Rebirthing

We are in the energy of rebirth. Just as in nature we know there is a stirring of energy happening within the earth to give the plants the strength to pop up over the soil and start to grow and bloom. Or when we are actually pregnant and the baby is at the end of third term in maturation, the space is cramped and the child makes movements to prepare for the birth experience to find their way into the world.

I encourage my clients and students to rebirth themselves as well. And what kind of a teacher would I be if I didn’t practice what I preach?

I find myself in the uncomfortable stage of rebirthing. It’s where the triggers are plentiful and once firmly placed boundaries have now collapsed. It’s the burn out stage of my cycle, the one I always try to avoid but also is such a gift because it teaches me so much. It’s The Tower card of the Tarot deck which represents upheaval, sudden change, chaos and awakening. It’s the process of letting what no longer serves you fall and crumble away or sometimes burn to the ground, it’s painful and hard, but on the other side is so much growth. It reminds me of wild fires and how devastating they are but how the soil is more fertile after. It’s the natural life cycle of death and rebirth but the rebirth is always something new.

The triggers that I am currently working with are manipulation, neediness and fairness. Everyone’s cycle of a trigger is different and how they conduct their shadow work is just as individual as the person. If you have never heard of shadow work or you are interested in learning more about what exactly it is, a friend recently shared this podcast with me and I thought it was wonderful! I highly recommend listening to the 35 minutes, it’s worth making the time for.

Triggered

The most important thing to know about shadow work is that it is on-going and you don’t have much control over it. We do the work when we get triggered and we have the choice to repeat our triggered behaviors, or to sit and heal them. It is not a comfortable process, but it is absolutely worth it. I always suggest working with someone when you are doing shadow work, a close friend, a loved one, or ideally a therapist or coach, depending on your situation and mental health needs and emotional needs.

I see clients on a daily basis and part of my work is to walk with them during their shadow work, to sit with their triggers and offer support and guidance. I was triggered when I felt manipulated. This has been an energy building in me for quite some time and I finally had a moment during the recent Mars-Uranus square where I experienced irrational anger and acting out of character, or it could very well have just been compassion burn out. In my type of work, I have to have strong healthy boundaries and know not to take on anyone’s “stuff”- I can help them unpack it, but I cannot hold any of it or take it home with me. I must practice the Yama of non-attachment. To be present and unattached to the results.

The trigger of manipulation in this situation went hand in hand with neediness. And as I dig deeper into this feeling I find that the root is victim mentality. Now, don’t get my wrong, I have been the victim, played the victim and the Gods and Goddesses know I could win awards for my acts as the victim in my earlier years. We all do it and it can serve an important purpose in our growth process. You see, you must experience these not so flattering parts of yourself, heal them, and transmute them (ie: let the Tower burn to the ground) so that you can rebirth into someone that is more self-aware and can have compassion for those in the victim portion of their experience.

Recently I had an experience of fraud and it was truly liberating to go through the motions of advocating for myself, fairness, due diligence, all while remaining a non-victim. It’s a situation that I could have easily played the victim and blamed everyone around me, but instead I took ownership of the situation, I accepted that in some way I had played a part in it’s manifestation and that it was teaching me something. Basically, I said to myself “what role do I play in this and what can I learn from it?” The teaching behind it was that I still jump before I look. I move quickly and frantically and don’t pay attention to detail. I was not present. I can accept this part that I have played, learn and move on. No need to strap on my victim pants.

“Our bodies are always communicating to us our mental and emotional needs”

If you have ever strained a muscle in your neck, you know that the injury was the result of a build up of poor body patterns or stress, maybe sleeping on the wrong pillow, or not have the best form when working out. It just takes that one sudden quick look to the side and SNAP, your neck is in so much pain, you can barely move.

It just so happens that after a few chaotic moments in life, I also injured my neck and had to clear my schedule and live on a bag of frozen corn. If you know me, I loathe having to cancel or reschedule clients or work in general, I beat myself up over it, but I gently reminded myself what I preach to others - “you can’t pour from an empty cup, you weren’t slowing down so your body forced you to slow down” and that it did. I took extra care of myself, mothered myself, booked my own massage and chiropractic treatments and rested. It is not easy for me to rest but I had no other choice. Our bodies are always communicating to us our mental and emotional needs.

Eventually, like my neck, I snapped and I snapped hard. It took that one comment when I was already on burn out and feeling depleted and I snapped like a rubber band. Now, in this moment of trigger, it is critical that we notice the trigger as soon as possible, once we do, we realize we have a choice. I began to revert to old ways, feeling angry, resentful, judgmental. Judgement is a great trigger because when you find yourself judging others you know there is an unhealed part of yourself begging to be seen. The Tower had come down.

