Living Joyfully: Connection is Key

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Hello Friends,

In the famous bestseller, Getting the Love you Want, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt write, “restoring the awareness of our connection is the source of all healing.”

They talk at length about the importance of connection, and how easy it is for us to lose our sense of connection with each other, and with the universe.

Living Joyfully: Connection is Key

Connection is the key to getting the love you want, and connection is also the heart of Yoga. Yoga means union, connection. Between body and breath, between our ideal selves and our life circumstances, between so-called “mind” and body.

At root, our lives are about the creative tension between understanding and developing our authentic selves, and relating to others authentically through connection. Through relationship, we grow in our capacity for compassion, awareness, and authenticity, and we discover aspects of life, including our own being, that would otherwise remain hidden.

Living Joyfully: Connection is KeyOne of my favorite teachers, Peter Francyk, often emphasizes the short-circuit we take when we simply think of life and each other as “all one.” It’s simple to say “all is one” and think of unity and even relationship in that way, but most of us are far from experiencing this sense of oneness.

We may long to experience the sense of connection we think oneness would bring, but we continuously bump up against the actual otherness of the other. And, I think, a lot of the time we expect oneness to be the fruit of relationship – agreeing about everything, for example. And when that fantasy doesn’t pan out, we feel disappointed and disconnected.

A better approach, Peter suggests, is to recognize our diversity, the wonder of creation, and acknowledge that we’re all different, but intimately connected.

One-ness flattens everything out, while connection emphasizes the dynamic dance we experience when we truly approach and appreciate another being as other.

At Eponaquest, we work with the horses in an exercise called “Exploring Connection.” The most eye-opening aspect of this experience is the recognition that connection does not always happen in the way that we expect. Our unconscious assumptions about what connection must be in order to be “real” and authentic, come to the surface to be examined, explored, and tested against the reality of connection in this moment.

Connection is the key to getting the love you want. What does connection look like to you?

Namaste,
Erin

p.s. In just two weeks I will be co-teaching a November retreat at Red Mountain Resort with Mary Johnston-Coursey. The topic? Awakening the Energy Body. The practices offer us a way back to ourselves, by connecting us to our total being, inner, outer, and beyond. We still have a few spots left! Scroll down for details…

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