Saturday, February 6, 2010

Expressing Original Tenderness





"Expressing Original Tenderness"


~~Karen watching Nancy Shilling be supported by her son Eli and Desiree Rumbaugh~~


so I'm contemplating this process of how we human beings express our truth. Or what I recall from my very first yoga class being referred to as "Original Tenderness". I remember clearly having an awareness of it as a child......and then life just sometimes stomps on it when we are too young to know any better so we start to build the walls....and then more life happens and we build more walls around this Original Tenderness.....and then some of us rebel and shout and scream and cause chaos....some us slip into an isolated darkness.....and some of us like me become people pleasers and will do and say anything to not rock the boat or break down the very well constructed walls....even though every ounce of our intuition is dying to tell the truth of our Original Tenderness.

anyway......yoga has become one of the ways that I have learned to express the truth of Original Tenderness without words. Learning how to break down the walls of "who I thought you wanted me to be so I don't have to break down the walls" and draw into the core of my being to feel who I really am. Now who I really am at this core level has no words.....it's a feeling....a vision.....a vibration.....an intuition...a REMEMBERANCE. This is like drawing in that muscle energy from the periphery to the core. In yoga, I would watch my teacher, hear what she said, see what she did, and draw that from the periphery of my attention and try to find that in myself. A lot of tweeking goes on in myself to find it. A lot of wiring and rewiring. And then the fine tuning rings a song from within and in yoga I have learned to express that out through organic energy. Its hard to do....it's no easy business.....and in a physical way it suddenly becomes and expression of the truth of Original Tenderness if I hold to my edge. No words are necessary because truth really shows in a glow in the way you "strike a pose" so to speak. It might not be the "deepest most challenging" variation of the pose, but it is mine and it's right on the edge and i know it when I'm doing it.....and it feels like strong sensation for sure....but totally free....totally truth....totally Tender.

Sometimes there are just times when expressing our Original Tenderness is just really hard to do alone. We need each other in this process. We just can't do it alone. There is so many obsticles in the way of expressing Original Tenderness once we've remembered it. Like the obsticle of expressing it during the grieving process. I was thinking about that when I was going through some of the pictures I took at Desiree's workshop. This picture above is a gem of an example of helping someone express their Original Tenderness when it is difficult to express it. It's actually a whole story in one picture and one expression. What I see is my friend Nancy.....an amazing woman who does beautiful yoga.....always playfully looking for her edge.... and when she would teach it she would always do it with the heart of a playful child......and she smiled like this all the time.....and then my friend Nancy had a tragedy happen in her life in the loss of her son.....and when tragedy happens the truth becomes bleek and dim and we absolutely need support to remember it while we walk through the grieving process......and then the Universe sends support.....and in the case of this scene in the picture.....it was the support of another woman who had a similar tragedy happen to her in the loss of her own son, the support in the watchful eye of a dear friend, and the support of that dear friend's son..........and I can't help but note the support of the sun coming through the window and bouncing off the face of Desiree and illuminating the smiling face of my friend Nancy in that moment of expression. It's an expression of the rememberance of her amazing childlike nature that right now needs support to express itself.....it is without a doubt Original Tenderness.

Now here's the catch.......you so have to be open to the support.....and that is hard....and it is so YOGA!!! Open to Grace.....open to the support when you need it.......and then draw into the rememberance of Truth within....which sometimes is your own with the added external muscle energy of a friend or two or three supporting you......and then remember that truth and shine it out with organic energy.....which means sometimes we shine it out through the open wound of a broken heart.....now that is Courage......that is truly what it means to express Original Tenderness.....not just expressing it when it's easy.....but when it is truly TENDER......through the open wound of the heart.


Thank you Nancy for your Courage!

1 comment:

  1. Hey friend happy valentine day & chinese new year, u hv a nice blog & yoga classes here, nice to meet u, wish all the best to u 6-^

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