hold onto any of it. To limit it and try to keep it just means I’m limiting and containing myself in the struggle.

I’m the one who becomes constricted in those moments of greed and clinging. I’m the one who is trapped in the fear of not having. Is it selfish to want to be free of that? Perhaps.

Today, the Cookie Monster followed me on Twitter. It’s a childhood dream come true – okay not entirely since there was no Twitter or Internet then – still, it makes me smile.

When I was around four or five years old I went to a picnic with my family. It was an organized day with lots of festivities – games for kids and grown-ups alike – and an appearance by none other than the Cookie Monster. I was completely mesmerized – so full of excitement and wonder at seeing him right before my eyes. Getting to meet him! It was as though every single cell in my body was full of joy – beaming and radiating even after he left. I was completely content.

Later that day I was indoors with my mom and for some reason I was looking under the tables. I don’t know what I was looking for but I do know what I found. As I pulled back the tablecloth I saw a large beaten-up cardboard box. Something familiar and blue was in it. I pulled back the flap of the box and to my horror there was a flattened Cookie Monster.

“Cookie Monster’s dead!” I sobbed. A mix of grief and horror shocked my system to its very core. Completely devastated, wonder and awe seemingly destroyed, I kept crying and crying at this lifeless mass of blue fur who not so long ago had brought me so much joy.

My mom tried to explain and I certainly didn’t have the skill or understanding at that age to hold both realities. Which was real? The Cookie Monster I saw not so long ago moving around and bringing such happiness or the Cookie Monster deflated and contained in the box underneath the table? Why did I have to open that box? Why did I have to find him like that? I wished I hadn’t.

Of course both were real, as were the emotions that came with both realities. I just happened to like the reality that I understood more and liked more. The one where I felt good and enjoyed life! The one before “reality” was crushed and I didn’t believe I could ever recover from the loss and the torrent of huge emotions of pain that came up and ran through me. I wanted the first reality back. I tried to will it back into existence, but it was gone. Both were gone. Past.

The polarity of these two extremes stuck with me like a framework within which to ride through life. Oscillating from one extreme to the other. Cling to the good (but not too much joy because it’ll be taken away and I don’t like how that feels) and avoid the bad. I can feel the remnants of years of brainpower used up trying to get back to many a reality I liked or thought I’d wanted. Trying to curb the emotion by sheer will. Trying to get to what “should” have been or could have been or the maybes or mights. Years of beating myself up for what I did “wrong” or simply trying to figure out how to get back. How to go back. There must be a way.

The thing is it’s not separate. One reality doesn’t replace another. It’s fluid. A movement through time and experience. Some moments will be intense, others won’t be.

It happens in moments as simple as being on an overcrowded subway car, all the while using energy to try to get out. It happens at crossroads in life, not trusting which “reality” is the right one. It happens on vacations and wanting or not wanting to get back to “real” life. It happens in the extremes of death and trauma and dramatic change.

The practice of yoga is to learn how to tolerate the intolerable and be able to allow all charges of emotion or energy (even the strong ones) move through without getting stuck or held onto anywhere in our systems. The charge of energy or emotion in that moment needs to be felt, fully experienced, and let go. Moved through. Not stored. Once it’s past it’s old energy. No longer needed. I’m coming to see that storing bits of old energy and clinging to it helps cling to judgments and beliefs including the belief that you can get back to the past which is impossible, and causes suffering.

Suffering also comes from clinging to one reality. When reality doesn’t actually exist to just adhere to my definition of it or my belief of what it should be or was or is. It’s just there. Constant. All these “realities” or moments are real and all require the same energy and care to flow through us in order to be present with what is instead of what could be or should be or might be or wasn’t.

Now, I smile at that person who tried so hard so many times to dig her way back. To uncover what was lost. I smile at all her efforts and hard work at trying to turn back time (and believing that she could by willpower alone). I smile because I understand her and I can now see her efforts of persistent tunneling to get back never would have got her far. She just couldn’t see that yet.

I can see now that I was powerless in what I was doing and didn’t want to believe it. I felt like I had the power to do it. I didn’t want to give up. If I just kept digging…I could get that “should have” back. I could undo opening the box. I could stay in the reality I liked – if only I could find it again.

I was caught up in an endless cycle of suffering that consumed so much of me and for so long.

I had to change direction. I had to let go not only of the past memories but also of my attachment of believing they meant anything about me. I had to see that my current reality – the one I’m actually in is real.

Changing direction has taken years of daily practice and there’s still a ways to go. I have noticed though that my severe and constant self-judgment about what I did “wrong” or how to change things I’ve done really has fallen off. It went from a constant churn in my brain to being pretty much non-existent. I no longer exert myself trying to get back with such intensity. The more I work to remove the charge from past moments and let current charges move through the best I can, the less I have to cling to and the more easeful and kind I can be.

When I saw that the Cookie Monster had followed me this morning I had a flood of happy emotions and instead of remembering the painful parts as painful or extreme joy all I could feel now was compassion; for myself as that little girl and compassion for myself now. Not disregarding the grief or loss or pain or joy. Including and incorporating it and letting it have had its place to pass through. Now it’s gone and the memory is no longer charged with anything other than love.

My eyes blinked open to the sound of rushing water. 4:38 a.m.

“How do I make it stop?” I thought.

After a moment of hesitation I called for help as the water started rising up under the door, flooding the room. A pipe had burst with the fluctuating sub-zero temperatures rising so quickly overnight. All that was frozen and stuck prohibiting the movement of the water that wanted to flow. Wanted to get through.

I got help, cleaned it up enough, and managed to get back to bed by 5:23, leaving an assortment of rags and mats and towels to sop up the remaining water.

As I settled back into sleep I did think, “the water is literally trying to get to me”.

Water keeps calling me, loud and clear. It has been for months in different ways. Now, here it was – literally crashing down on top of me and starting to rise.

The next day I grew in heightened sensation across my heart and chest. I noticed large blips of energy releasing from my womb (second chakra) continuously rising up. One after another enough energy would collect together and release, rising up.

Blip. Blip. Blip.

Rising up and then getting stuck – my solar plexus through throat constricted so tightly around the accumulation of energy, holding it tight. Minor things started to trigger me significantly, bringing up a strong sense of hyper-vigilance, allowing me to hold even tighter.

Feeling a fully heightened state of panic growing stronger I started to try to ground. To bring the energy down from that place where it felt so contained and intense that I actually thought I was going to explode. I focused on the breath over and over. I stuck to my practice, trying to ground and while it would work for a minute or two all that happened was more intensity of sensation.

