So for those of you that don’t know…
This is my Never Ending Story. Expect this blog entry to be updated often with thoughts and reflections. This part of my site is a bit more personal. It’s where you get to know me a bit more. I’ll talk about the books I’ve been reading, the ideas I’ve been discussing with others and general inquiries.
August 23rd, 2018
Pausing as an HSP or highly empathic person
A lot of people I know who go into Yoga and particularly sensitive. One of the habits I’ve observed in myself is a tendency to over listen and over practice theory of minds. For those of you who are not familiar with the term theory of minds, it’s a psychological expression used to convey a person’s ability to imagine another person’s experience. At times I can get so wrapped up in someone else’s experiences that I lose track of my own values. In part, this is due to variations in my nervous system as a highly sensitive person. I’ve read that when a person falls in love their amygdala rewires to incorporate their partner or child. I have found as a person who is exponentially sensitive, I easily fall in love with or find love (platonic love/companionate love) for my friends and community. While, this has great benefits, because it allows me to hold the experiences others in high esteem, and it hurts me when they hurt (literally), the boundaries and discomforts I have when I’m around others fall tertiary if they contradict my partners’ and thus my attitudes and behaviours sometimes change temporarily, only to lead to me to acute processing in times when I am alone, hence this website.
While I would never advise anyone to give up relationships, I would advocate for sensitive and empathic people to carve out time for themselves everyday to sit or lie quietly and comfortably in meditation. It has been therapeutic for myself to acknowledge that if I spend too much time processing the differences in values or personality between myself and another person, it is a sign of incompatibility.
The act of tuning into myself has helped me to literally sever my nervous system from the emotions of others. It has let me take mental notes over whether or not my relationships reciprocate and if I am reciprocating…sometimes I’ve received more than I feel I am giving.
One of the things I’ve learned to call myself out on is rationalization. Meditation has helped with this. Rationalizing our discomforts can seem helpful, but it can perpetuate issues that are harmful to you, or me. If your body says “no”, it says “no”. Taking the invitation to stop what you are doing, if that is a viable option, can be liberating. It does not mean that that option always has to be a “no”, but for now, that’s what it is. It’s okay to quit and retreat.
The Tantric practice views desires positively, as a means of perpetuating life and cultivating energy. I agree with this. Other eastern traditions suggest that desire is the root of suffering. I don’t disagree with this.
In essence, I think both hold merit. Desires are fluid. They change with age, experience and reflection. Sometimes we need to accept our desires in order to grow. I’ve had some pretty dark times in my life where I desired things that weren’t life-sustaining, having been there, I now know its’ lessons and I no longer desire those experiences.
I think these experiences are ones that exemplify my naivety. I am okay with that. I am young-ish. I’m okay with being naive because of my age, but not for my age. I hope to become wiser with my years. This is why I meditate. Pausing to tune in and refine my conduct, my actions, my presence in this world means giving myself the opportunity to exist authentically. While for some people the work is being able to be more compassionate, for the empathic person, the work is being able to be more brazen, making more judgement calls and having stronger boundaries, Who you are and how you came into this world matters. Not all of our work is the same. Not all of our destinations are identical. If you came into this world in a way that resonates with my experience, I hope that meditation can be a place for you to tune into yourself and refine your self-expression.
August 21, 2018
Inter-generational Communities
Back in Montreal, I was blessed to be living in NDG. For those of you who are unaware of NDG, it’s an acronym for Notre-Dame-de-Grace. In the west end of Montreal, it is a primarily anglophone sector with diversity among its’ inhabitants. Known for spanning across generations, NDG also offers low-income housing, half-way homes, luxury condos and is a hub for both the Jewish, and Jamaican communities. Our eclectic neighbourhood also homed environmentally aware millennials, flew pride flags proudly and grew guerrilla gardens. My favourite times of the year was NDG art week and porch fest when community members would fill the streets with art and music. The children would play safely under the watchful eyes of good-hearted neighbours and we’d catch up with all the people we lost sight of while engulfed in our own endeavours. I long sometimes for the times I would regulate our local coop and chat up my favourite baristas while discussing Alice Miller with Pat, my seventy-sometime retired prof friend, who escape being drafted in the Vietnam war by coming out as gay and sat on the board of planned parenthood. There was something cozy about being a young adult in an intergenerational neighbourhood. I always knew what my role was. If there was a child, I kept my eye out for him/her/them; if Pat was there, constructive intellectual conversations; if my besty Nadia was there, we’d go off into our own little world…and that’s how it was. It was liberating to discover so many sides of myself. I’ve always valued having such a community.
As I establish myself here in Victoria and in the Yoga community, what I can hope for is to help build that same type of community, where people cross cultures and generation and intermingle safely and soundly. I hope to offer a class that can challenge the young and be safe for those who are more fragile in body.
Welcome to Victoria!Here I am.
After 9 years of work in Montreal, a place where I was blessed to work through most of my trauma and come of age, I am finally in balmy Victoria. Upon arrival I hoped everything would be pristine, and while for the most part my life here is idyllic, this island has a way of folding in on itself.
I think this is the first moral I can share, it was actually taught to me by a dear friend, so I don’t want to take dibs on the wisdom. She told me, “just because you’ve worked through a pattern doesn’t mean the pattern ceases to exist.” Life is like that; when we realize this we get to choose how much we want to engage with the pattern and how much we want to get involved or allow it to exist. I found this pertinent. This island is small, all of us who live here will likely have to interact with characters that elicit habits we’ve worked hard to abolish. While I wouldn’t say these experiences are always cozy, I find them thought provoking and exhilarating. I’ve been learning to observe the patterns that generally entice me and rather than engaging, walking away, or if I do engage, cutting ties sooner.
I’ve been skimming through Women Who Run With Wolves (also borrowed from the same friend). The pattern I’ve noticed: I am the youngest sister, the little red riding hood; the ingenue who frolics through forlorn forests and wistfully longs for the moments before she noticed her grandma wasn’t really her grandma.
Patterns I’ve noticed: many young women have been trained to do this, when we are told not to judge a pattern of behaviours, or speak harshly or get angry. This is why I am a queen of nuance.
Opinion (also told to me by my former of psychologist): there is a difference between being judgemental and making a judgement call.
Observation: before getting aggressive one can say, “I’m feeling a lot of aggression right now” and then walk away. I’ve been doing this. I have a few triggers; authority figures who shouldn’t have authority and people telling me I lack compassion because I will be firm with people at times. I generally get triggered here because boundary setting is something I’ve worked on and it’s never fun to say no or put my foot down, but it’s necessary. Having boundaries does not equate with a lack of compassion. We need to integrate that as a culture (as you can see my firmness here suggest it’s a trigger).
Opinion: being compassionate doesn’t mean that you have to be a pushover or an embodiment of grace. Sometimes compassion comes out of realizing that others are just as capable of being as human as you are, which in essence liberates compassion from teetering towards belittlement.
kind movement. Compassionate mind. Empathic research. 