I've been so embattled recently, against myself. Be better, eat healthier, get up earlier, you're lazy, you're not going anywhere, you'll be alone forever. These are the phrases that were running through my head like a tape stuck on reply of my least favorite song at top volume. Torturing me over the past few weeks without me even realizing it! The tormentor was a hidden demon, while I was left wondering why I felt so down all the time. Over the weekend, I attended Tammy Shemesh and Vanessa Wolf's workshop as part of the "Embody Love Movement". Held at Balmain Buddha, a beautiful and heavenly space set up for healing the soul.
Among many other exercises we were asked to write our negative self talk about our bodies or otherwise on post-it notes. Hard enough right, yet I was writing as if possessed, shocked each time a different, terribly nasty and mean phrase came alive on paper out of my hand. I think these things I wondered? I'm so mean!! If I said these to someone else I'd surely get slapped, or worse. Yet, I was allowing myself to speak this way to me...confounded indeed.
If it wasn't a challenging enough exercise, we then had to stick the post-it notes to Tammy as she stood in the middle of our circle and say what we had written out loud - talk about vulnerable! I didn't know these 9 women and I can't believe I had to say this stuff, which I didn't even understand, out loud.
But I did it, we all did. Then we shared what it felt like. Powerful indeed. As a bit of a crier, I started talking to the group only to be immediately confronted with my own tears welling up in an unstoppable force. Talk about a massive shift occurring... "After days of getting caught up in my own nonsense, I left the house the other day and looked up, for what must've been the first time in a week. I nearly gasped at how beautiful the sky was. It occurred to me I had been staring at the ground, so caught up in repeating these messages to myself about my own lack of worth that I had missed the sky, the SKY!" I don't know if you've ever been to Sydney, but the sky has a certain vastness and unprecedented blueness to it here, with which I've always been impressed. I was allowing myself to miss the true beauty in life, the connection to nature and to others around me because I was being so mean to myself.
My intention set at the finale of the workshop? Love myself, each moment, of each day and be compassionate for those times I can't access that love. When I love myself, I'm a better person in the world and to those around me. It's a ripple effect out to the people I connect with and then for the people they connect with and onward and onward, until like drops of rain water, the love touches everyone.
I can't tell how much more bright my last few days have been, the sky is blue and I see the sun shinning.
I can't encourage you enough to connect to these two amazing yoga teachers with their workshops around Sydney - Embody Love.
To find out more about the Embody Love Movement - http://embodylovemovement.org/