A few things came up for me while listening to the discussion this week -
- Initially, I became somewhat frustrated when the discussion turned to "trusting your gut" but then I was pleased when you spoke of being in survival mode and sometimes people need to heal first. This is absolutely spot on! As someone working through trauma with a dysregulated nervous system, it is really difficult to "trust my gut" and ask others to do the same because sometimes what our gut is telling us is from a place of trauma and not always reality-based.
- When speaking of truths, I feel it is really important to understand that all our realities are different and what is true for someone, may not be true for someone else. Understanding this has really helped me understand how someone's actions may bring harm to me unintentionally and to offer forgiveness. For example, with the US political system, because it is mentioned so often in lectures, can be really harmful for some while being really beneficial for others. I was raised in a very conservative environment and grew up to be the exact opposite. For years, I experienced a lot of sadness and pain by how those closest to me would vote, knowing it would harm me as a queer woman. However, I have been able to take a step back and realize that those who live in very rural areas have different needs and truths than others who have a different reality. Because of this, I feel the discussion around truths and causing non-harm is very nuanced and complicated.
- I appreciated the student sharing her experience about leading an imagery practice in a jail setting. Working in a forensic hospital, I have also stopped doing this with patients for similar reasons. Asking folks to imagine a safe space can be triggering because they may have never had one, theirs may have been compromised, or because of their sentencing circumstances, they may never get to experience it again. Also, imagery can be distressing for folks in our correctional systems that are experiencing psychosis and may exacerbate symptoms of severe mental illness.
As always, I enjoyed the discussion regarding sequencing. Thank you for bringing awareness to the difficulty of going back and forth from the floor to standing. This is a barrier for me, and something to consider when working with folks that may be medicated due to mental illness as it can cause disruptions in blood pressure. I am excited to begin putting together an energy release and dynamic work-up to practice with someone.
I am only about 30 minutes into watching and listening in to the 8/1 recording session and I am just holding space in my body and heart, for self and community - especially for those that shared so openly and vulnerably about the harms and suffering they've encountered in life (recently and historically). My heart extends a tremendous amount of light and hope for peace amid all the turmoil and turbulence spoken about in the opening part of this session. I will continue to watch this recording and reflect more on the topics covered, but for now just wanted to share what was immediately coming up for me.
I appreciate what a participant said that anger is never a truth. What is behind the rage or anger is the truth. I also very much appreciate that our personal truths can change over time. Self expansion also means personal truths can be ever evolving.
I was unable to make this live session. I loved this recording. I really enjoyed the share from the women who recently did a class in the jail and how she felt that she might have brought the clients down. I liked that she asked them to be aware of their surroundings. I have been going to different yoga classes around where I live and it neat to see how everyone has a different way that they sequence their classes. I am going to go back and study the slides so more so I can become more knowledgeable about trauma sequencing. Now about the truth part, I have always believed that my gut is spot on. I go with my gut feeling always because it never lets me down. Everybody has different truths which can be hard to except sometimes. I really liked this session and can't wait to watch the next one.
I am catching up on forum posts and posting off of notes I made during my initial watching of the recording.
The discussion around Sonya Massey was just an incredibly real layer on top of the already traumatic event. Hearing women of color describe their thoughts surrounding the event as "you know what is coming", "same commericial play again ... of course she will be shot to death...what else would happen" was a discussion I will not forget. For so many reasons. There is the obvious reminder of my privlege as a white woman, that even through all the tears I shed surrounding Sonya's death, I did not also have to process thoughts that were once fear and now seem hopeless and normalized. Because the death of black women has become normalized. Even as I type this I am not able to properly express my level of understanding or lack there of. I want to say thank you to those that shared.
Satya Notes: During this lesson my dog had been dx with a cancerous tumor on her back leg. A bump that was biopsied a year before and it was non cancerous and we left it because we were nervous to put a larger dog (she's 100lbs) under anasthesia and dealing with a dog post surgery is not convenient. And I made the anasthesia and convenience factors the truth for not removing the bump and I kept that as the truth for what was best for Lilo. Fast forward and the bump has grown three times its size within a few days. When she was taken in to be looked at we fortunately had a new doctor want to rebiopsy based on how the lump looked. And it came back as cancerous. My doggo is fine now, but there was a grieving process the days following her surgery. I was disappointed in myself for sticking to a "truth" that fit the story I needed for my life at the time. When the HARD TRUTH and why I was upset was that the mass removal would have been better the first time I took her in. Because I waited, there were consequences. It became cancerous and there was suffering. And the surgery ended up costing 2 to 3x as much. And recovery was a lot longer. I think my overall final thought of Satya and truth is that I think most real truths are hard ones. Hard in that moment.
I really feel the connection between ahimsa and satya. I think on the mat, these two work together to remind us to explore the truth of our body and mind today without judgement or harm. Off the mat, they allow us to release judgement and harm of those who have different truths from us. I think that we can all have multiple truths that sometimes contradict one another. For example, in the spring I had a "random" panic attack – the truth of my mind was that I thought I was in a calm and happy period of time, but the truth of my body was that it was overwhelmed; it is okay to hold both of these truths at once. It takes a lot of practice to be tuned in to the truth of my body, and there are times where I get out of touch and have to reconnect. This was one of those times that I got out of touch with the truth of my body – my body was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't hear it until it was screaming. Then I reflected on those months and realize I did in fact go through a lot of emotional turbulence, so it was not "random." Thankfully, from this experience, I connected to a beautiful new way of connecting to myself which was poetry. Writing poems allowed me to connect to my truth more easily because often the writing feels like it is coming from a very present part of myself. My poems are not written for anyone else – even if I do end up sharing them later on – it is a very honest reflection of me in the moment I write it.