Integration and Wholeness
As we’ve been working with the wisdom in Sah D’Simone’s new book, Spiritually We, The Art of Connecting and Relating From the Heart, I've been contemplating the state of my own heart.
This is a more personal post, as I wanted to share some of what continues to open for me. For the past twelve years, I've worked in depth with releasing trauma and shame out of my body. Through somatic inquiry combined with thirty years of yoga and meditation, I have developed a more stable nervous system. My mind is no longer compulsively ruminating about the past, or catastrophizing about the future. All of this has opened up space.
When we work with opening our heart and connecting, we're working with trust, and for that we need a regulated nervous system.
When we are in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawning response, it means that we are reacting to a threat. Some of these threats are actually here in the present moment. Most of them are from our history of being hurt.
I've had a rocky experience with relationships. I was sexually shamed as a teenager and I know what it is like to have people who didn't even know me turn against me and talk about me. I had a “bad reputation”.
It was the mid 60s, long before the feminist analysis and activism of the seventies. Patriarchy was thriving in our small town then and gendered violence is still prevalent. My parents were disconnected from me and I was on my own emotionally. My best friend had just moved away. I was twelve years old when a popular boy in Grade twelve invited me to skip school and go to a friend’s house to drink. First kiss. First beer. … The beginning of years of suffering.
I brought that pain, loneliness and longing for a connection into my adult life. When I was in my mid twenties, I got into a relationship where for the first time I felt like someone loved me, saw me, cared about me, and wanted to protect me. What happened to me as a child and in my teen years left me vulnerable, and I couldn't afford to see that it was not a healthy relationship. I traded my autonomy for protection.
In my late twenties and thirties, I found connection and growth through feminist and lesbian activism. I began to understand and fight against systemic oppression and got in touch with my anger. My activism now is less on the streets but I continue to care deeply about and work for social justice.
As I turned forty, I discovered meditation. I was still in an emotionally abusive relationship, but now I was able to connect with myself spiritually and my heart opened. I was vulnerable and not really protecting myself. I was fortunate to have spiritual teachers who were trustworthy which gave me the freedom to let my heart open without being abused. I felt completely at home.
Then as everything does, life changes. Our senior meditation teacher stopped traveling. My romantic relationship was not healthy and I couldn't seem to leave. When I had finally decided to leave, a series of events kept me there for a while longer but I was healing inside. I was seeing clearly and I was finished with the relationship.
When I was almost sixty, I moved across the country to Nova Scotia where I could be near my son and family. Being able to form a closer friendship as adults with my son is a great blessing, and having grandchildren in my life every day opened my heart.
It took me a few years to energetically recover after leaving that long term relationship and I began to do the work I'm doing now, teaching classes and working online with people on healing trauma.
My work evolved. I had been teaching yoga and meditation since the late nineties, but now I was working more directly with the mind and the body in healing trauma. In 2015, I began what I thought was a 30 day meditation challenge to meet every day to do a meditation practice together. We've now been meeting for eight and a half years every single day, seven days a week.
The consistency and depth of meeting daily has become an anchor for me in my own practice, as it has for others. It has become a way for people to deeply heal in their body, mind, and nervous system. Guided daily practice with me is free, online, and is a foundation of our community.
Six years ago I started offering a Sunday free community class where we explore all aspects of life. Connecting in small groups on Zoom has created a vibrant trusting community as people learn how to be in their body, somatically listening as other people speak, and hone the ability to share their experience into a trusted space where we know other people are not going to give advice, comment or evaluate our share. Then we come back together and share as a group. I love this connection we have.
When I think about opening my heart to another romantic relationship, my heart is not as trusting. I haven't had healthy romantic relationships. I do know some people who have a supportive, kind relationship with each other so I know it is possible. For me right now, when I think about connecting through the heart, I am satisfied. I have deep family and friend relationships. I have an open heart and intimacy with my community, which is mostly online. Since I moved here in 2012, I've found local friends, which is expanding delightfully again.
A new relationship that I'm cultivating right now is the sacredness of Earth Mother. My spiritual practice has been through mantra based meditation, the Himalayan tradition of yoga meditation. We practice in community and ultimately, it is a practice of going within.
I am drawn to the Indigenous healing practices in the Medicine Circle and cultivating a mindful daily life relationship with the world around me. I have connected with elder Dr Fyre Jean Graveline, who shares her wisdom through programs like Healing our Fragmentation: ReImagining our InterDependence.
An example of something I am excited to deepen into is the sacredness of water. I live in a tiny house off grid without running water. I collect rainwater off my metal roof. I'm careful with water now, in a way that didn't happen when I could open a tap. I live in view of the ocean. I savor the fragrant moist air I breathe. My open hearted connection practice right now is mindfully honoring the sacredness of water, air, fire and earth.
To live well, we need wisdom, good boundaries and an open heart. We need to trust other people and take care of ourself. We need to protect our tender heart, our inner child, and be a reliable adult for ourselves. We need to be on our own side
This process evolves as we understand how our system works. We begin to get free from some of the compulsion in the mind and the hypervigilance in the nervous system. We all have the capacity to understand ourselves and to set our own course. It takes some time. Healing always does.
Cognitive understanding is helpful, and deep somatic work is where the change actually happens. It can be as simple and profound as changing the signals we're giving our nervous system. If we've developed a habit of holding our breath because we were scared as a kid and/or as an adult we've been in relationships and circumstances where we are afraid, then that resides in our body and in our nervous system. Cultivating a smooth, even diaphragmatic breath signals safety and that changes everything. We begin to experience safety within ourself and then with others.
Becoming at home in our own heart is the foundation of connection with other people. During my early years in meditation, my opening heart was a surprise as I'd been shut down for so long. I was pretty dissociated and I didn't really take in the opening, the warmth, and basic goodness. It took a while for that to become known and stabilized.
As we go through life and we turn towards healing, we become a true friend to ourselves. It happens on so many levels. For me, I feel like I am a friend in my mind. I’m not bothered anymore by a mean inner critic or catastrophic thinking. I also have a lot of somatic awareness, I'm aware of my body now. We pay a price when we're disconnected from our body. We do that to survive, and at some point, we can come back and integrate and become whole again.
This is what is happening now. In all of the wonderful ways that we are doing this, in our own private thoughts, in our tender hearts, and together in community, we are coming back into wholeness.
I wholeheartedly welcome you to connect and join with our community.
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