The next morning I sat down on my mat and all that kept appearing was the name of one of my teachers. Instead of practicing on my own, I decided to get up and go to her class even though I was exhausted. The very thought of getting to class felt impossible and like too many steps. By the time I arrived, simply sitting down in class and seeing her was enough to bring tears up to the surface. I was ready to burst.

I held it back even as I wanted to let it out (and knew that I should).

In class we worked to balance our doshas. Basically we are born with a certain balance of the five elements (earth, water, fire, air and space) within us and the mixture of these elements can be seen as three different dosha “types”: vata (air and space), pitta (fire and water) and kapha (earth and water). We have a unique composition of these elements or doshas (prakriti) and as we find our way through the conditions of life they also can become out of balance (vrakriti). To find balance is to find that original composition of the elements within us, and not be caught up in the imbalances of our condition.

Throughout class I couldn’t tell where my imbalance was. I felt so intensely heightened in every possible way – the air quality and fire quality felt like they were stronger than normal. It must be vata or pitta. I completely disregarded the possibility of a kapha imbalance.

The teacher lovingly gave me a big hug after class and the tears started coming up and out instantly. A whole bunch of emotion released and she offered that I not resist the emotions.

Afterward, I felt much better. Much more clear.

The energy accumulated again over night. Not as strongly but in the same ways and holding in all the same places. There was less of it and I wanted to keep it that way.

I had an appointment with my therapist and suddenly her office seemed so far away. Like it had never been that far before, my goodness. Even watching the numbers on the houses slowly increase until I finally got to her door felt like they dragged on for years in between.

I finally arrived and with the thought of not resisting and all the work I’d been doing to ground I simply said that I didn’t know whether to ground or to go into the sensations.

“What have you been doing so far?”

“Grounding.”

“Is it working?”

“No…”

“Well then… try going into it”.

Sigh. I didn’t want to. I already felt like I was going to explode – the energy was so strong. I knew that wouldn’t actually happen and still a part of me felt like it might.

I stepped in and started listing the emotions.

Panic. Fear. Sadness. Frustrated. Loss. Fear. Anger. Inability.

I continued and we dove into some a bit further and more and more opened up as a few more layers ripped through and so much emotion came up and out. I didn’t stop it from coming.

By the evening I felt remarkably better. Completely clear. Something about releasing these emotions was working and yet I still didn’t fully trust it or make that connection.

Even though I didn’t think I was working with a kapha imbalance I went to my teacher’s workshop the next day. I didn’t know, but she could (thankfully) see it. The traces of the panic and emotions had returned and were accumulating again with less intensity than the day before.

We moved through a lot of energy and emotion through the class, releasing even more.

The key for me was also learning that an imbalance in the doshas always means there is too much of something. Too much earth, water, fire, air or space. The “too much” then also takes on a quality of being overactive (rajas) or under-active (tamas).

This suddenly made so much sense. My kapha condition (or imbalance) was that I had too much water and earth. This condition is often tamasic or lethargic and that quality was certainly there underneath and the main quality was rajasic – overactive. So even though I was feeling all this heightened energy it was the kapha that needed release (which also helped explain my simultaneous inability or lack of desire to move or change or do anything about it).

The water and the ground are rising.

Too much water and too much earth.

No wonder I’ve felt panic and the inability to breathe.

I can’t add more ground (as I was trying to do to ground the sensations through breath) when the imbalance right now is too much ground. It only makes things worse – more intense.

Too much ground.

The water wants to release.

It needs to rise up in order to release and that rajasic quality to the energy was letting it do just that. Except – all I wanted to do was add more ground to it. Cover it back up. Get away from the discomfort of all that build up. Sleep. Holding the energy was exhausting and sleep could let me avoid having to do anything with it. Plus it felt so cozy and comfy and satisfied the other more tamasic parts of my imbalance.

Right now I see the ground as old experiences I’ve locked away and the water as the old emotions also swallowed down and stored in my body. I’ve done so much work to draw all those things up to the surface – I like that part. The part I don’t like being caught off guard by is the waves of emotional release.

I like holding on. I’ve been doing it for a long time, collecting stagnant energy. I’ve been working a lot on getting that energy to move and… it’s starting to move. I’m letting it move in some places now freely and restricting it in others – resisting. Still putting on the brakes, just not as firmly.

So I have a choice. I can either hold it all in my body. I can hold it all in my solar plexus and heart and throat. I can continue to choke down all that old energy again and again and let it settle in my body.

Or… I can let it go. I can go into it. Feel it. Stop holding on to it all. Clear it out.

It’s the opposite of everything I want to do and everything I have always done. Except I know how to do this now. I know I won’t explode by facing things. I can start to trust the safety of allowing the flow of energy and emotions to happen. I don’t like it and it’s the only way out.

The majority of the energy has passed now. Traces keep accumulating and releasing and soon it will all be moved through.

I feel exhausted and wiped out except I’m not. Not really. That is just on the surface (coaxing me into false inactivity). Wiped out would mean some sort of lacking. In fact I have “too much” right now of a couple of elements. That’s all. And they want to come out. This layer wants to heal. It wants to be let go or it wouldn’t be rising up to the surface.

The best part is I don’t have to do this alone. Just like the call for help at 4:38 in the morning to fix the bursting pipe and water rising into my place I wouldn’t have been able to do this on my own. I needed people there to recognize what was happening when I couldn’t and know how to approach it. To help allow me to “burst”, to help me dive in, and let the water rise up and out, releasing the excess ground with it.

I have been feeling intensely lately that I constantly have one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the brake simultaneously. Like I am always pressing down on both and preventing myself from moving forward (or moving at all). Continuously forcing myself to stay in one place while wanting change.

In the past couple of days I experienced an acceleration of thoughts – picking up speed, intensity and volume. I had a pain in the right side of my neck and shoulder and my attention focused primarily on my discomfort, consistently returning there with anger and sadness at the pain. As I watched the thoughts they seemed to be all focused on past romantic relationships, past best friends, people moving away, upcoming anniversaries of loss, current friends I’m missing, other people who seem to have close groups around them, and my sense of belonging (or lack there of) started to take hold of the wheel of my reality. I scanned through the past and present for “evidence” supporting the belief that I was always as alone as I was starting to feel (and had felt strongly at times before).

It swelled up as if overnight and I could feel the corners of depression while everything was spinning around as if on the wind. I felt like the energy needed to ground. I needed help so I reached out to a friend and went for a massage and healing session.

Every time she worked on the pain in my neck and shoulder my brain would have a flurry of intense thoughts. The thoughts now were about things that “needed” to get “done” either at work or administrative thoughts about a new program or class offering a new business or getting so and so to do such and such for this or that.

The flurry that exploded with each release of the neck and shoulder were completely different in content and would dissipate to silence in between strokes. I realized the thoughts were there trying to make me do something to not feel the pain. To get away from the pain.

