Big Lie #1
There are a few deep and terrible lies here on planet Earth, which have gone on to produce countless others. (I have pondered this for many years.)
A Big One is the lie of Disconnection. The Lie that we each should deny, ignore, and eventually forget our own inner truths, submitting instead to follow external authorities and experts, because they ‘know better.’ We’re taught early and often to turn away from our own intuition and instincts.
“Sit still.”
“Finish everything on your plate.”
“If I can do it you can do it.”
“It’s only safe to follow the experts. THEY are the Authorities.”
After a while we can’t hear the inner voice anymore. It seems to have vanished. So we resign ourselves, ”They must be right, I must be wrong.”
And the dynamic shows up everywhere - in healthcare, education, religion, government, and on and on. It’s a refrain that’s been passed from parents to children for hundreds of years.
Gentle reader, how does this sit with you? Perhaps it sounds like gobbledeegook. (Deep breath.)
I want to share 2 specific experiences that helped to reconnect ME with my inner self and inner knowing.
Seven years ago I attended my first yin yoga class. It’s not dynamic or stressful, but it’s not completely effortless and comfortable either. My body transformed into a laboratory where I could observe: really paying attention to the consequences of tiny changes in how I embodied a pose, or even how I modified my breathing. My body became my own private crucible! I got to feel into how my tissues responded to the mild and prolonged stretches in each pose. It was incredible. Tuning back IN, after decades of tuning outward.
Still today yin yoga (alongside qi gong) provides a safe, familiar environment within which I relax and tune inward. My cells and tissues de-flame (or whatever the opposite of inflame is!).
This reconnection with my moment-by-moment experience - and with my nervous system’s relaxation response - set the stage for many subsequent transformations. Like this one:
About a year after my first yin class, one of my employers surprised me and asked if I would become the company’s first-ever Parenting Coach. As soon as I heard “parenting,” every cell in my body jumped for joy! My body - my unconscious - knew that the bonds between parents and children are essential to my purpose in this lifetime. (Though it had never consciously occurred to me until that moment.)
Waking up to and being in touch with your own inner knowing / truth / intuition is not once-and-done. It’s a part of an awakened journey. It’s not “finished” any more than you’re finished brushing your teeth forever, just because you brushed them this morning. I mean, how hard do you need to think about brushing? Not too hard, right? Because it’s a habit you cultivated long ago, that now runs on auto-pilot. Being in connection with your Own Truth can be like that too. Practicing so that it becomes more and more natural, even automatic.
And while I’m a fan of yin yoga, it is in no way a required part of some one-size-fits-all recipe for Reconnection. Each person’s ingredients will resonate for them, as part of a unique recipe that reveals itself in its own delicious time.
