After work this past Wed-Fri nights, I attended 3.5 hours of a SKY Meditation retreat. If I every come back to read this, I hope I'm still following the daily breathing techniques and meditation.
In addition to philosophies, life approaches, and creating connections with others during the classes, the first 2 nights are extended breathing processes to detox one's system(s) and reset your rhythms. Sure, it sounds like complete bullshit except that there are more than 100 scientific studies that have been conducted by experts at Harvard, Yale, and UAB proving the direct impact the program can have.
They tell you that feelings or thoughts may come up during those extended breathing sessions and to just go with them. Mine starting showing up yesterday and today.
There were a few emotional sparks of meaning during the classes:
- The presenter started off by talking about where stress comes from - the mind constantly vacillating between regrets or hurts of the past and dreams or expectations of the future. Peace can be found by being in the moment.
- I realized that I have been in a near constant state of stress since childhood because I am near constantly trying to escape my present.
- We discussed being childlike and being 100% of who you are to be in the present - "Like how you are not afraid to be goofy with your closest loved ones."
- That hurt like a knife because I never have - even as a child - felt unafraid to be goofy with my family.
- I did not have the sense of safety you need and desperately want during those years when you are first navigating the world.
- I was primed for everything I did to elicit a reaction of correction, mocking, bullying, or some other painful experience.
- Talking about being childlike brought back the memory of how I loved to sing all the time as a small child - to myself, around the yard, in the bathroom. And I clearly having a great time just singing my heart out while on the toilet in the the hall bathroom in the old house, and Lance opening the door just enough to make fun of me. I don't remember ever singing around the house again after that and rarely building the nerve (maybe 3 times I can remember) to sing a solo for choir performances. I'm still uncomfortable letting people really hear me sing.
- Another discussion point during the classes was that we isolate when we feel stressed.
- From the previous points, it's pretty damn easy to see why my life was constant stress (especially until I moved out).
- I thought I was a loner because I am such a strong introvert, but connecting the dots through the 3 days of classes, I realize I was exhibiting that stress response my whole life.
- I was a loner and isolated myself as a protective mechanism.
- The response that really hit me in the heart was during a connection exercise where we paired up and looked into each others' eyes for a really long time. During that period, the instructor said something like "The person across from you is love. The stress of everyday life may get in the way or keep them from fully expressing it, but they are full of love."
- That's my family. Life has repeatedly gotten in the way for each of us, but we are full of love.
- Several weeks ago, I was thinking through my family dynamic and how Mom and Dad's family of origin set them up for who/how they are. So yeah, their fucked up families got in their heads and that got in the way of their love too often, but I have to remember they did - and do - love me.
On Friday morning, what kept popping into my head was "I feel like a completely different person." I didn't feel constant achiness all over my body or weighed down or exhausted beyond any ability to not be for the first time since I can remember.
What else kept popping in my head was a quote from years ago (which I'm pretty sure I wrote about in a previous post): Are you living from the wound? Or from the healing?
- I've been so frustrated that I feel like I keep falling back into the wound, but what the process this week made me realize is that I've never stopped living from the wound. It's like the damn pyodrema gangrenosa I've been fighting for years - the would seemed like it was filling and getting more shallow, but in reality, the tissues were swelling because the inflamation was so continuous that the wound was becoming more wounded.
That's how I feel the last 4 years (maybe longer) has been - a wound getting more wounded. I think I've been a max capacity, and that is why the last year or so have been so completely overwhelming. I was running out of healthy parts the wound wasn't taking over any more.
A LOT of emotions, revelations, and memories have been coming up today (especially during the quiet stillness of my massage appointment). But, I (perhaps naively, perhaps shrewdly) feel like I have found fresh edges to the wound for the first time that may allow healing, if not at least the skin to start toughening and scarring so the wound finally settles into a manageable reminder instead of a constant source of pain.