Was I trying to get away from the pain in my neck or the pain the pain of not belonging or the pain of loss of relationships (by preventing them from starting or deepening, or by them ending) or all of the above? Either way the refusal to acknowledge the pain and to try to smooth over it with activity was evident.

“Just be with it,” I told myself. “Just be with the pain right now. You are safe. Let it happen.”

This helped me to settle into the experience of what was happening right now and not anything else. As I moved into just feeling the pain, trusting that nothing was wrong and that I was in good hands, the thoughts stopped. My breath settled. I relaxed and let go. The pain even lessened as I softened around it and just let the pain be there with my full attention acknowledging it.

I could quickly see how this is something I’ve always done. As a teenager I adamantly refused to have emotions. I flat out decided to stop. They weren’t “useful” and I didn’t really like having them. Of course it doesn’t work that way but I didn’t know that then. One of the ways to work around having them was to stay busy. To work. To take on three or four part-time jobs as well as school. That way I wouldn’t have to deal with them and I’d also be too busy to figure out that whole relationships being important thing. Work I could do and it conveniently made me prioritize being busy over having time to be with other people too much. I did, of course, also have friendships and relationships – many of them quite close – though I never allowed them to satisfy this belief that I belonged. I was “too busy” to have been included so it’s okay that they didn’t ask me (even though it felt painful) or I had to work so I wouldn’t be able to make that party. I didn’t have to look at the pain or beliefs that I felt around not belonging. I could conveniently avoid them all. Every time the thoughts or pain came up if I wasn’t invited out or felt like I’d never be in a relationship, I’d feel the pain and it would push me to isolate myself further.

The pain in my neck and shoulders linked the fourth and fifth chakras. The fourth chakra governs our relationships (with ourselves and others) and the fifth chakra governs communication (including communicating needs, emotions, desires). While both the feeling of belonging and work are related to the first chakra – that was the energy catching the wind and trying to leave my feet, move up and out through my head in a long-held escape pattern, only to get stuck on its way.

In romantic relationships in particular I would often put on the brakes in communicating what I needed or wanted. I’d press down that foot in order to not have to fully express myself and to keep my emotions in check. Relationships did evolve, of course, though with one foot constantly on the brake connection was also limited. The heart chakra often also closed off or moving frantically between the gas and the brake (with a bit more heft on the brake). When an interaction let me press further down on the brake it pressed down significantly and became really hard to let go of or bounce back from (if at all). If I could keep the brakes on then I could keep the person at a distance. My inner resistance satisfied and my fears of not belonging and internal convictions of being alone confirmed every time a relationship inevitably ended.

As I explored after the massage I also saw that this is a trauma response of mine, which became further engrained several years ago in a different way. While going through a significant traumatic experience I put the brakes on at the same time I moved forward and through. Resisting internally every step of the way while the external world seemed to push me forward. Not to mention many complex relationship dynamics at play.

Now I can see that I’m still doing it all the time with pretty much everything. The foot that’s on the brake pedal is still much heavier than that on the gas. Why? To protect myself? To not want to go through with it? To make it stop? In that moment, yes perhaps. What about now?

I realized that I’m still holding on to the belief that to release my foot from the brake means stepping into intense pain and having to feel it. It has meant (until now) that all those painful thoughts and beliefs of not belonging are true. It has meant not having the relationships I want and not expressing what I need in them. It carries with it the memory of (and subconsciously reliving) traumatic events maybe even playing out in the background without me knowing every time I do this (which feels like all the time). It’s potentially loaded and yet I continue to sit poised, one foot pressing more on the brake than the gas.

Except I didn’t release my foot from the brake before and there was still so much pain. So clearly that doesn’t work. There’s no avoiding pain. Just like there’s no avoiding emotions. I’m learning now that to be with the pain just like being with emotions and not trying to get away from it lets it pass. I don’t need to put up all these mechanisms of inner resistance and avoidance. I can step into the pain, know how much I can tolerate, and move through it. Not around. Not above or below. Not trying to move up and out in escape. Not to stop and avoid it and try to go only when it feels safe (it’s too convenient to believe it never will feel safe) but to keep moving. To keep everything moving no matter what it brings.

I can use both pedals with skill and fluidity. So that I can keep moving and not suffocate and choke (as it has started to feel) by limiting myself in this way. By starting to lift my foot from the brake and allow myself to live, love and be loved.

As I sat with it all again today to investigate further, I noticed a subtle clenching in my womb. The pain in my neck and shoulder also present again though not as strong. Thoughts continued to spring up about what I wanted to do. What I wanted to start. How I wanted to live. How I wasn’t living. What work I wanted to do. How I’m starting to want my work to have a different meaning. And wondering, why can’t I just move forward with any of it?

And I felt a small blip of fear. Wait – let’s look at that and let it be there.

Fear.

I felt myself try to turn away from it and gently turned back. I went further into it.

“What am I afraid of?”

“Of not having the life I want.”

I’m afraid of not having the life I want to have.

Tears released in resonance.

And immediately another thought tried to take me down, “you don’t even know what you want.”

I dropped down into the fear and felt it more fully.

Moments passed in silence.

Yes, I do. I’ve always known.

And I smiled as the fear released.

“People don’t just walk around being happy all the time,” I barked and snarled in response to my boyfriend at the time. He had told me that he wasn’t happy and wanted to be happier in life.

“Impossible,” I thought. It hurt to even consider that anyone would want to be happy. That wasn’t what life was for. Life was supposed to be hard. It was my heart center that I can remember now. When I hurled this response at him it burst forward at the sides in attack while at the same time shrinking and shriveling in the middle. Caving in. I wanted the same thing and believed it couldn’t happen for me.

I used to see people who smiled all the time and I wanted to smack them. It didn’t seem authentic. I mean who were they kidding? “Wipe that smile off your face,” isn’t that what we’re told. Don’t be happy – especially when you’re getting away with something.

Early in my yoga teacher training we sat for a meditation where we were invited to bring a happy moment to mind.

Nothing came.

Nothing came and I froze, holding my breath, and stuck my focus on the pain that in the black hole where I could see there was no hint of happiness. All I could feel were hard edges. I wasn’t allowed to be happy. Because of what I’d done? What I’d “gotten away with”? It had set in long before that but now… never.

And I started to cry because I couldn’t find a single happy moment. Just blackness. Emptiness.

Life is hard.

People don’t just walk around being happy all the time.

I don’t get to be happy – especially because of what I had done.

My long-held beliefs (apparently even as a child I would walk around saying “life is hard”) were so thickly set they were all I could fathom. At that time all I felt was pain. I was comfortable in pain – it’s hard. There’s no happiness in it. I was used to it. I believed that’s all there was and so that’s all I found as I made my way through life, adding experience after experience to this way of seeing the world. Fitting them all in.

