Image / Vachev

(Today's post comes with a little musical inspiration.)

In our practice, as we explore and inhabit the remote places within ourselves, things happen. Sensations bloom in areas that were previously numb, quiet, or completely off our awareness. We begin to experience a host of sensations - no longer are pain, pleasure, tension and ease adequate descriptors for our physical experience. We may need to find or create new words for our experience, as we discover that there are numerous distinct sensations that we used to label "tightness" or "pain" which aren't either - they are far more complex and interesting. Our experience of BEing in these bodies becomes richer, more complex, and far more interesting. 

And as we increase the sensitivity of our awareness while continuing to plumb the depths of our physical tensions, we will have experiences that show us those physical tensions were not only physical. It may happen that in the moment of a physical release, we have a memory of a past experience arise in the mind, or a revival of an emotional state that we experienced in the past. It may happen that either of these things comes up in the moments, hours and days after our practice. It can take us by surprise, and it can be pleasant or disconcerting.

Because what's coming up relates to past relationships, past events and past experiences, our emotional responses in the present can feel out of place and confusing. A beautiful and important moment of our practice has arrived - it has brought us right into the process of clearing old wounds. We are in the process of releasing that which has held us back, that which has caused us pain, and that which has kept us from feeling our lives with fully awakened hearts. How we respond here matters, as judgment or denial (of ourselves or this process) can create new wounds. Allowing the process while holding ourselves with care and understanding will bring us into new ways of being. And while it can feel a little scary on this side of release, once we've allowed it we invariably emerge lighter, wiser, more responsive to ourselves and others, less affected by chronic tensions and more capable of feeling really good in our bodies. We can do it.
 
We can hold ourselves lightly and with gentleness.

We can let it happen.

And we can let it go.

Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.

Dana Wyss Healing Arts
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Elena Elesseeva



Though I do not believe

that a plant will spring up

where there was no seed,

I have great faith in a seed.


Convince me you have a seed there

and I am prepared to expect miracles.


- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.

Dana Wyss Healing Arts
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Dana Wyss



Fresh

To move

cleanly.

Needing to be

nowhere else.

Wanting nothing

from any store.

To lift something

you already had

And set it down in

a new place.

Awakened eye

seeing freshly.

What does that do to

the old blood moving through

its channels?


- Naomi Shihab Nye



Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.

Dana Wyss Healing Arts
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / Huettenhoelscher



The Waterwheel

Stay together, friends.
Don't scatter and sleep.
Our friendship is made
of being awake.

    The waterwheel accepts water
     and turns and gives it away,
    weeping.
   
    That way it stays in the garden,
    whereas another roundness rolls
     through a dry riverbed looking
    for what it thinks it wants.
   
    Stay here, quivering with each moment
    like a drop of mercury.

- Rumi



Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
Dana Wyss Healing Arts
http://www.danawyss.com/

Image / All Souls Dancing by Dana Wyss



VIII

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the hole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?



- William Butler Yeats, excerpted from 'Among School Children'



Dana Wyss Healing Arts
http://www.danawyss.com/