The Healing

What I found was that I am not one to ask for help when I am struggling. As a kid, I silently suffered alone a lot of times with anxiety at night in my bed. I would have such a hard time sleeping, it’s like I was so busy all day at avoiding my emotions and hurt feelings of rejection that I escaped with play and fun and then at night, in the stillness of the dark, it would all hit me. I would toss and turn and want to do anything to get away from my mind, my emotions, and myself. I can remember having fantasies of being an abandoned orphaned, covered in dirt that would get rescued from a family and warmed and loved. I would drift off to sleep after playing out this fantasy, As an adult and through psychology I learned this was a stress coping mechanism, to create a story of being saved.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have some really wonderful and amazing memories from my childhood. I wouldn’t change anything about my childhood because it helped to shape the loving and compassionate person that I am today. I am grateful for my family and all the experiences that I have had. When I work with clients, one of the first things we talk about is not blaming our parents, to not blame our childhoods, to see them as a gift or at the very least an experience that shaped and molded us. This does not mean that anyone deserved the childhood that they had, some childhoods are filled with fear, unfairness, hurt and pain and we never want to dismiss that or force finding gratitude if it’s not appropriate.

Each person and each situation is individual to them. What we can do is recognize the trauma, observe it, identify it, label it, and bring it into the light so that it does not lurk in the darkness haunting us. Again, this is not a delicate process and very well may require the assistance of a trauma trained therapist or psychotherapist. This is not light work and the severity of the situation should be appropriately matched with the source of help, I think it also depends on the individual and their mental state and the level of attention they require for healing, this is where boundaries comes into place.

I heard a psychologist once describe it in this way, and I am totally paraphrasing this; we all require a level of attention for survival, this is a wide range with very opposite ends of the spectrum. Some people require very little levels of attention for survival, whereas others require a narcissistic level of attention for survival. I realize that as a child, I required a lot of attention for survival and one of my coping mechanisms when feeling abandoned when those levels were not met was a fantasy of rescue. That I wouldn’t even need to ask for help, it would just appear.

I also realize that it has. never been easy for me to ask for help because I saw asking for help as a weakness. As a kid who struggled in school, I was always very anxious when I did not understand something and would not ask for help, this led to a lot of insecurities. I am sure I had undiagnosed ADHD, I worked very hard in school and I would think I really got the material and then testing time would come and I would walk away feeling so confident that I nailed the test, but when I got the grade of a C or D- my self-esteem was deflated like a balloon and I would tell myself how stupid I was and how silly it was of me to think I could be smart.

I was a sensitive child

Of course I have carried this baggage around for many many years and when I find someone asking for too much help, it triggers me. It makes me resentful that others are asking for help when I am barely keeping my head above water. Or it triggers in my manipulation and how emotions are manipulated to get desired outcomes, another behavior that I learned at a very young age. And kids naturally are egotistical because when a baby is born they are naturally dependent on caregivers, to a child perspective, this is THEIR world and everyone else is just existing in it. Of course through maturation, we realize that we are apart of the world, we have a role to play in the world, we co-exist with others and we have to find our way. I think this is rooted in one of the purposes of life, to remember that we are all connected and One.

If a child has any trauma in those transitions from ego to place in the world (this would be sacral and solar plexus chakra work) they may get emotionally stunted in that stage and turn into adults that require a narcissistic level of attention to satisfy their attention seeking inner child. The gift in this is that once it is recognized, the treatment is quite simple. We sit with our inner child and we tell them how wonderful and loved they are. There is a meditation that I often walk through with my clients where they meet their inner child and embrace them. It usually ends in some wonderful teas and releasing.

The Rebirth

I was a sensitive kid, and I am a very sensitive adult. With all my rebirths, I notice that I become more and more sensitive. This is truly a gift. To be able to empathetically connect with others, to hold genuine and authentic support for them, without any attachments to the end result, to simply co-exist with someone on their journey at a moment when they feel lonely.

The greatest gift we can give ourselves, aside from the present moment, is the gift of love. To recognize when we are desperately seeking attention and approval from outside of us and to turn inward and give ourselves that love and support because it is not any one else’s job to do it for us.

It is no one else’s responsibility to make you happy, it is a solo job and when you find yourself unhappy, retreat and spend some time with your inner child, rebirth a million times if that is what you need to do. What fills your cup, may not fill others so be mindful of that. If you are someone that requires a lot of attention, be mindful if you are projecting that desire out to others, as you could in fact be draining them on accident. And if you find yourself drained, set boundaries, take breaks. If you do the shadow work and find yourself in a similar situation as I’ve shared above, it’s an invitation to do some self-care; fill your cup with meditation, energy work, a massage, a quite afternoon alone with a good book out in nature, or take the time to write a gratitude journal entry, to list all the ways you are grateful for this life and all your experiences that have led to this moment.

The healing journey is not an easy one, you are stronger than you think. On the other side of the Tower card is Rebirth.

Yours in yoga,

Amanda