Except in that invitation to see a happy moment a seed had been planted. I was, on some level, aware of this absence and aware that I wanted to be happy too. Not being happy was also causing pain. I wanted to find this seemingly fictional state I had hidden from and pushed away for so long.

It was about a year and a half after that initial meditation that I found the practice of yoga nidra. Part of the practice of yoga nidra is the pairing of opposites. For example you might be invited to become heavy then light or hot then cold to move between these two states a few times. At first the different states always felt extreme to me. I’d become so heavy I’d sink way down into the earth and so light I felt as though I was floating way up on the ceiling.

I was in a weekend-long training and the first time happy was paired with sad I had no problem finding the sad moments and feeling sensations of sadness. I could stick with them and pile them one on top of the other. Bring it on.

This time the happy moment didn’t come but I could feel my brain buzzing and searching. Reaching across space and time and trying desperately to connect, to rewire, and then the feeling and sound like when a heart monitor flat lines. There was blackness and there was movement.

The next day it happened. The first time a happy moment appeared. Soft and powerful and clear – it was the memory of the first time I held my little brother. I was nearly twelve and he was a few hours old. The smallest baby I had ever held. That was my happy memory. It appeared and sensations of happiness flooded my body. Tears, different than the ones of loss and desperation from before streamed out, as I stayed wrapped up in the moment.

I had one! I had the most perfect fitting happy moment appear. I was thrilled. It happened. And if I found it once, I could find it again. And I did. For a while that was my go-to memory every time I was asked to find a happy one. Some times it took a while to appear and then it would float up and bring the memory of all that happiness with it.

The sad, painful memories still came more easily. Of course they did – it was a lifetime of me believing that was all there was. And yet there was this beacon of light and reprieve. This moment of happiness in that vast sea that would so constantly overwhelm me and drag me down.

In the yoga nidra practices that followed I found it difficult to find the happy place more than once. We would go into happy and it would eventually come. I’d leave it to go into sad and then that’s where I would get stuck. When alternating back to happy again I couldn’t go. The familiar sensations of sadness held me in place.

Until one day there was more movement.

I was laying on the floor and the happy moment came and then the sad moment that appeared showed me an entire trauma – that thing I had “done”. And for the first time ever I could move away from it. I could feel my brain letting go and unsticking like tendrils languishing for a bit before releasing. I could move away and back to the sensations of happiness. Not right away but it didn’t take long.

I was allowed to feel happiness.

Life wasn’t about being hard. It wasn’t all about only being in pain – whether I was “getting away with” anything or not. It wasn’t about being stuck in one place unable to be happy.

I could move between both.

I could move between both and the more I practiced the easier it became. The easier it became to go in and out and over and across from happy to sad.

I no longer sink into the floor in heaviness or float up on the ceiling in lightness. The two opposites have started to feel similar. It’s the same for happy and sad. I’ve built up a similar strength in happiness (there’s so much!) to what I used to have only in sadness. Now, in some ways, they seem to have combined. Infused with the emotional charge of one another so they aren’t so absolute. I can feel and tolerate both at any level of extremity without it feeling extreme and without get stuck in either.

So no, people don’t just walk around being happy all of the time. That is true. Happiness doesn’t work in that absolute kind of way. Neither should sadness or pain or any other emotion. I was so afraid to let go of the beliefs and control that I had within pain and sadness that no one could be happy, least of all me. I had to make it all fit.

Now I know it can’t be contained. It can only be felt and the more freedom I have to feel and move between these (and other) states the less “hard” life becomes.

I can see myself clearly – walking into the yoga studio for class – anxious to get there early so I could get my spot. Time and time again, I was always frantic and panicked the whole walk over at that thought of not being in that particular place. I needed to get that spot. It was – in my mind – the only place in the room where I couldn’t be asked to move: a little crook in the wall ensured my safety. I figured out that from only that particular spot I couldn’t be forced to move backwards, forward, or sideways thanks to the configuration of the room. Not too far to the back or too near the front of the room, my placement felt ideal. If the teacher came in and asked us to move and make space for others, I would be exempt. I wouldn’t have to move or interact with anyone else. I wouldn’t have to change or give anything up. I could just be there and block the rest out. That was exactly what I wanted.

More often than not I would sneak into the room before paying for class, hastily throw down my mat and take a momentary pause of relief before heading upstairs to sign in. Relieved that I had secured my spot.

I needed to be stuck in that spot.

That was as much as my brain and being could handle at the time – any other option meant the potential for interaction that I didn’t want. I wasn’t aware of it then but any one of those interactions would resurface trauma and I would unconsciously be right back in it all without knowing. No. I didn’t want to tolerate that any more. I wanted to protect myself. I just wanted my spot and my class and that’s it. Was that too much to ask?

Sometimes it was. Sometimes, no matter how early I got there, someone else was in my spot. In those times my already heightened state would tip over even more strongly as my entire body from head to throat to shoulders to heart to stomach and below would shift to a state of high alert mixed with emotion. Fight. Flight. Freeze. All at once. All was lost.

That spot held me. Supported me. Let me cry. Could I trust the other spots in the room to give me the same? No. No I couldn’t.

Begrudgingly and with my simultaneously depressed and heightened manic states intertwining and escalating, with one part of me trying to turn and run out the door, the other part forcing me to stay and trying to not cry, swallowing emotion, I searched the room for another place to be.

When I finally settled on a new space, I would be on guard and at full attention, protecting my area with fierce eyes, internalized anger, and energy, lest the teacher should ask me to move (trying to will that they wouldn’t with my thoughts). All the while eyeing “my spot” and feeling another flurry of thoughts cut through my head like a chainsaw at not being in it.

What I didn’t realize then was that every time I had to find another place, I could. I did. And it was okay.

There was support in the room to do so. Nothing fell apart. Nothing bad happened. I could walk a few paces forward, backwards, over, place down my mat and practice in a different place. As we moved through the class, my desire to be in “my” spot disappeared (sometimes quickly, sometimes it took a while for my brain to let go – to unstick) as did my protection of the new one.

I wanted to be stuck, internally attempted to will the ability to stay stuck to that spot no matter what and, as it turns out, I could also move. I could also adapt. Even though I didn’t believe I could. Even though it felt painful and uncertain at first.

In the beginning I only moved if I was forced to. I resisted unsticking fiercely. At the same time a tiny wee part of me started to grow that wanted to unstick. Even if I couldn’t trust it or allow it to surface too much, no matter how small, it was there.

