The Shakti Shine - May 25th, 2020
Shakti Love Notes
We are always growing. I love that! And the more I grow, the more I recognize how important it is for us all to share what we're going through-- even (and especially) me.
So these Love Notes are a space for me to share with you each week-- about the studio, my life, how our community is growing.
The greatest lesson I've learned over the past few years has been to hold two (or more!) things as true at the same time.
Another word for this is duality.
I used to try to only feel 'good.' I used to glaze over uncomfortable feelings with 'choose joy,' 'get grateful,' and 'good vibes only' attitudes.
And it worked for a while, because privilege.
But I started to feel sticky, dammed up, and kind of plastic feeling if that makes any sense.
Eventually I started to wake up to the world.
Long story short, it just didn't make sense anymore to pretend things were always ok. I didn't understand it then, but it's something I knew all along.
I remember being a teenager and my mom asking, 'How are you?' and I would say 'Fine.'
I wasn't fine. I was irritated. I was maybe lonely. I was ok, but I wasn't fine.
Or I remember going to my dad's house for the weekend and not being able to pull myself out of bed but pretending I was just doing what kids my age did to sleep all day and act moody.
It's strange to me because I grew up in a home where we talked about things openly. There was clear and open communication. I felt safe and supported. We had hard conversations when we needed to.
And yet I remember the heaviness in my chest of pushing my feelings down, pretending to be ok and mostly pretending to be happy. Because I thought I was supposed to. It doesn't make sense, but that's what it's like to live in your head all of the time.
I didn't know that I felt so trapped.
It was actually kind of nice to discover yoga, where it seemed like if I practiced standing-head-to-knee enough I could probably levitate out of my pain and grief. It was a place where Love & Light could transport me into an alternate reality, which I later discovered to be spiritual bypassing.
I still didn't know that what I was doing was disassociating from myself in the moment, which was probably what that plastic feeling was about.
It was a slow unraveling that began. Yoga opened something up. It was sometime in 2018 when duality became something I talked about a lot (mostly with my friend, Kate).
I started to realize that my lived experience, exactly as it is, makes me real. That whatever present emotion comes up is what's real, even when that means that I feel empowered & pissed, happy & lonely, annoyed & calm.
I can hold both (and all) at the same time.
It's a practice to be able to feel what I feel at any given moment. Usually I feel 2, 3, or 4 things at once. I've learned that that's normal. I'm learning to accept that every feeling has something to share. I'm learning to check in and ask what that is.
In action holding all my feelings at the same time looks like feeling what's present simply because it's present, not because it's right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. Just because it's here.
It gets to be 'both, and,'
'yes, and,'
'I believe you.'
Good news is I can breathe a lot more deeply now.
Good news is there's nothing to pretend about or run away from, and I don't feel like plastic anymore.
xx
Ruby