Newsletter: Leaning into a Season of SAD
I have been in a holding pattern with my newsletter. I have felt more sadness lately. Not just about my personal life but the state of the world. At the same time I am in love with my life and respect the necessary shifts that are happening in the world. When I honor these feelings and don’t push them away, it gives me permission to experience the full spectrum of living and that’s an important part of being human. It also helps me rinse my feelings so I don’t silence my truth for shame and create a false sense of strength. Inner strength is cultivated in the willingness to learn from all the seasons of our lives.
What does the word Sad conjure up for you? What is your relationship with your own Sadness and being with other peoples’ Sadness? I have found this can be a hard place for many of us to visit. Is it Sad that is hard, or our judgement of it? Sadness can have its roots in old stories and can be reactivated in present experiences.The denial of it suppresses what we are feeling and depresses our ability to see a way forward. The darkness can bury us in a heaviness that can take us into a pity-party for one. It is not a bad place, it is a space to rinse our upsets and own our struggles so we learn to change the inner dialogue and repattern our communication.
Winter time is known for bringing on SAD (seasonal affective disorder) because of less light, the barren landscapes, the stripping away of the gogogo tendency and slowing down into the tenderness of our inner lives. Impatience is often a sign of ignoring what needs attending and healing. This is also a time of shedding and stripping us bare to see and feel into places that are lacking love so we can fill our inner well with nourishment and plump up our lives and blossom into the next phase.
Winter in London has helped me appreciate dropping into my sadness and understanding the difference between crying with feeling it and crying in a circle of self-pity. Let’s face it, we can all go there or wall it off completely, but the denial of our sadness doesn’t allow us to process and move it through. Why? I have found that many of us don’t do sadness because we think it is weak and even scary. We are afraid if we drop into the center of it, we will be swallowed up. If we avoid it, we may play it out with others and look to be rescued or saved or, on the flipside, rescue and save others. This is the dance of codependency, and it’s not rare. :) When we embrace our fears, mistakes, or hurt places, we learn to self-soothe and open a dialogue of listening and finding a new path forward. We take ownership for our pain and struggles and move from spin cycle to embodied intimacy.
As a yoga teacher, I fully embrace and love the power of the practice to get into our bodies, open our channels, listen with attentiveness, and own the work we need to do to change the narratives of old belief systems that may be influencing our present choices. The inner work is where the deeper transformation happens. I have found that meditation is helpful but can disassociate me from what I need to process and resolve in the human dance of life. I think it is a great tool but there is a fine line of checking out from planet earth when we are in earth school to learn. Love and intimacy don’t happen without messing up, breaking down, and breaking through what is not of love. We get to rub edges and soften our prickly places when we engage with life. I am not poo pooing meditation, I am suggesting that we have to rinse the dirty water so we can sit and feel into the truth of our multifaceted lives.
Yoga reminds us that we will all splinter away from our essence and that is part of the deal. This breaks down the illusion of control, and helps us see ourselves and each other with more compassion. It is the returning to source that helps us keep the faith in the process of living each day. As many of us embark on spring, may we honor the dark that births the light, turning our hurts into gratitude, so we can hold all of our truths and each other with tenderness.
In shadow and light,
Mia xo