My sweet yoga family,
How are you feeling? Are you being gentle with yourselves? So much is coming through so fast, new insights, feelings and heart opening energy. Yesterday in our morning class (online) we connected with the Magdelene Pink Rose Crystaline energy meditation, as Venus was at her most radiant. This is a new anchoring of the Feminine Divine, here now on Earth. We connected the energy lines between our Heart, Womb and 3rdEye, to align our potent placement here within. Divine flowering opened our hearts and healed our connection to the Womb of the Mother Earth. I felt such a powerful upward energy that it brought me to tears and to this story I am ready to share with you. Maybe it will be meaningful to you.
Several years ago a completely new anchoring of my relationship to the Feminine Divine began. As I rewrote the Divine Light Yoga 300 Hour Teacher Training (from the initial offering), I realized the Yang (masculine, linear, projective) nature of the DLY 200 Hour Teacher Training, and it was a new time for the Yin (feminine, circular, receptive) focus on an advanced teacher training that developed the subtle side of our teaching platform. (I am not teaching these course currently). What revealed itself to me, was that all of existence moves in a circular direction. As we grow, learn, and experience, it may feel at times as if we are “right back where we started”, and yet, with mindful and calm presence, we may realize we have “evolved up a notch”. That teacher training provided a unique and genuine experience into revealing the subtleties of our True Nature, to revealing true authenticity . It confirmed for me that building a bridge between the Feminine and Masculine Divine was essential. For all men and women, we must learn to come together in a completely new way. It showed me the roots of so much conflict, within me and the world. This was big. I asked to be shown more on this and the Universe delivered. Just not in the way I could have imagined.
Soon after graduation I was confronted with a choice I never wanted to make ever again. It placed me exactly in the firing line of the one male that I had sworn to never again be near. As the next two and half years unwound a nearly soul destroying experience, it also recalled into deep question my entire relationship with all men, with the entire Masculine Divine (within me and Universally). I struggled as I felt pulled down into the depths of anger, rage, pain, fear and outright violent tendencies. My strong fire nature ended up being nearly overwhelmed as I could feel myself sinking into a heaviness, despair, fear, dullness and losing a part of my heart. I know you have gone through things in life like this, where it is all just too much, too painful, too scary. It felt like outside forces were taking over, and my deep inner connection to my Divine Nature was feeling separated. Right when I needed it the most, I was feeling disconnected. My body was not responding, my heart was not connecting and my mind was foggy and bouncing between emotions. This frightened and frustrated me, after all, is this what shows up after 20 years of a committed spiritual practice? Was my own self betraying my Self? Previously believed resolved trauma surfaced as unresolved trauma and called into question practically everything that had held me steady. I was stunned by this. I realized this was not just about me, it was about all of us, it was speaking to a universal pain, to a collective trauma inflicted upon the entire Feminine (and Masculine) and that on a microcosm I was experiencing what the macrocosm was exposing. We were all being called to task.
Answers began to arrive, people showed up in my life in the most unexpected ways, I paid attention, I did not give in to the victim mentality, instead I reached deep into a broken heart and remembered how I had asked for this. And the irony was not lost on me. What had sustained and awakened me before this situation occurred, needed tweaking, I needed to dig deeper and get to the root cause of my own suffering to understand our collective suffering. This is the root teaching of all I practice and teach, so I knew this was the way through, by going right into it.
I renewed my daily practice, I recommitted to giving myself permission to feel more deeply (which is exactly what scared me the most) and I acknowledged that my rage, my anger and deep emotions were okay. In fact, they were a tool I could use to heal myself. They are energy and I needed all I could muster. I began to bike ride and felt a renewed sense of playful childlike fun. I practiced and taught Yin and Restorative yoga (subtle and slow) with Yoga Nidra (deep healing of the nervous system). I asked for help. I chose to expose more of my vulnerabilities. I opened to the possibility that maybe what I believed about men and the Masculine was inaccurate and based on my trauma, and that my experiences with my father, grandfather, brother, ex-husband and many other men had all been supreme opportunities for me to see into something differently.