I was learning – without even knowing I was – by allowing myself to take up the arduous task of moving in the room to another spot and discovering that it was safe. It could be safe over here or over there too. I could move over here too. I could find movement in new places literally, physically and mentally.

Maybe it was possible to not have to stay in that spot…

The aversion to being “forced” to move by others (who didn’t know the spot was “mine” to begin with) eventually gave way. I could trust myself and know that I could handle moving. In time, it was no longer painful and no longer a sacrifice to lose my spot.

I didn’t need to stay stuck.

My feeling of safety grew as I unstuck and my brain and body no longer entered the room in such a heightened state. I started to purposefully place my mat down in different places – noticing the blip of anxiety that arose each time. I consciously decided to make it a part of my practice. I would smile at the other people in the room instead of try to stare them down out of fear. More and more openness and inclusivity took root as I became less stuck.

Lately I’ve noticed that when I walk into the studio (or any studio) I don’t even think about where I put down my mat. I don’t have a spot and I don’t look for one to have. I want to talk to the other people in the room. I smile without even noticing I am. I feel easeful without a hint of those previous heightened states.

The flexibility that has come from this practice translates into life as well as I find myself exploring different and new relationships, ways of being, and activities. Lately I’m often living outside of my “routine” on any given day. For months, every time I’m somewhere I usually never am in the city I run into someone I know. I’m amazed every time and smile deeper and deeper with each chance encounter, feeling encouraged by the universe to continue unsticking and keep doing things and going places I normally wouldn’t. Continuing to move away from my regular spots while feeling safe, happy, engaged, and alive by doing so.

As I can see so much change and growth and unsticking in so many ways I am aware that there is more stuck.

For example, a few months ago my brain and being were stuck on not moving a class I’d been offering for over a year (at the same time and on the same day). Much like trying to protect my spot, I had been trying to protect the class since I started offering it, worried that it might not stay on the schedule if not enough people came. Even though it wasn’t “mine” I now wanted to also protect it both for myself (so I could keep teaching) and for everyone else: for all the students who came.

The question of moving the class came up, and along with it so many fears that had been embedded in my worry and protection, convinced that no one would come if it changed. Many of those same attributes of emotion and heightened sensations from years ago surfaced throughout the conversation about whether to move it or not. And, in the end, I wasn’t ready to be unstuck. I wasn’t ready to move a few steps in any direction. I was fearful and wanted to stay stuck. Even as I closed the door at that time, the possibility of moving was introduced – another seed taking root.

From that possibility, just the other week, I was ready to unstick. I was ready and eager to change the class and I started to see that just like picking up my mat, I could also pick up and teach anywhere, any time. I didn’t need to protect it. Even with those realizations, throughout the conversation, it was still painful through my heart center to allow the unsticking to occur – to move the class by an hour or so. Throat closing, heart closing, brain scattering and trying to compute and calculate the safety of doing so. To walk through the fear that no one would come and trust that they will. Then the decision was made, I walked through, accepted the change, and within moments found relief. Not only was I no longer stuck, the quick fierce emotion that surfaced had released and I felt amazing knowing that I had emerged on the other side of unsticking. Knowing that everything will be more than okay.

Though I crave change and “unsticking”, right now I actively resist it at the same time.

It will be interesting to see how to continue to work with (and move beyond?) such a significant sticking pattern. How to not always be stuck in seeing things through the lens of trauma or post-trauma. It’s not to erase or remove anything at all. I valued and needed to be stuck in those ways at those times and now I can move through life differently (and to be stuck in any ways I’m not yet aware right now). It’s a practice.

Through that practice, I’m learning to place my mat down anywhere I go with trust; to step backwards, forwards or to the side and still find movement; to be met with safety and connection every time I move off my regular course; and to be able to pick up that mat again (and again and again) and know that not only will I be okay; my un-stickiness will continue to grow and I will continue to move in new ways inside and out.

This year my parents started hosting a beehive. I was lucky enough to be there the day they arrived and I got to meet them. Something powerful and magical in their presence connected within me and I was excited that they had a safe home to explore, go about their work, find nourishment, create, and live.

The bees have their individual roles within the hive and they also all work together as though they are one organism. One community. They need one another in order to survive. Beyond that – they need one another in order to thrive. They are whole as a hive.

It was about ten years ago right now that I started practicing yoga. I had been quite ill for a few years and no one could figure out what was wrong. I kept getting worse and it felt like I was being treated not as a person or a whole. As more and more specialists got involved to look at one segment or another and couldn’t find an answer in tests, many insisted I was making things up. I continued to get worse – every part of me closing up. First my tongue showed symptoms, then pain in my stomach, until eventually my throat would close up and I had no energy to move off the couch.

I started working with a naturopath and remember the relief and tears that came from our first visit mostly because she actually listened to me. She listened to all of me. From there, we started to work together to find ways of healing. We discovered it was aggressive candida taking over my entire body and pretty much all of its systems. She was the one who suggested yoga to me since it would help strengthen my core. So I went.

My mom came with me at first. We went together both starting our own exploration. I remember those first classes well, especially shavasana. I had no idea if I was doing it “right” and couldn’t stay still, my mind completely in overdrive and I had no practice relaxing except for when my ill body forced me to through the sheer inability to move (which I also resisted mentally).

I often think of those early days of stepping onto this healing path. Of the care, tolerance, support, and guidance of the naturopath and my first teacher.

I’ve been thinking of all the teachers that have come since and in so many different forms. I’ve been thinking of not only healing that first deep illness through releasing so much in mind, body, energy – healing the root of it as well as strengthening. It took about seven years for the candida to be in balance and I’m confident I would have kept deteriorating without that help. I’ve been thinking about what has happened since then – how I’ve worked with healing trauma. Not on my own at all. Only through the support and help of others. The generosity of others. The kindness of others. The compassion of others. The knowledge and care of others who could help in so many ways. Ways I’m both aware and not aware of at all (and don’t need to be).

My heart grows peaceful as I feel all of the interactions. As I see every teacher I’ve met – both on and off the mat – I come to realize that there have been hundreds of people involved in my healing process. It has taken hundreds of people to help in my process. I needed hundreds of people. Hundreds. Each one offering something of themselves. Each one bringing insight and compassion. The wider the circle has expanded the more whole I feel. The more I start to be able to also integrate and incorporate more and more of myself, which, in turn, allows me to integrate more and more compassion for others. Generosity of spirit seems to be overflowing in me these days and it feels so full and bright and wonderful. I’ve never felt more genuine or authentic.

It’s not even about giving or receiving. It’s not about wanting anything from people in return. It’s not about any sort of calculation. No one is being used. It’s not an either/or. Or black and white. It’s and/and. It’s wholeness.

