Like Words Together Reflections from the deep end of Practice.

Settling and Healing

I think I'm improving a little today. I didn't wake myself up coughing last night and felt a little more rested this morning. I'm still coughing, pretty hard at times, but I just felt like I had a little more energy today. I worked from home again just to take it easy and because I had a session with GM this afternoon.

The effects of the sesshin are still sinking down. At times I'd feel the deep silence there and I'd feel so deeply connected to my lineage at those times. Supported by nothing but my breath and those ancestors from both Zen and Yoga. Then out of the silence some bubble of trauma would come crashing up to the surface. I'd see some of those traumatic moments clearly for a moment, like looking down through still water. Now I'm still settling down the turbulence caused out of those brief glimpses of clarity.

The sesshin and all the energy of moving, CK here and AM to his flat, created lots of unsettled feelings. GM asked me today how I was feeling being back in the house all the time, with CK here, and I said that it felt good. In that regard it is really nice to feel like I'm not really living anywhere, to feel like I am getting to work on my home again.

I still don't really want to see my Mom all that much. Hard because I finally spoke with her on the phone yesterday and she mentioned how she wanted to see me this weekend. I hedged on any commitment, noting I wanted to wait and see how I was feeling. She thought that was reasonable given that she heard me coughing.

What makes it all feel kind of hard is that those momentary glimpses of clarity only have served to have me really see just how inappropriate and wrong things were during my childhood, adolescence and into my twenties. Hard, sharp moments of clarity. Sometimes, seeing the edges of these moments revealed hurts still.

I guess it is progress. I don't curl into a ball of stuttering and muscle spasms as often, in fact it hasn't been that bad in a long while. I'm able to stay present even to some very small degree when it feels the worst and that's while I'm looking at the causes of the turbulence clearly now, instead of being merely thrown into panic by the turbulence itself. My Zen and Yoga practices often feel like they have kicked all of this processing into some turbo gear.

GM told me today that I'm her hero. It took me a moment to realize she was serious. Then I went right back into my discomfort with being looked up to in anyway. Shying away from the responsibility of being a teacher. I don't feel any of the confidence in my voice unless it is describing yoga, not yet.