I resolved gently and slowly to ask to see the pure good in men, to see how a healthy and loving relationship functions. All the while, that ongoing nightmare situation was resolving and I walked away disillusioned yet clear, is that even possible? Incredibly, I realized the trauma that man had experienced and why it resulted in his behaviors. I realized the trauma my father, grandfather and brother had experienced (to the best of my memory) and it helped me to see them in a more compassionate light. I began to see the collective trauma to the Masculine and the resulting trauma to the Feminine and the synergistic relationship of trauma to inflicting pain and harm. I felt a little like Arjuna when Krishna shows him the mighty power of the Universe and he is blinded by the light in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11.
It took me what felt like a year to heal my body (post menopause can wreak havoc without proper attention), to regain a new connection to heart and to balance my mind. The mind and emotions came into balance with a renewed focus and direction into studying Yoga Therapy. Every Master teacher, new friend and focus opened me in a completely unprecedented way. In 15 months I witnessed more loving and healthy relationships than I could remember. I witnessed and experienced so much love and support that it empowered me to be more and more vulnerable, I felt the inner light get brighter and brighter, I felt stronger and yet more soft. A whole new unfolding was happening within. I studied with complete fervor and dove deep into my own trauma with the tools of somatic therapy. Moving, breathing, dancing, biking, hiking, loving, playing, writing, sharing became my renewed reality. Accepting the changes in my body and releasing resistance to integrating the past were my new daily.
I chose to embrace the deep wisdom coming through for me. The wise woman was birthed. I am ready to fully embrace and hold space for this most magnificent time in life. This is my 60thyear and I live fully embodied, ready and whole . Gratitude extends beyond my heart and soul. I share all of this with you, openly and honestly because I know we all suffer the same, we hurt the same and yet each of our stories are unique.
I love to synthesize information, experiences and wisdom, to bring them into a simple and palpable context for use. I love to take content of the most profound nature and break it into digestible bites. If the last three years revealed anything, they revealed everything. I learned we are all traumatized, on some level and we share in a collective trauma. And never has that been more substantial than now. I realized there is one specific tool I used to heal and resolve the deep pain, suffering and anger I had experienced. It allowed me to find my way to a whole new resolve, a new unfolding, a renewed sense of Self. I feel it will be a powerful for you too, when used as a tool and not a weapon.
It is commitment.
Unequivocal commitment to full, radical, unabashed, primal, essential authenticity. Period.
All else will come, once we commit to authenticity. The larger question posed is, how do we do it? What does it mean? How does it look? Feel? What are we to do? To be? This is not a little thing, this is larger than you, it is us. And it will yield profound, life-enhancing, heart opening, mind blowing Soul experiences. It is passion, compassion, and everything else you can imagine, really. Once you commit, you cannot control what will unfold, but you can learn to be with what is from a deep place of courage and ecstatic joy. Again, really.
Rooting out trauma, integrating it and the resulting stories I had created from those traumas (around the most important men in my life) gave me an entirely new relationship to my authentic nature. The most astounding part of this healing, this integration of experience was my not even understanding how the early trauma had impacted me and resulted in a myriad of behaviors.
For now, I encourage you to simply sit with this concept, to gently allow in the possibility of considering the ways your life shows up where you are not feeling full, rich, harmonious, solid, strong, kind, patient, or feeling fearful, worried, overwhelmed, angry, resentful, jealous, frustrated, empty, and…fill in the rest. I hope to open dialog with you on how we can use this tool of commitment to authenticityto awaken and reharmonize our lives. More to come, for now, consider.
Thank you from my heart for reading to this point, I love you and feel you deeply.
In light and love
Denise
ps. I’ve added some new videos to my Offerings page that may give you more balance and integration right now. And remember, you can meet me on our virtual mats Monday through Friday, go to my Live Classes page. I hope to see you soon.