How do we navigate a safe return to the world with our hearts open?
As we are all getting ready to greet the outside world again, I've been pondering how much invisible help we need in bringing our hearts forward and keeping them open, after 15 months of living more closed in on ourselves. Many of us are nervous, some are a bit more hesitant. We have navigated so much over the past while that we are likely still processing and assimilating, and to be very honest - we have yet to make full sense of it all. It may feel like we need help contemplating the 'how' of emerging back out into a world that we have in part forgotten; a world where we are not so sure what ‘normal’ is anymore, and perhaps even less sure that we want to return to it.
That's why I really think we need June to be our heart month; to make it all about leaning into this resistance as we experience it. But I suppose considering our recent history, this is a lot easier said than done.
The Body Keeps the Lockdown Score
The emotional effects of lockdown for many were, and still are, very much held in the body. And the prospect of leaving the safety of our nests now seems more daunting than it should. To some, even thinking about meeting up with friends, trying new things, meeting new people, requires more effort now, and the cost of that effort requires even more alone time to recuperate. The challenge ahead of us is to emerge from lockdown in an integrated way, safe in the bittersweet knowing of having grown larger to accommodate the experiences, but not shackled to the emotional trauma that might have accompanied them.
The awareness of how the body holds emotions is not unfamiliar to yin students. It’s a practice that allows us to get this on a very visceral level. It’s something for which we can be grateful, even if at the time the depth of what we feel can be too much. But knowing just how much the body can hold us in the past inspired me to expand on how yin can help us integrate the lockdown lessons as we cross this threshold.
And really, to emerge in an integrated way from lockdown, we would do well to learn how to spend a little time in our bodies, with our hearts open, and breathe. and feel, and stay, and come to ground. And see if we can maybe discern the parts we haven’t felt enough.
“It is not enough to be able to drop your body as easily as a bathrobe,
take flight like the eagle,
enter the hollow hills,
talk with angels, and dance among the stars.
We must make the return.
We must live in this word and be gardens for the dreams that want to take root in it.”
Feeling vs Fleeing
So how does getting familiar with the physiological experience of open-heartedness help us? This befriending the tender parts of ourselves, and leaning into our raw vulnerability; Why in the name of all that is good and holy would you want to do it?!
Well, because there is huge potency in surrendering to all that is.
Leaning fully into all that is is the only human, wise and integrated way to get through the mental and physical effects of lockdown, and not end up with long-term neuroses. If anxiety is the price paid for not listening to the whispers of the soul, we could say that our self-protection is exacerbated by our very resistance to feeling into every dark corner of it.
Rather than enlightenment I would so love to see us adopt the term integration. It is more honest. It is more real. Integration takes into consideration the reality of our human form. Seeking enlightenment often leads people on a self-destructive path of avoidance where the embodied healing that is lauded is all too often lacking.
Integrating our Vulnerability as we make our Return to the World
Heart-openers serve not only to confront us with all the ways we are reluctant to be here, but they offer us our wildest, truest, and most deeply creative selves. Our spontaneity & our fire, our passion & our thirst, our deepest connection to what we truly desire, and our most expansive commitment to what we deeply love. We must feel to remember. We must feel to heal. And just like one of my favourite children’s book reminds us - We can't go over it.
We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it!
There just ain’t no bypassing over, over or around anything to do with our embodied evolution and constant change in this life. We have got to feel through, go through, and grow through each and every moment.
“Heart-openers serve not only to confront us with all the ways we are reluctant to be here, but they offer us our wildest, truest, and most deeply creative selves.”
Melting Heart pose IS vulnerability. Yin yoga is honestly the closest thing you will find to an embodied practice of vulnerability. To navigate feeling into the unknown, holding all our uncertainties, we come to realise that the shy part of ourselves is already there, standing at the top of the mountain on June 21st, nudging us gently forward, cheering us on, because that shy (but oh so wise) part of ourselves knows that while the inner world has been our sanctuary, it’s in the outer world we need to plant our dreams.
“What you must do must be done on your own...
You’ve listened long enough,
Now, strike your note.”
So here are the invitations; Can you call that shy part of yourself forward from deep within? Can you make your return just that half a shade braver than your were before? Can you uncover the new conversation you’ll start with the world to which you return?
The June heart-opening challenge might just offer you the perfect container to feel your way into the answers; #21daysOfMeltingHearts starts today, and you are all so welcome to join me for one hell of a ride with the wise one yinside.
Grace x