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OPEN MIND OPEN BODY The Yoga of Connection |
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Week 12: Courage and Compassion This week I interviewed Molly Kenny, a yoga therapist who teaches yoga to people who are in hospice care, dying from AIDS. [Members of the International Association of Yoga Therapists will get to read to the full interview in the May issue of Yoga Therapy in Practice.] One of the questions I asked her was, "How did you find the courage to do this work?" Her answer was, "This work doesn't take courage. It takes compassion." I was surprised by her answer. As we talked, she described experiences that most people think would require a great deal of courage - answering difficult questions like, "Do you think I'm dying?"; being physically intimate (by providing massage, therapeutic touch, and assisted yoga) with individuals who are extremely ill; holding the space for patient and their loved ones to face grief and dying; losing students on a regular basis. I asked her, "That sounds hard. How is that not hard? At the least, it must take courage to show up in the first place." Molly went on to explain that it can be scary to show up - but that the experience itself allows you to tap into the part of you that has endless courage and compassion. Most people think that they don't have what it takes to do this work, and that someone who *does* do it must be special, have some kind of special courage and compassion. She explained that we all have it - we all have the ability to tap into some kind of limitless well of love and compassion. Our personal yoga and meditation practice provides a way to practice being spacious, open. We tap into that way of being when faced with what looks like a difficult situation - including facing loss and death, and finding a way to create peace around that experience. In yoga, there is a term for the kind of person who has found a way to tap into the limitless courage of unconditional compassion: the bodhisattva (enlightened being). The bodhisattva is sometimes described as someone who has found the courage to be completely open, to all experiences and all beings. Many of the practices introduced in this class so far have been related to this idea. The most basic practice is metta meditation (guided audio practice / written instructions). This week, I encourage you to reflect on the idea that what we think requires courage actually requires openness. That what we think will be hard, doesn't need to be. That we often talk ourselves out of what we really want to do, are called to do, out of misplaced fear. Yoga practice is a wonderful place to start looking at this dynamic. Is there a pose that you avoid out of fear? Have you put off attending a class or workshop because it might be "too hard"? Do you put off your own practice because you think you don't have the energy for it (not realizing that the practice itself allows you to tap into a source of energy)? If yoga practice is, as Molly described, the place we cultivate the openness that supports us in challenging experiences, then "courage" should be one of the qualities we look for in our practice. Practice simply showing up, and trusting that the "you" who shows up has the resources to handle whatever comes. |
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