I learned a whole lot in school last week.
If I were to sum up the week with one golden nugget, it's that everything is a story. We create them, and have all the power to create them as we wish. We can make them heavy and dark, light and airy, or somewhere in between. We can also recognize how much of our lives have been guided by these stories, and then we can let them go, and see what's right in front of us.
On the most superficial layer, I learned an entire Healing Dance sequence. Pages and pages of pool notes hung on the wall of the lower pool at the Harbin Domes. It was amazing how many different moves they managed to cram into a week, and we as a class learned them all by wednesday. The tone of the entire week was gentle, supportive, patient, and reverent. Really beautiful. On my evaluation sheet, My teacher wrote "keep softening and letting go of the story that this is hard work. Your work is lovely." hmmmm.....
Something else that presented itself as a story is the idea that "deep" implies a heaviness, that going deep has to have a texure of darkness. I learned that Going deep doesn't necessarily need to be heavy. When an emotion or feeling or realization comes to the surface, It should actually make us lighter, because it's one less thing that's in the dark, lacking clarity.
I came to terms with some stories involving relationships, as well. It's the implied pressure story. When two people allow themselves to feel love and connection, there's this implied pressure that something needs to happen, the relationship needs to move somewhere, "forward". So the two people can choose whether or not to move "forward" or to simply acknowledge their feeings, and let the pressure go. Seems easy enough, but there's a second part to the implied pressure story, and it's the unavoidable responsibility that goes with holding someone's heart and vulnerability. It can take up all the room in your heart so there's no room for anything else, including yourself. And we've all heard that we need to love ourself before we love someone else. We also need to make sure we always reserve space in our heart for us. When we've forgotten that, it's time to create another story, one that comes from the heart. What an amazing gift...
Flowers growing through a fence at Jayne and Derek's house
A heart in the sky at Harbin
