SHAKEN. I BREATHE, & I ALLOW

Apprenticeship to Love: Meditations on this Path to Authentic Relationship, October 9, 2023
🎁There's an "Easter Egg" in today's chapter for three Premium or Premium+ subscribers... 😊

• Today’s questions: Are you able to feel yourself trembling, shaken to your roots, and still stand? Still stand with your heart open?
• Today's suggested practice: Day 9 of this month's practice, to notice & receive while in motion (see my "Short Practice,” below)
• My practice today: 3am: Two hours of yoga, practice of Going Within (with Kundalini Yoga School).
• My vulnerability practice: Yes, I'm feeling very tender to the world right now —and practicing holding myself tight enough to allow it all to nourish me, I breathe. I relax. I allow...

★ On Tuesday at 8pm, Pacific time, I'll be doing an Instagram live with my colleague Fabiola Perez. We'll be talking about our upcoming Tantra+Tango for Couples workshop. And your questions are important. So important that we'll be offering a special discount code to the workshop for everyone who asks a question on Insta live. Here's the link: https://bit.ly/3F7I7JA

TODAY'S MEDITATION

It is the ending of this full moon in Aries. Always a transformative time for me.

This is said to be a time of power. Passion. A time of conquest and conflict.

I know that the way I conquer is to be, to breathe into the man I love. The man I am. To be, fully, “he who must be trusted.”

So I breathe and allow myself to be this deep and this powerful. I am he. I am here.
…
The days, hours, minutes are passing. My dreams are full.

In anticipation I hold a flood of feelings. Feeling them, i do not let myself be swept away. I am rooted. I breathe.

This is how I choose to live, to feel it all, and to do less.

I let Her dance through me, around me. Within me.

She is powerful.

Breathing, so am I.

“Breathe, and she will return.” Yes. This was the lesson, in class, so many years ago. Now, to live it. And enjoy it. In this life, this moment, these days and hours and minutes of anticipation.

Breathe, and allow.

Breathe, and do less.

Trusting myself and all of this practice, that I may receive.

Breathing, and allowing.
...
Timing. Not just the waning of the Aries moon, but me, stepping into the depth of this season of arrivals and anticipations and such deep stirrings.

So the timing was good. To listen to a friend recound her recent adventures in this season of discomfort. She'd travelled to a place that was once "home." Not so much anymore, but that's part of the discomfort. The other part: falling into something deeper than anticipated (the things that happen when we open not just our hearts, but our bodies too, to unknown others...). A man is involved. Scarcely known, but the charge was —remains— strong.

So here she was. Back from what had been home, in the place she feels called to know as home, torn. Her heart and body open. Feeling the unsettledness of it all. And, somehow, holding herself open to it all. Tides swirling. Winds blowing. Heart and body aching. Standing in it. Holding herself in it.

A portent. My own swirling tides and howling winds about to descend as my inner storm.

A guidance.

A reminder: This is all here for me to feel, and to allow myself to be nourished by. (I wish for things to be so much easier and less uncomfortable, but I also know that it's only at this edge that I really know myself and how beautiful this life is. So I breathe. And stand. Open.)
...
I was led through an "inner voice" meditation several years ago. This was at a time when —for good reason!— I could not and would not trust myself. This was one of those times in my life when the weight of regret seemed almost too much.

The only place of sure-footing for me in those days was in my daily yogic practice, and in my meditations.

I knew enough not to brush off the weight of my regrets, and had to hold this resolve firm, against the advice of most of my friends. (We are not a culture that knows the value of regret. We're so quick to "move on." To "get over it." To "let go.") I knew my heavy feelings were serving a purpose. Still, I chafed. Resented. None of it a "bad thing." All of it uncomfortable.

In my meditations I'd begun to experience a way to use my regret to fuel the fire necessary to transform the habits and ways of being that had brought me to this discomfort. The "inner voice" meditation simply brought me to another level of clarity about who I was, where I was —and, my ability to now trust myself.
...
All of the things and people I resist and resent, they are are here to serve me. It's not about not-feeling the resistance and resentment, or the regret. No, it's about allowing myself to feel this discomfort. And, feeling it, to allow it to show me my way through.

🎁 Easter Egg!

Free "Inner Voice" guided meditation (value: $150) for the first three Premium and Premium+ subscribers who book: https://www.sacredbodies.ca/lite/inner-voice-meditation (it costs $5/month to be a Premium subscriber)

TODAY’S INSPIRATIONS

🌀…and really considering your inner world as important, if not more important, than the world around you. Taking this into consideration it makes sense that for many yogis Pratyahara is actually their most important practice or limb on the Eightfold Path. (Kundalini Yoga School, Going Within sadhana, Day 1)

🌀 You can harness the power of a full moon in Aries by doing manifestation rituals that seek to help you start something new in your life while simultaneously closing out an old chapter.

🌀A man's authentic edge of practice isn't to do more.
It's to do less.
Much less. (Justin Patrick Pierce)

🌀There is a way through every block. (Aquarian Sutra 2)

🌀I want to be seen. I want to be accepted as I am. And loved for that. (My beloved, my Oracle & Siren)

TODAY'S SUGGESTED SHORT PRACTICE

Day 9 of this month's practice, to move and to notice, and to receive:

Please read through first, then ...

• Today, set two alarms, one for the early part of your day, one for mid-late afternoon when you may be feeling low energy.
• When the alarm sounds, wherever and however you are, take three, five, 11, or 30 minutes to do this short practice:

• When you’re done, stand for a minute or two, breathing gently, slowly filling and emptying your belly. Here, as you breathe into your fullness, ask yourself, Are I able to feel myself trembling, shaken to my roots, and still stand? Still stand with my heart open?
• Notice if your body-mind feels somehow changed. And whether you notice a change or not, be content with yourself, exactly as you are in this moment.
• Continue with your day until the next alarm sounds, and repeat.
• If you want to talk about your experience, or your resistance, or about anything that, as one reader has put it, "lands while reading these chapters," please set up a short (15-minute) chat for Zoom: http://sacredbodies.ca/chat.
• It may not be enough, but it'll be a start. And that's always a good thing.