I remember early on in my teacher training hearing that, “all you have to do is heal yourself”. I felt such confusion come up – certainly that couldn’t be “all” you had to do. Not that it’s easy by any means – it just didn’t make sense to me at the time. That couldn’t be enough – could it? How would that work? Aren’t you supposed to help other people? I find more and more the truth of that statement and I agree fully. “All” you have to do is heal yourself.

Healing yourself does not mean you have to heal on your own.

I’ve realized that I’m the only one who can do the internal work for myself. I’m the only one who will understand what my own healing looks like from the inside. I’m the only one who can apply the tools I need. Except I couldn’t do that without all the hundreds of people I have met who offered so much help and understanding. I couldn’t do that without other people sharing their tools and wisdom to help me even know what was available to me: in both simple and more complex  exchanges, in conversations, in therapy, in yoga classes, in workshops or sessions, in so many ways I couldn’t even list them all. The more I heal myself the more I feel shifts with others. The more the energy changes the more my compassion grows – for myself and for others.

None of those people had to be there for me and yet, they were. Without question. I‘m starting to see more how we can (and do) all work together in order to heal. In order to heal ourselves. It takes more than a village. Much more. We are each in our own process, doing our own work – just like the bees. We are also each already whole and we are already part of a whole. Even if it doesn’t feel like it or we’ve forgotten what that feels like – it doesn’t mean it’s gone or broken. And I’m coming to see the importance of working with, contributing to, and needing to be a conscious part of the whole for one another. Not only to survive – to thrive.

The day of the Fall Equinox I felt myself starting to slip a bit. Throughout the week I found myself getting frustrated because it was so beautiful outside and I kept having to be inside for work and then on the weekend I was in a teacher training all weekend. Stuck inside once again. Stuck. Trapped.

All of my attention rested on not being able to be outside. I started to slip a bit further, focusing on the things I wanted to do and couldn’t. Like go outside or gather hawthorn berries – becoming agitated with the knowledge that the berries will only be there for a certain amount of time and knowing that I might miss them completely. If I had to be stuck inside and missing out on the things I wanted to do then couldn’t it at least also be raining? To reduce my temptation and desire to be outside. That would surely help me not feel stuck. Couldn’t the weather just change to suit my needs – that was obviously the only way to feel better, right?

I knew something was going on and couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Throughout the training I found myself hitting new edges and walls, triggers coming up for me in some of what was being asked and experienced. It was interesting to me because it wasn’t words or images or interactions with others that were triggering like it has been in the past – it was the assignments and having to move through them without feeling like I could or like I understood how to. That was what brought up deep responses of freezing and not knowing exactly what to do while also feeling the need to figure it out without time to process. It felt like ancient stored responses surfacing – going back to being a kid and trying to figure out how to handle complex situations in the best way I knew how.

Feeling stuck in place and needing to move at the same time.

In the first yoga nidra offering that night many long-held beliefs surrounding past trauma also sprung up clearly across the screen of my mind and then I knew. A light bulb went off, as I understood that it was trauma responses infiltrating my thoughts and yet the ride wasn’t over. Though this was really important information to receive.

The thoughts that started out as not being to go outside or collect berries grew deeper as I gave them energy. I started telling people in the class how I was upset to be inside. I told one person and then another and another. Why? For support? Understanding? Camaraderie? No. I fed the energy a little more each time I said it. Each time it wasn’t discounted. It didn’t need to be said for any reason other than keeping the energy alive and feeding what I believed to be true, searching for reinforcement.

In a few days the thoughts had grown from the berries and expanded to include so much more of how I was stuck in life. I went back to some good old staples of mine: how nothing has changed for so long. How there are no external changes. Everything is just the same. Same apartment. Same job. Still single. No family. The energy of being stuck continued to grow and expand – the thoughts I grabbed for encompassing more and reinforcing more. As these thoughts grew, my blahness grew; my ties to past trauma grew and my focus on desiring large sweeping changes in my life grew. I could feel more of a rut growing in my brain as all the old depressive thoughts that used to run freely along it received attention, wanting to flourish once again.

Feeling stuck in place and needing to move at the same time.

Even as all this was happening and I knew something was off I also had in the back of my mind the revelations from yoga nidra that the trauma was resurfacing right now. That information was helpful in understanding my state of mind and wellbeing. I held onto this information even as the rest of me felt like I might slide off the face of the planet.

Throughout the training and outside of it I kept hearing the Yoga Sutra pratipaksha bhavana being mentioned. Suddenly I was hearing about it every day. Seeing it in Facebook posts and online. It was everywhere, calling me to listen.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.33: “When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of. This is pratipaksha bhavana”. The idea is that by cultivating an opposite thought when we are in a state of suffering, we can move towards healing and entering the opposite state. Not to say we brush the painful experience under the carpet or try to get away from it – it’s explored, understood and you can also remember that there is an opposite state and that you can move freely from one state to another with practice. We practice this in yoga nidra with the pairing of opposites.

It took me years to understand that this was even a possibility in concept. If I was in a state of pain and suffering, I was supposed to stay in it, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I in it for some reason? Something I did or didn’t do leading to this consequence and I should suffer as a result. More than that – wasn’t it who I was as a person? If I wasn’t suffering all the time as my thoughts dictated then what else was there? It took ages for me to have a slight inclination of “what do you mean I don’t just have to stay here”? And the realization that “no, you don’t have to” took hold over time in little bits until this moment of readiness.

Pratipaksha bhavana. The words kept floating into my mind as an invitation saying, “try me” and “remember you do not have to stay in this state”.

I actively chose to rest my attention on the opposite state. I reminded myself it was “just” the trauma taking over and working its way out. I then kept reminding myself of the Sutra and its definition.

What happened was quite powerful. Within twenty-four hours of focusing mostly on the intention and idea that there is an opposite state (without even defining what it was) I had so many new thoughts appear. So much changed within me. I kept telling myself that many things have changed over the last several years and from that I saw for the first time the value of where I am. That maybe being in the “same place” for “so long” was a way for me to finally see how great everything is instead of always looking for what isn’t working or what isn’t present.

That burst of a revelation started to feed different energy. Instead of feeling stuck in all the parts of my life I could see that my life is actually pretty sweet internally and externally. It took about twenty-four hours for me to feel completely grounded and easeful. I saw that I didn’t need to make any massive external changes in order to feel different or better.

While looking at the opposite state to where I was I came to remember it’s also okay to be where I am.

After a lifetime of constantly looking for what’s missing. What’s not there. What’s not happening. What’s not changing. To be content with what is. To instead now value what is.

I value where I am. That is a new perspective. And as the new thoughts came through, the groove that was growing and leading me in the direction towards depression filled in and no longer pulled me away. It’ll likely come back; it’s long held. Only now I know it can change and heal.

