This has been one very special week. I feel like I’ve learnt so much! The theme was gratitude. It sounded great until I hit day one of this theme and got totally triggered. I had a meeting on the Monday and by the end I felt utterly worthless, useless and rubbish. A rare feeling for me and I was drowning in it. Wave after hideous wave..
Swept away utterly by this rough tide of emotion I didn’t sleep a wink. Not one wink! On the Tuesday I was supposed to start teaching about gratitude. I could hardly keep my eyes open and I just kept bursting into tears over the coffee I was supposed to have given up for New Years. Welcome to gratitude week guys lol.
I’m participating in a year long yoga training with The Contemporary School of Yoga. I put one of the webinars on, just to try and lift myself. It spoke of radical vulnerability. A talk was posted by Brene Brown. Omg it was so beautiful. I sobbed, but this time because it was breaking my heart open. I’ll put the link to this talk at the end of this post. Shes incredible!
She was saying that one of the keys to life is connection to others. We often close down because we are scared of being vulnerable. However, we when we close to keep ourselves safe, we close on every level. We also close to joy and gratitude (my current themes). By allowing myself to be vulnerable I could open up. Gratitude didn’t have to be an Annie musical where I’d be elated and dancing down the street. I could open to it with puffy eyes, in bed, crying over my coffee. All I had to do was open up.
I suddenly knew that if I could do this with the group where I’d felt triggered, I could reestablish connection and allow myself to reopen also to joy. I took a deep breath and typed. I typed how I’d felt and why. There was no blame. It was nobodies fault. I told them my vulnerabilities in that moment and shared how I truly felt.
Amazingly most of the group replied that they also felt the same. Others had also lost sleep. We had all appeared so strong and sure of ourselves, but deep down we wondered if we were good enough, capable enough, strong enough. I think we hide these feelings a lot in groups and in life. A huge bonding and lots of humour happened as we shared how we truly felt. Connection and joy emerged, also a huge wave of gratitude.
I went on to have a beautiful week of connection and cooking, art and cats, reading and sharing. The biggest gift, however, was being brave enough to open with my vulnerabilities. To know and be known. Just open up x
Intu-Yoga 