In my restorative yoga class last night I took to the mat in a supported child’s pose and suddenly couldn’t breathe. It felt like my lungs were being crushed and I could not catch my breath. I was going to lose it, like weep right there on the mat. The room started to spin and I felt tears start to well it my eyes. “Keep it together…keep it together,” I kept silently saying to myself. When the yoga instructor inquired if I was okay as I sat up out of the pose, I almost let out a loud whale but managed to say I couldn’t’ breathe.
The well of emotion took a hit and sprung a leak but I didn’t want it to erupt mid yoga class. I’m a unique duck who goes on emotional journeys and works with different parts of myself whilst in these calming and restorative poses. I don’t float away, I float inward, towards what is already stewing inside or what has been lying dormant my entire life.
I feel like I came face to face with a deep deep wound, a wound that is held in the physical ailment pattern of my blood issue. It’s my thirteen year old self. I’ve tended to this part of me for years. It’s the time when I lost connection to my body and caged my soul and started to live my life in the edges of self-harm with an eating disorder and alcohol misuse. I acted out my pain and my disconnection and severing from my feminine, wild soul. Her and I have done a lot of healing work together (my 13 year old self) but suddenly she’s re-emerged.
As I flipped onto my back and opened my heart chakra in yoga class to reign in my emotional meltdown, I started to inquire within about the grief trying to ooze out of me. My thoughts went to an email I received from a good friend in response to one of my blogs. I was dumbfounded. I was so moved by her healing, her growing… her awareness. I was so humbled that some of my sharing had really sunk in for her, resonated with her in such a powerful way. I had not known that some of our conversations she really had digested and absorbed. I wasn’t sure she really bought in to what I was saying at times, it’s quite opposite to the general accepted norm.
As a professional therapist, I’ve helped a lot of different people. But this was different. I felt heard and celebrated from the depths of me, from the place of my soul. From the place that had been silenced, tamed and hidden away from the world because nobody gave her permission to emerge and shine. My wild, primal voice once silenced is now being shared, heard and better yet…received from others, like a knowing and remembering they already owned. That’s how it happened for me, shaman and teacher Lynn Andrews spoke words and a language that my DNA had already known but was just waiting to emerge, just waiting to erupt forth into my veins and consciousness. Now I’ve found my way to live them, even though our society largely disconnects from or unacknowledges our emotional and spiritual realms, I go there and experience them regularly. That is my purpose. That is my life line to balance, and fulfillment. It is the pathway to my confidence and self-worth in the world.
This wounded thirteen year old self at times emerges when I get triggered or fearful and she takes over my body momentarily. I get frozen in fear and in that automatic response, I get silent and small.
Sometimes I get frustrated that I need to continually tend to this part of me, my inner child that seems to range in ages. I wonder why she can’t just go away or be healed already. The Creator knows I’ve worked my but off to tend to her and heal my past. My ego has a pre-conceived idea that I should be done already, able to move on and forward with no emotional upheaval. Ha! Silly goose that ego is.
What I’ve come to learn is to simply just witness and make space for whatever it is that is occurring within. I cannot control what I feel or rid myself of some of my emotional responses triggered by past wounding experiences, I can only witness them and tend to them and know that over time they lessen. I guess I can try and ignore and escape them but I’ve done that gig already via eating disorder and too much boozin’. And in the end, I still had to face what was there anyways.
So what if we simply let go and stopped trying to control the uncontrollable? What if we simply allowed our natural reactions and allowed them to be as they are while offering them what they need ourselves. This is the gift of the Aquarian New Moon…non-attachment (as shared by my pal Bekah Finch). What if we simply observed our reactions and responses as neither good nor bad but as messengers? What if we simply heard them and witnessed them, maybe even gave voice to them so we could better understand and honor them, rather than poo- pooing them away?!