As my focus of attention changed, my thoughts changed and my energy changed. I was feeding a different state. The more I focused on what I valued and had going for me the more I could see how I truly authentically wanted to live my life in the future. Future plans I’d never considered before as possible started to appear and felt completely right and not only possible but probable. True. Understanding and clarity around what I want to do and who I want to be came through in ways that it never had before accompanied by the knowledge that I don’t need to get there right now. That I can stay exactly where I am while also growing those new parts – the areas I want to foster and allow to flourish – and the rest will fall away.

No longer stuck and needing to move at the same time; freedom coming from within the movement from one state to another.

Thanks to a foundation of working with these energies through different practices, it took about twenty-four hours of dedicated focus practicing pratipaksha bhavana to move to a completely different state from where I had been. I no longer felt any depression or blahness. Instead I felt happy, bright and full. Excited by the magic and profound power of this practice and content with all the new information and insights I discovered by going through it. Feeling healthy and glowing in this other, blissful, state of being with no need for justification or reasons why. Amazed at being able to change the weather (at least internally) and to become unstuck without falling off the edge of the planet.

Change. It’s constant. We hear that all the time. It’s the one thing you can count on. If nothing is changing, it’s stagnant – and stagnation is death. And yet, we often try to hold on to that energy of death – even if it’s no longer moving – instead of finding ways to move with the change.

In the past few months there have been possibilities for change in my life. Some changes I didn’t have any signs of stress or worry over, some I did.

At first in thinking about the more unknown changes that I felt uncertain about I found myself saying, “I love my life, but it’s going to change”.

I love my life. BUT. It’s going to change.

What a powerful word set in between those two statements. But.

For the first time I saw what that word did – to me, my energy, and my overall state of wellbeing. It seemed to act as a threat introducing fear. As though whispering – yes, you love your life now but it’s going to change and in that change you won’t love it any more.

It added in worry about the future and shut down possibilities – forcing me to not be open to change. It created a duality between the two worlds. The one I love now and the one in the future that I may or may not love (and assumptions creeping in that I wouldn’t). It started to create a loop that I could see quite clearly of two absolutes that both felt like truth and were contradictory to one another. Black and white. One must be better and the other worse.

I mean obviously the “good” thing is happening right now, so the “bad” thing must be what happens later, right? The second half of that sentence became clouded over by my beliefs.

The energy fed into these beliefs, creating more uncertainty and shortness in breath. The possibility of tipping over into anxiety was strong and with that change in breath and energy the thoughts tried to become even more fueled by it all. The thoughts wanted the loop to get stronger – the energy wanted to take root.

After a while even more could kick in around stagnation – the worry that if I don’t change now then I will lose both the life I love and what if the possibility of change would have made it even better? Fearing the death that stagnation brings. WIth that, for me, comes the feeling of paralysis.

Even though in the current moment nothing had changed. There was nothing happening and I was completely safe, happy, healthy, and as the first few words showed clearly – loving my life.

In practicing Tantric yoga philosophy I’ve learned about the idea of non-duality, which I often see as a practice where everything is included (all experiences, emotions, sensations). All is consciousness. When it comes to thoughts and thought-patterns and psychology, I like to see this practice work to show that there are no absolutes. No black and white dichotomy. Nothing is right or wrong or positive and negative. With non-duality there is no longer an either or. Everything is everything. There aren’t two worlds – one where I love my life and another where I may or may not. There is only one and it is full of life.

Through my practice I could observe the thought-pattern taking place and not get too caught up in it. I watched it for a while, feeling the sensations in my body and how my breath was starting to move. I kept breathing into my belly to ground and then remembered something that I had heard from a teacher recently. I applied his teaching and changed the “but” to “and”.

I love my life and it’s going to change.

Great! I love my life and it’s going to change.

My energy changed immediately. I felt so much better. I kept repeating it and watched the loop dissolve before my eyes. It let go. The energy calmed. The breath and sensations of anxiety disappeared. My suffering was completely alleviated. In fact, I started to feel energized by the possibilities and excitement that my life was going to change.

I love my life and it’s going to change.

There is no sense of loss there. It’s adding on, not creating the possibility of taking away (whether true or not, it was what I perceived as truth).

The statement becomes non-dual. It includes everything and offers more possibilities. In changing the one word I remain open and don’t talk myself around in unresolvable circles before anything has even happened.

“But” keeps me in a never-ending cycle of separation and suffering. With everything needing to be figured out in asking myself which is better: my life now or the maybe future life that will happen later as a result of these changes? As a result I become in conflict, turmoil and at the beginning of what could be a major spin resulting in anxiety or depression or both.

“And” brings everything together. No either or. It adds up to one whole. All is accepted and okay, incorporated into the whole. No sense of suffering. No spinning out of control. Nothing stagnates or is segmented and separated. It’s all one, flowing statement. There is no longer any death in this statement of life.

I was blown away by the quick shift this choice in words and thought brought to my overall state of being. What power in choosing to say and instead of but. If I wasn’t aware of the sensations in my body, breath, thoughts, I don’t know that I could have done that or so quickly.

Yes, there is a possibility (even a likelihood) that the future will hold things that are painful and I don’t like. It doesn’t mean that I will need to give up loving my life because of them. They too will be felt, honoured, and become incorporated into a larger whole. And though that whole will expand and contract over time there is nothing to be lost. There is nothing to suffer for or over in an effort to try to keep change (life!) out or pushed away. There is no change that I need to try and prevent or stress over. And now I have a magical tool to help me through the next time this loop appears.

I love my life and it’s going to change. There is no but about it.

About a year ago I started a near-daily seated meditation practice. I’m not sure how long I sit each day (knowing I would want to keep trying to achieve a certain length of time I never started collecting this information) and it’s mostly the practice of Apa Japa or being with the breath.

Prior to that my experience with meditation had been scattered, spontaneous, sporadic, and often no more than the five minutes or so offered at the beginning of a class.

I didn’t actively avoid meditation and I didn’t seek it either. I always enjoyed how it felt, was surprised when I could shift my focus, awareness, energy, breath to different parts of my body or the times when out of nowhere everything would connect and there would be a strong energy coursing up and down my spine into the ground and up through my crown chakra. My practice was intermittent at best and I had no desire to change it.

The first weekend after practicing for three days in a row I returned to work, turned on my computer, and realized that I was holding my breath the entire time I was going through emails. The entire time. “How long has that been happening?” I wondered. Likely years. Sitting there, breath held, waiting in a hyper-vigilant state for what? My email to attack me? Yes, I was. I was expecting some unknown threat to be waiting within those unread messages. My breath responding as though a tiger was about to pounce on me when it was only words on a screen.

