As I related recently when I wrote about my experience at Yoga Teacher Training, I fell in love with Dancer pose, and even told everyone before cueing it, “everyone loves to dance!” As noted, that’s really not true, some of us, like me, can’t dance to save our lives, but for some reason, I just love Dancer. My classmates even gave me the name “Lord of the Dance”, not because I’m so good at it, but because I wanted to do it all the time. There are several balancing poses, Warrior 3, Eagle, Tree, Balancing Half Moon, but I’ve fallen in love with Dancer. It took me until now to learn why.
Last weekend, I had one of the greatest weekends of my
life. OK, I exaggerate, it can’t compare
to my children getting married, or when Laurel and I got married, but it was
one of the most enjoyable weekends of my life.
Laurel had a yoga training session at our old yoga studio in Georgia,
and I tagged along for the ride. I
busily made plans and I set myself up with a full schedule of events. In order, starting with Friday afternoon:
- Therapy session with Hailey – I don’t believe anyone could ever reach me the way Hailey does, she is simply amazing. She knows more about me than anyone, except maybe Laurel, I trust her that much.
- Yoga with Stephanie – Laurel and I did a lot of yoga with Stephanie before we moved, and we also went on a yoga retreat with Stephanie to France, so it was nice to see her again. Added bonus, I got to see Stephanie’s dog, Tilly!
- Massage with Tami – She may have the most magical hands I’ve ever felt in a massage, I told her that she has ruined massages for me.
- Birthday dinner with Kelly and Clayton – Kelly and I share a birthday month, we are only two days apart, and we used to always have birthday dinners before we moved. It was so nice to reinstate this tradition.
- Yoga with Ashley – I spent a year in a book club with Ashley, all virtual. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to meet her in person, and I was so looking forward to taking a yoga class that she was leading.
- Coffee with The Chocolate Poet Society – It was “only” five of us, we couldn’t get everyone together, but it was so nice to see everyone again after two months or so apart. I miss them all so much.
The start was incredible.
Hailey and I have been together for three years, off and on, and I’ve
had many powerful sessions with her.
This may have been the most powerful, the most impactful, but also at
least one of the most painful. As we
ventured down the path of “what is wrong with me, why am I the way I am?”, I
came to a really odd epiphany, and one that I struggle to put into proper words.
We were discussing my inability to feel worthy, worthy of
love, worthy of forgiveness, worthy of grace, worthy of Laurel, worthy of
anything. Hailey tried to explain to me,
convince me, that worthiness is there, it’s inside of us, we don’t have to do
anything to earn it or deserve it, it’s already there. I know that, I don’t believe in “works” or
doing things to earn it, I just believe that we should do nice things for
people just because that’s what you do.
There really shouldn’t be any motivation for us to be nice to each
other.
But then something really hit me, and it hit hard. I thought back to something that Jeny said
the one day after a yoga class, she perceived that Laurel and I had done
something nice for her, and she said, “I know what you guys did, and I really
appreciate you.” It felt really nice
when Jeny said that, it always feels good when someone expresses gratitude,
especially those we really like and respect.
As I sat there in front of Hailey, the stark realization hit me yet
again. As good as that felt, it didn’t
make me feel worthy. Nothing I do will
make me feel worthy, it never has, and most likely, never will. I inherently knew worthiness wouldn’t come
from anything I did, but the painfulness of not being able to figure out how to
get there was overwhelming.
It gave me a lot to think about, and I wish I could say
Saturday was just purely bliss and joy, for the most part it was, but I had
that gnawing inside of me about worthiness, or lack thereof.
As noted, Sunday morning opened with a yoga class with
Ashley. She started off her class
talking about “peak poses”. Those are
the types of poses that you build up to in a yoga class, working your way to a
difficult pose, and sometimes you get there, and sometimes you don’t. Ashley talked about how we work
our way up to reach these peak poses, and when we get there, we feel so good,
we feel like we accomplished something, but that only lasts briefly, we then
want to move on to the next peak pose.