In sitting with my thirteen year old self on my yoga mat, I know she is just moving through a release, a dumping out of the old cargo that has been held there for so long. An old pattern is being shaved away and with it a new one taking shape. There’s going to be some emotional release with that. Her responses are to freeze in fear and collapse into silence. As I play witness to her (seeing and watching an image of her my mind’s eye), I tell her I got her back as my adult self and stand in front of her to protect her. I tell her she is safe and supported, I am here, I will protect her. I will DEFEND her. I will use my voice and stand my ground on her behalf when she feels threatened. I’ve got her. And as I tell her that I see her begin to shift.
In working with this 13 year-old part of me, I’m aware that she feels both relief and grief. That’s all she’s ever wanted was support and validation. She’s just wanted someone to have her back. Hence the grief. So I allowed myself to whale on the way home from yoga class and release what needed to be released. It’s that simple. I don’t have depression, I’m not crazy, I am real life, feeling human on a spiritual life journey. My emotions are gifts, messengers from the Divine leading back home to myself.
As such, I have issues with my spleen, it swells, it hurts, it aches. It has for years. In the book The Secret Language of Your Body by Inna Segal issues with the spleen speaks to, “Feeling helpless, disconnected from feminine energy, fearful, frozen, angry, frustrated. Overly sensitive and easily swayed…continually worrying and stressing about others.” My spleen is holding the soul wounds of having separating and betraying my wild, feminine soul and the layers of grief has been long held in the fibers of my spleen and lungs. I’m currently focusing much of my time and energy on these long held emotional wounds held in the depths of this physical illness. In tending to the underlying emotional and spiritual patterns I believe I will heal my illness, I believe I will at least get more physical stability in my health as I uncover, unwind and release the twisted wounds in my body’s fibers. I’m already starting to see the changes. That is my intention for 40 straight days, to work with the emotional and spiritual wounds while on my yoga mat. So far I’m on day 16.
So let us practice a teaching most of us missed growing up on this Aquarius new moon. Nobody sat us down and showed us the way inward, down into the body to reflect and feel our emotions. So may I be so honored to share with you the way home, the way in, the way to your deepest self. Let’s practise this conscious journey inward to our bodies, the magical inner realm where our emotions, spirit, desires, needs, wants, wounds and unconscious mind exists. It’s like a magical galaxy with endless information and beauty that swirls with emotions, feelings, sensation and even symbolic imagery. We just need to travel into this dimension and this world regularly, consciously so we need not erupt at the seams or act out and distract from it with our “vices” or addictions.
So, sit or lie down and take several deep breaths. Allow your eyes to close. With each breath just sink deeper and deeper into your body and notice anything that calls your attention. Is there a muscle ache or a tingling sensation anywhere? Is there an image or emotion that comes to mind? Just allow what is there, first thing that comes. Say hello to it, honor it. Imagine that part sitting beside you. Ask it why it is calling for your attention. Become that part of you and speak on its behalf. What wisdom and information does it have to share with you? What does it need from you? What do you have to say to this part?
Don’t think too much here just consciously feel what is calling for your attention. Meet your inner wisdom where it exists. There is so much in there so just focus on the loudest aspect that is calling you today. Sit with it in silence, maybe just say hi and sit there to start. And work your way up to conversation. Simply by acknowledging it, it will begin to shift.
This new moon with mercury retrograde feels like a cleansing, a lesson in absorbing the inner wisdom and releasing the past. It’s like we are simultaneously clearing the old while setting the new foundational intentions. It’s quite interesting. Maybe this month you can set an intention for self-connection, going inward, reflecting, hearing, listening to the Sacred Body as a regular soul nourishing practise. What can you do to self-connect and go inward a little more? Watch for more posts this month to help guide you with some self-reflection activities and inner world explorations. Be sure to follow the blog by adding your email to get the posts. J
This is my specialty, going inward, going into the shamanic territory of the inner body where all parts of us exist…the perfectionist, the addictive parts, the controller, the over achiever, the self-sabotager, the wounded self. It’s like a sea of segregated parts…all hiding the Big Kahuna…our wild, primal souls. If you’d like to work deeper into your inner realm and learn how to exist in more regularly as your wild, tribal, primal soul email me at crystalchagnon22@gmail.com. To explore some one on one work together.
Happy New Moon & Inner Reflections this month.
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