I stayed with the practice after that and it has given me many clues into my breath and how it feels or holds in places depending on the situation (real or perceived). Clues where I could understand myself and how I responded to life. I could see and then have the power to change my breath and responses whenever a similar thing happened.

Last weekend I decided to create a mini-retreat in the city. I found classes I wanted to go to and decided to be offline for 48 hours. One of the classes was a day of silence at the NYC Insight Meditation Center. Now, I have been through silent practices in the past but mostly morning yoga practices extended out through to mid-day silence. It honestly didn’t occur to me that this would involve meditation (despite the name of the center).

When the instructor mentioned we would start in our first 45-minute seated meditation I felt confused for a split second as awareness also dawned on me. “Okay, you can do this,” I said to myself. So what if you haven’t done this before… If you’re going to do it best to do it “right” and find a meditation cushion to sit on instead of this chair. I got up and took my spot on the floor.

I’ve never sat for a 45-minute meditation ever. Turns out it was the first of several as we alternated between seated and walking meditations throughout the day totaling five hours of meditation. Five hours!

And what a ride it was.

To my surprise the time went quite quickly. Sitting four times throughout the day for forty-five minutes each time also allowed me to be with many cycles of breath. As they repeated through their natural patterns my body and sensation of emotions appeared around the breath in the same repeated ways. I hadn’t ever noticed how the breath changes in long patterns all by itself many times throughout a day. I’d never paid attention for that long.

I was heightened from the week and my thoughts were running rampantly at first. My thoughts were so powerful – running through thoughts about work, mostly conversations had, how I could do things differently, more and more thoughts all focused on the future and what to do, say, organize. It felt like the energy underneath them was spiraling so fast and with growing intensity – as if it could lift me up off the ground through the right side of my head and drag me along. My body was literally tipping up and to the right – ready to be carried away.

Near the end of the forty-five minute practice I found sustained stillness and it felt so peaceful. Easy. Like it could be there for hours. I wanted to relish in it. The bell rang. Phew – I made it through!

Normally that would be it. I would have found that delicious space and the practice would feel satisfying at getting there, feeling complete in my practice. Except in this case it wasn’t over.  There was more. Much more.

At some point in the second or third seated meditation I found myself not tipping as far forward in future thoughts but images from the past arose. Long forgotten childhood memories bubbling up as images. I later realized that these were all moments where I felt like I had no control. My body moved left and down as they appeared and repeated.

Then at one point the future and the past came together as if they were the same but no words or images – just energy. Dark and bright at once. And slowly ever-so softly surfaced memories of a past trauma. It surfaced in a very different way than in the past – not something to fear or hold my breath in anticipation of threatening me. It was surrounded by a soft sweetness and was floating slowly up. It came as a clue.

All I had to do was watch and hold the space as this soft blob of images appeared and started to mesh with all the energy that had built up and was moving through me. I felt it combine with another piece of my psyche. It felt intense, gentle, and necessary. Healing.

Right after, one word appeared: control.

That’s what ALL those thoughts were when I first sat down. Machinations of control unleashed and rampant – even more with a light cast on it. I often forget how control plays into things – perhaps because it is so engrained in me it doesn’t want to be seen. And in those moments of trauma my need and attempt to control became even more extreme and engrained in infinite ways into everything.

With this clue and healing moment my brain settled. Even more space appeared with so much cleared out. The future thoughts stopped completely. The past memories no longer surfaced. All was peaceful, still, and quiet. Deeper and far more powerful than at the end of that first 45-minutes. It felt like more expansion. More space.

At least for a little while…

Then I started narrating – writing what I would post later as it was happening.

“Stop”.

It would for a bit and then would kick back up again.

More quickly this time I saw it for what it was – another form of control. Saying what was happening in the moment so I could control what I would do with it in the future. Controlling both the present and the future in one fell swoop, it appeared in yet another way to achieve its goal – what a powerful tricky energy the subconscious has, especially as it’s healing.

It would start and stop. The gaps became longer, absolutely no thoughts present, only sensation, colours. The energy of that in-between state where the universe rushes in and the sensations are so delicious.

And this time as the narration came back from time to time I settled and said:

“There is nothing to control right now”.

I’m sitting here. In a room. There’s nothing to control. I let go even more. Settled. Far more space. There is nothing to control. I don’t need to do anything. I’m safe.

If there is nothing to control in this moment, then there’s nothing to control in the next. Then that means there’s never anything to control or try to or need to. Everything fell away and I was in a deep, prolonged, blissful, healing energy with not a single thought rising up for what could have been an eternity.

There’s nothing in my email to brace against. I don’t need to hold my breath to try to control what’s happening (or perceived to be potentially happening).

In the years before it wasn’t that my meditation practice was scattered it was that I felt like I was scattered and out of control – like everything would always be so extreme because my thoughts and responses felt so extreme. And they must be true, right?

For all those years I wasn’t riding the wave. It was riding me (throwing me around all over the place – and I let it). It felt as if I had no control and everything else did. In that I created alternate ways to feel like I had control.

I avoided meditation for so long in part because the energy didn’t want to change. It wanted to keep growing and feeding on itself. It was strong and in control of everything. Why would it want to give that up? I certainly didn’t want it to – it was all I knew.

Little by little, over many years, bits of meditation found their way in anyway and introduced a tiny bit of alternate energy into the mix. In time, that alternate energy is now what continues to be fed and grow. It becomes more than the old energy which I keep shedding. As it continues to heal my consciousness, allowing me more and more ability to be with myself and with all that comes through.

All those ways I created to seek control in the past aren’t going to disappear overnight and perhaps some of them are healthy or useful to hold on to. I don’t need to figure it out. I know that in this meditation some of the unhealthy mechanisms to achieve control did let go. I felt some of them lose their hold and fall away as my brain rewired.

What I can see in this transformation is that now I can be with my thoughts – even when they’re rampant and strong like they were on this day. I can ride the energy of them and keep breathing. Through sticking with these practices I haven’t gained more control over what the world may present to me. Now my thoughts aren’t in control of me – they’re no longer running the show or carrying me off. I don’t need to chase after them, make them happen, believe them to be true, be afraid of them, try to control them, or follow them down a reinforcing path of destruction. I’m not in control of my thoughts. I can stay with them and the energy underneath. I can work with them and understand them in new and different ways. I can step out of the past layers and old habits of controlling, let them go, and walk a different path. Perhaps that’s a different kind of control and that’s okay because it doesn’t feel controlling or restrictive. It feels healthy. Spacious.

I no longer need to struggle against the waves or respond to life as though it has the upper hand and I need to scatter and fragment and seek control in order to survive. Instead, I get to live. Breathe. Be. And enjoy the ride.