She said we oftentimes believe that
reaching these peak poses makes us worthy.
But she went on to say, that we are already worthy. There isn’t anything we need to do to be worthy,
it’s within all of us. We were in Child’s
Pose as Ashley went through this, and after she was done, there was a puddle of
tears on my mat, I was astounded at the irony of the situation. While some can or may attribute this all to
luck or karma or serendipity or whatever, I tend to believe these are God moments. I needed that message that morning, and I was
very thankful to receive it.
Sunday afternoon was magical of course, I was able to see
Phyllis, Meenu, Luciana and Staci, and we reminisced, and we talked about how
difficult it was to go from the high of our Yoga Teacher Training back to the
real world of work, of stress, of anxiety, of our normal lives. We had been isolated, we had spent nine days
in a house in the beautiful Georgia mountains, we had grown together, and then
got ripped apart, in a manner of speaking.
I didn’t have time to digest, I flew home Sunday night, and then I was back on a plane the next morning to Colorado, time to get back to work after such a beautiful weekend. It wasn’t easy to come off that high either, but getting back into the spirit of travel tends to ground you.
“For a Moment, When I’m Dancing,
I’m Free!”
Later that week I got an e-mail notification from one of my
favorite pastors and authors, Nadia Bolz-Weber, she has a website called “The
Corners”, that is described as “Grace for fuck-ups. Prayer for the impious. A space for spiritual misfits”. She has this segment titled, “Stuff I’m Into
Right Now”. This is a menagerie of book
recommendations, movies, recipes, podcasts, and in this case, an incredible
music video I just can’t stop playing, watching, listening to and crying about.
The music video is Florence and the Machine’s song “Free”,
and it stars Florence Welch, and one of my favorite actors, Bill Nighy, who
plays her anxiety (I highly recommend watching it). I didn’t notice it
immediately, but the second time through I heard the line, and it hit me, “For
a moment, when I’m dancing, I’m free!”
And the mystery for me was solved, it finally hit me, when I’m in
Dancer, it’s the one time I can silence all of those voices in my head that keep telling
me I’m not worthy and all of the many reasons that I’m not worthy. For those few moments, I’m free.
“To Open Up My Arms and Give It
All to You”
There was one more message, or actually many, but the line
above gave me a partial answer, and Bob Goff gave me the rest of the answer
this morning.
This morning I was reading Bob Goff’s “Love Does”. Lani recommended this book to Jeny, Jeny
recommended it to me, and I’ve recommended it to several other people. The premise of “Love Does” is that we can “discover
a secretly incredible life in an ordinary world”. It doesn’t take much, we can all do our small
part, and eventually, it makes a big difference. And I think that’s what I’m discovering or
discovered over last weekend and into this past week. Florence Welch and Bob Goff were able to put
my epiphany into the words I couldn’t come up with.
As I sit here writing, I’m watching Laurel. She has four yoga books or manuals in front
of her on the kitchen bar, a folder of many notes, many sheets of paper half-written, a computer
she periodically types into, blocks, and she goes from writing to typing, to on
the floor doing yoga poses, using her blocks, figuring out how to sequence a
class for her 55 and over community, back to her notes, back to her computer, writing, typing, hand motions, and an endless stream of activity. She
puts countless hours into figuring out how to best serve this group, and she
does it well. And they appreciate her
for it. Yes, love does.
“This is 911, Are You Having an
Emergency?”
Early Wednesday morning, I was out for a run in Boulder, it
was dark, very quiet since it was so early, and I was listening to my music, I
always listen to contemporary Christian music, I think I was listening to “Jesus
Mystery” at the time, but I was deep in my thoughts, and of course, the voices were telling me, well, what they always tell me. Suddenly, I heard my phone ringing, and I
looked down, and it was 911. I panicked
and quickly hung up, I had inadvertently called 911, but of course, they were
persistent, and called back.
“This is 911. Are you having an emergency?”
“Why yes, yes I am. Can you please do something about these voices in my head? Can you tell them to leave me alone and give me peace?”
