How would you define love?

A friend of mine recently how asked me how I would define love; what it means to me to say or hear the words, “I love you”.   

It caused me long pause for thought.  These are the kinds of questions that I spend a lot of time thinking about.  Because the question wasn’t just about love, it was about human relationships, and how we express ourselves within them; how we connect to one-another.  These are questions with no easy or static answers.  The idea of love is both as individual as a birthmark, and as universal as the air we breathe.

I am still exploring what love means to me, especially within the context of relationship – be it romantic or not.  I am fascinated by human beings, and human relationships in particular ... and although I’m still formulating my exact thoughts around it (and may be for the rest of my lifetime) I recognize that I do have some beliefs that are quite clear and strong.  One of those is a firm belief that as human beings, we are designed to love, and designed to be in relationship.   in fact, whether we understand it or not, we ARE in relationship, all the time – with ourselves, each other, and with the world around us, and with the divine. (however we interpret that)

I believe that, fundamentally, what ails us in this society comes back to lack of authentic, present, loving, connection. It is our chronic inability to be full present and connected in those relationships with ourselves, each other, and all that is around us.

I also believe that however one defines love - it's never love itself that causes pain.  It is fear, misunderstanding, and our stories that cause the hurts.  I believe that love itself is absolute and transcends all the 'stuff' of ego and human suffering.  

I don't, however, believe that the statement, "love conquers all" is necessarily accurate - because while love may transcend all - we humans get in the way all the time.  We let fear, ego, stories, and whatever else we can come up with, get between us and that love. The love itself is always there, around us, and available.... we need only the courage to tap in to it, to allow it, to be fully present with it.  

Coming back to the original question – how I define ‘love’.... it’s a working definition (at best), but I think that love is like water; It is both what we are made of and what we are surrounded by.... and it is essential for our survival.

Which doesn't mean that it always looks the way we want it to. Once we're in the realm of relationship with another person we're no longer dealing just with 'love'.  We're dealing with values, beliefs, stories, hopes, fears, boundaries, fantasies, and egos – ours and theirs.  And all of those things are both what bring us suffering, and what give us opportunities to grow, to learn, and to fully experience love when we do open to it. 

It is in the very human struggles, of egos and stories, of fears and hopes and dreams, that we are connected to each other.  It is in our places of darkness, as much as in light, that we find connection, that we need each other.  We are conceived in relationship; our identities are formed in relationship – at our core, we are human in relationship.  Where we hold ourselves back from relationship, we hold ourselves back from our full humanity; we deny ourselves the fullest opportunity to grow and actualize.  To enter into intimate, loving, relationship is the single most courageous thing we can do as human beings.

Reflections on becoming a yoga teacher....

What is the image of a heart cracking open?  Of a body being reclaimed?  Of a soul coming into the light?  Is it like a closed lotus flower, coming into bloom?  Or a crevice in the earth, widening.... revealing the dark soil and rocks and heat of her very centre?

What is the sound of a heart, yearning to open, to surrender, to deepen? Of a body, finding its true expression and movement? Is it a keening wail?  A low sigh?  Is it a bird song high in the trees?  Is it the sound of the wind in the trees, breathing power into the world?

What is taste of finding synchronicity?  Of connection?  Of the meeting of minds and bodies and hearts?  Is it sweet like a mango?  Or rich, like dark chocolate?  Or is it full bodied and complex, like good red wine?

What is the smell of unfurling?  Of the unwinding of a lifetime of trauma knotted through the nervous system, embedded in the flesh?  Of the peeling away of layers of shadow and illusion?  Is it like an onion?  Astringent and strong?  Or is it the smell of compost or fetid soil?  Or is it the smell of fresh spring coming through the wide open windows as the house is swept clean?

What is the feel of coming home?  Of reconnecting to a deeper truth?  To the core of my being?  Is it soft, like a down pillow?  Scratchy and yet comforting like a wool blanket?  Or is it spacious and hot and wild like a wind-storm under the hot sun of summer?

How do I put into words this journey? How do I even describe when and where it started?  Do I arbitrarily pick the first weekend of classes?  Or do I include the application process?  Or the thought process?  Or the knowing in my body, that has been with me for 4 years, that I would do this when the time was right?

What do I focus on to describe how I’ve experienced this?  The postures? The anatomy?  The teaching? The people?  And where does yoga teacher training end and the rest of my interconnected, open-system, bio-feedback loop of a life begin?  It’s a tapestry .... pulling one thread tugs them all.

This program, this experience, has opened up a world of possibilities – and shined a light on so much of what was already within me.  It has been a year of deep inner exploration, even as it has been a year of learning new skills .... Verb, Body Part, Direction. 

I feel both stronger, and softer.  I have met my edges, over and over.  I have felt into my vulnerability, and fallen in love with my teachers and my cohort.  I have learned to be present with my own experience – if only for moments at a time when it was most painful .... even as I learned that my primary coping strategy is to escape.  But I kept coming back.  And I keep coming back.

I have learned to move my body differently, hold space differently, breathe differently, and feel my way through differently.  I have learned to listen to my heart and my body in ways I never thought I would.  I have found meditation (finally) that feels resonant, and a path that I can see walking.  I have found my direction, that a year ago was so elusive.

I have rediscovered gratitude and possibility, having weathered my way through a dark night of the soul on the journey.  And the journey, of course, isn’t over ....it simply shifts and evolves into a new chapter. 

Solstice to Solstice - a journey of many transitions

It's been almost exactly a year since I posted a blog.  I'm tempted to wonder where that year went.... but as I pause and reflect, the answers are enough to fill many posts.  It has been a year of inward journey.  After 2 years of exploring the world .... Guatemala, India, Nepal ... I have spent the last one exploring my inner world, growing myself, building fertile soil for my next journey.

There is something powerful about the solstice to mark times of transition.  I left for Guatemala on Winter Solstice, 2009.  I returned to British Columbia exactly six months later, on Summer Solstice.   It is two summer solstices later, and I am again called to reflect on the transitions and what is unfolding before me.

This past year has been one of profound paradox for me.  Developing myself as a professional consultant while simultaneously developing myself as a somatically based yoga teacher.  Playing dressup in  'professional' heels and navigating corporate politics through the week; donning yoga pants, with my raw-vegan potluck contribution to the world of deep emotional connection on the weekends.  And through the process finding my voice of authenticity in both.  Finding the place where I can bring heart and connection into the corporate world, and where I can bring my professional skills into the powerful realm of yoga and connection.

As I move forward this year, I know that my work life will continue to shift into greater alignment - and with each step forward, I am able to see the incredible value of each step I've taken, perhaps most especially the difficult ones.  I am grateful for all the places where I have bumped against the questions of balance, alignment, integrity, and purpose.  Those questions have enabled me to be more present in those moments, and to grow from them.... and to make choices with ever greater clarity.

This week I got to play with another level of balance, as I brought my 'professional' skills into a community I care deeply about, and helped them move forward through an important piece of work - that for them is all about connection.  I see what is possible when I bring all of me together in service work, and I am excited about what is possible.

I don't know yet exactly what this year will look like, but I know it will be yet another layer of balance - of the inner and the outer.  Of bringing my voice to the work that I do, and sharing it.  You can count on more to come.