Hello Friends,
One of the most important contributions to living joyfully is our ability to connect, meaningfully, with other beings. While we are taught addition and subtraction in grade school, most of us did not receive much education in understanding how to form and maintain meaningful connections with those around us. Through no fault of our own, we were not taught helpful ways of expressing and understanding our emotions, nor recognizing the messages behind the micro-sensations of joy, anger, fear, sadness, and excitement that naturally arise when sharing time with others.
We tend not to notice these sensations, especially the negative ones, until they become blown out of proportion. And when this happens, we lose closeness.
My friend and Yoga teacher Peter Francyk often states that advancement in our yoga practice has nothing to do with fancy poses. Advancement in Yoga means greater sensitivity, greater subtlety in our awareness.
A key practice in Yoga, then, is noticing the sensations as they arise in the body.
In their book Conscious Loving, Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks also note the importance of recognizing tiny sensations, bringing clear awareness to them, and then speaking up about them. “Telling the microscopic truth,” as they call it, holds a key to establishing and maintaining loving relationships. But first, we have to learn how to notice.
Sometimes, when I am looking at my beautiful daughter, I feel a tightness in my chest and my heart beats faster. This sensation could feel a lot like fear. But when I go into it with calm and awareness, I recognize that it is actually a feeling of intense love. It also has a twinge of grief at how quickly she is growing, and how much I cherish her childhood, and how sad I feel that the time is slipping by so quickly. It’s painful!
This bundle of feelings could signal an impulse to run away from the pain of love. Yet the impulse to run away from closeness prevents us from deepening our connections.
In sitting with the sensation of love-grief-sadness-awe, letting myself feel it with total clarity, I can “lean into the sharp points” of the sensation. This leaning-into brings me into deeper connection.
By noticing the sensations, and really letting myself feel them, I train my body and mind to be able to handle closeness. I learn how to handle the intense emotions that closeness brings. This is a yoga practice.
The poet Rumi writes:
They way of love is not
a subtle argument.
The door there
is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling,
they’re given wings.
The door to the path of love is devastation.
Devastation.
Do you think you can love without being blown apart?
Never.
Lean into the sharp points.
Feel what you are feeling.
Tell the truth about it.
To your loved one, and most importantly, to yourself.
This will be a state of Yoga.
Bliss.
No matter how painful the microscopic truth.
Telling the microscopic truth will bring you closer into true connection, closer to experiencing your own divine being.
This is conscious loving.
Namaste,
Erin