{"id":5522,"date":"2013-08-23T22:54:22","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T02:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/blissblog\/?p=5522"},"modified":"2013-08-23T22:54:22","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T02:54:22","slug":"emotional-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blissblog\/2013\/08\/emotional-yoga.html","title":{"rendered":"Emotional Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Years ago, I discovered that I had become an emotional contortionist, essentially bending over backward to please people. If not, I reasoned, they wouldn\u2019t approve of me or love me and then where would I be? I would tie myself up like a pretzel, in business, primarily since our livelihood was based on happy advertisers and readers. Guess what?\u00a0 It didn\u2019t work and I ended up with an emotionally twisted spine, numerous arguments at home and unsatisfactory business dealings. All of this because I wasn\u2019t being true to myself and living in a sense of integrity within myself. In the interceding time, I have been able to take a different perspective. What I thought was necessary for my survival was a less than skillful way of discovering that I have no responsibility for what others think and how they perceive me. It ties in with don Miguel Ruiz\u2019 Four Agreements concepts. I am learning (and it is a process) to put into practice the most challenging (for me) two:\u00a0 Don\u2019t take anything personally and Don\u2019t make assumptions. What others are going through in their lives is not about me. In relationship, (in whatever form they take), I am learning to step back and allow for process to occur. So often, I have moved to heal or fix someone else\u2019s pain because it has been uncomfortable for me to watch them struggle. I also recognized that as a healer, there is a temptation to make myself indispensable to people in my life. I reasoned that if I was able to help them with their challenges, then they couldn\u2019t possibly abandon me. The truth is, no one ever abandons us. We may do that to ourselves at times. The truth also remains, that God never abandons us.<\/p>\n

Several years ago, I experienced what many would call a \u2018dark night of the soul\u2019 during which I had almost no appetite, couldn\u2019t sleep, couldn\u2019t concentrate. I basically sleep-walked through my days and tossed and turned at night. I called on loving friends and family who guided me through it and recognized that I was revisiting two themes from the past. A little background first on the events of that time:\u00a0\u00a0 I interviewed two women for a magazine for which I was writing: twin sisters who are psychically gifted. At the end of the interview, Allsyon said:\u00a0 \u201cI asked you a question twice. Did you hear me?\u201d\u00a0 I replied that I hadn\u2019t. She said, \u201cWho\u2019s Michael?\u201d Goosebumps rising on my arms, I told her that Michael had been my husband who had died 5 \u00bd years earlier. She went on to say that he was there with them and that he was showing them a doorway or threshold that I was walking through and also moving vans. They felt that I would be moving within 3 years.\u00a0 (I didn’t move myself, but in 2011 which was 6 years later, after my mom died, I did move her belongings from her condo).<\/p>\n

Later that day, I received the shocking news that a young woman whose wedding ceremony I had performed a year and half\u00a0 prior, had been killed a few days earlier in a car accident and her\u00a0 husband was standing on my doorstep asking me to offer the eulogy at her funeral a few days later. I could do nothing but hold him and cry with him. Words escaped me, except to say that I would be honored to speak at Katie\u2019s funeral. The next night I came to Pebble Hill which is one of my spiritual communities,\u00a0to hear Robin Velez speak. She is a gifted channel and healer. During her presentation, she invited me to the front of the room. I explained to the audience that this wasn\u2019t a set-up and Robin hadn\u2019t even known I was going to be there. Her stern admonishment?\u00a0 \u201cStop explaining, stop justifying. It\u2019s killing you. You need to decide here and now, do you want to live or die?\u201d Through tear-filled eyes, I responded that I wanted to live. She then told me that I needed to completely let go of Michael and as I told her that I had, she shook her head. She then asked me what I wanted. I told her that I wanted to trust in love again.\u00a0 She informed me that it was about trusting myself. A while later as I left, I remembered one last detail regarding Michael that I hadn\u2019t attended to. I still had his ashes in my bedroom. What kind of message was that sending the Universe about readiness to move on to a new relationship? A few days later, my dear friend Susan Duval helped me to bury the urn in Pebble Hill\u2019s memorial garden. I also made a decision to find a new home for my cat Amira, since my allergies had become full blown and more than a little uncomfortable.\u00a0 During the week, it became abundantly clear that I was re-living old grief. I was releasing, letting go, turning over every aspect of my life as I had more than five years before. My body had been reacting as it had then too when I was in the throes of bereavement. I had convinced myself that I had successfully moved through the loss gracefully and in some ways I had. All of these events triggered the reactions I was going through. No accident that this all occurred around Memorial Day. An interesting phenomenon occurred that was a side benefit of my clearing.\u00a0 Two weeks earlier the garbage disposal stopped working. I hadn\u2019t gotten around to getting it fixed. On Memorial Day, Pat Harmon (a.k.a. Harmony) \u00a0was over for breakfast. I was washing the dishes and had just put a juice glass on the rack to dry. I made some comment about how quickly things happen and at that point, the glass jumped or slid off the rack and crashed into the sink. I cleaned up the shards and carefully put my hand in the garbage disposal to take out anything that remained within it. I thought, \u201cWhat the heck?\u201d and flipped the switch for the garbage disposal and was rewarded with the sounds of it roaring to life. As I had cleaned out my own garbage, it too was no longer on overload and could process as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That summer\u00a0I\u00a0had begun practicing yoga. Having been surrounded by both practitioners and teachers for many years, my interest had been sparked, but what set it aflame was attending a tantric yoga workshop in March of 2004. There I met people for whom it is a way of life. I saw first hand the emotional, spiritual and physical benefits of this ancient art and so the practice began. First at home on my own, then with a friend and diving into classes, I am enjoying a physical flexibility that I have never known.\u00a0 Even as I practice the asanas, I feel that I am called on to stretch further emotionally than I ever have before as old paradigms fall away. I am reaching beyond my preconceived limitations to what I know is true, rather than what I fear is so. I am recalling the phrases from A Course in Miracles: \u201cWhat is real cannot be threatened. What is unreal doesn\u2019t exist. Therein lies the peace of God.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Years ago, I discovered that I had become an emotional contortionist, essentially bending over backward to please people. If not, I reasoned, they wouldn\u2019t approve of me or love me and then where would I be? 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She has also contributed to several anthologies and personal growth books. Edie has interviewed such notables as Ram Dass, Wayne Dyer, Debbie Ford, don Miguel Ruiz, don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. Marianne Williamson, Grover Washington, Jr. Noah Levine, Shirley MacLaine, Dennis Weaver, Ben and Jerry and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She calls herself an Opti-mystic who sees the world through the eyes of possibility. 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