March 20, 2015

I read this beautiful article about holding space (share link) and it has prompted recent class themes. One class, I talked about how our yoga practice is the invitation to hold space for ourselves. At the end of class, one student left the room in tears. She then shared this: I spent the whole yoga class moving through my anger (about a particular event) and creating and holding space for my sadness.

Feeling, as an adult, can be much more nuanced than I would have thought / imagined. It seems pretty straightforward. There is a stimulus and then we feel. And yet, I have come to understand how layered the feeling world is. Certain feelings come up fluidly, space is made for them and they reside with a certain amount of ease (the ease of that which is familiar). These are our default emotions that are more easily provoked, allowed in and our internal home is built around them. These feelings can serve to protect us from the other feelings that are less allowed, not given space for and pushed away. For example, if we react to many situations with anger, does it protect us from being sad? Is it easier to be angry? Or is the reverse true. Does sadness means we never have to get angry? Do I feel fear and hold myself back to protect me from the intensity of the shame of failure?

In our yoga practice, we build and hold an internal spaciousness. We lengthen, integrate, extend and expand the body and breath so that the constrictions that limit us are dissolved. As we peel away the layers of constriction and the familiar patterns of holding that move us down grooved pathways of response. We shift out the familiar, comfortable responses and move into the vulnerability the new pathways bring up.

In this we build a tender container for all feelings to emerge. We no longer block out those emotions that we have not developed a taste for.

As we sit in the vulnerability of all the feelings, there is freedom. Freedom to be in the experience without the effort holding against it creates.