Quarantine Thoughts

photo (c) :namee baijal

Nearly half of March and all of April. At home. It has been an incredibly enriching time. So many online classes. So much learning. Finding teachers and new insights from all their free classes has been a gift. I also started working on resentment in working with flower essences. I focused on a very specific incident. Of being forced to wake up early so my mom could get me dressed for school before she left. This is something I’ve always been rather proud of but I became aware that I was quite resentful and there were so many aspects to this. So I made an essence for myself to work on this resentment with Red Maple, Arizona Lupine, Moneyplant, Ghostflower, Willow, Holly and Missouri Primrose. The third interesting thing that happened was that David Dalton (extraodinary flower essence teacher and the person who helped me let go before Amma passed away), had posted about a livestreamed channeling that he found helpful. I don’t really believe in channelings and the whole ascension healing movement but I do have tremedous respect for David so I started watching them and I still don’t know if I believe. But twice I have fallen into a deep sleep in the middle of it. The fourth thing, starting an accountability group with Richard and Sarah and it has helped to be able to talk about challenges and little victories and get some profound advice and love. The ffith thing that happened was that I resumed my reiki self care practice. i did a thirty day full body reiki cleanse and then have been doing it more or less every day or every other day. All these things helped, How much each contributed I will never know. But I feel much more open creatively now than I did in March.

I wanted to write this blog post to memorialize two potentially life altering insights that I have had in the last two weeks. A few days ago I couldn’t sleep and started looking up yoga for dropped arches and bunions and found an article. Which I didn’t even read properly, didn’t save and now cannot find. It talked about how in yoga classes teachers often talk about grounding from the ball of the big toe. Instead it suggested ground yourself in the heel first. I tried it in tadasana the next morning and almost wept at the sensation. I realized that life was a different experience when one was grounded in the heel. I thought back to the time in eighth grade when my arches dropped. About what was going on in my life and how l was acutely aware of being completely on my own with no support, acutely aware of the fact that empowered people around me - adults and peers were being unfair and holding me back and I could do nothing about it. Amma was too busy trying to make sure I had a roof over my head. I thought about every person with beautiful well formed arches whose feet I had looked upon with longing in all the classes I have taken where people are barefoot. And I realized my longing was not just for their beautiful arches but also for that sense of security they carried. That inner knowing that if they fall someone would catch them. I think as long as I live I will look at people with dropped arches with so much more compassion; and wonder what happened in their life that made them feel dis-empowered. The other insight was almost magical. I was exercising or doing a movement class. I cannot remember except that I was in the living room standing on the carpet; and it was almost as if one of the geniuses (as described by Liz Gilbert and Steven Pressfield) that flit around us, dropped down on a whim and downloaded something in my conscious. I have struggled with derservability. Why should I deserve anything? Why should that person be my friend? Why should that job or award be given to me? I have spent so many late nights researching flower essences and healing methods that might help me feel a little bit more deserving. And what the genius/spirit/epiphany whatever you want to call it said to me was this- there doesn’t need to be a reason. I just deserved it. Even as I write this, the bigness of this insight overwhelms and humbles me. It’s a very small thing and it’s a very big thing. And the thing that prompted this blog post was that last night I was reading Sinead Rushe’s book about Michael Chekhov and she mentions that Mr. Chekhov held that an actor’s work is not about reason…. Sometimes one has to wonder at all the complicated skeins that make up our world of ideas and how each little point and insight can loop back to so many other points of insight.