Hello beautiful people,
I have just returned from a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat. I have been fluctuating greatly. One moment feeling greatly expanded, grounded and aligned. The next I’ve been feeling anxious, uncertain and sure I am broken. This can be normal for me after returning from any intense immersion, upgrade or retreat. Even after one day of deep dance, I find it takes me time to integrate all that I have learnt and journeyed.
But it doesn’t feel great. I’m not in surrender or acceptance about all my emotions. Nor am I at all zen about it.
I have been writing this over several days, not quite sure how to describe both the empowerment I receive from this practice, while also acknowledging how deeply tender and how many “seemingly” broken parts of myself that I have touched. I know that I am still integrating (and that can be uncomfortable) at the same time, the world keeps on spinning and I keep on feeling all the feelings.
I don’t always share my downs with you as a community. Why is that?
I’m used to this cycle of growth now.
Energetic work –> Expansion –> Fluctuations (as deep hurt and pain release) –> Deep Joy –> The Process begins again.
Yet somehow, when I am caught in these shame or broken spirals, my damaged nature really feels too real, too potent, too true.
I find it easier to share my insights once they are integrated, rather than when I am going through it. It felt important today to be transparent. It felt important because the popular narrative about meditation, yoga and energetic work is overwhelmingly focused on the positive outcomes and the benefits we receive, rather than the depth of ups and downs there are.
Meditation helps us to accept what is. It doesn’t fix us. There isn’t a single moment where we reach wholeness. Nor is there a moment where we will sit down to meditate or receive a session and automatically feel aligned. We touch those moments fleetingly, but as with all things in this human plane. This too will pass. We came here to experience all things.
It is normal to fluctuate when deeply ingrained patterns release to feel them again. It is normal to feel our emotions.
These patterns are not coming up because we are broken (although we can forget in the moment). Instead, they come up to be released. Every time they come up if we witness them and feel them. They are leaving. Piece-by-piece. Part-by-part. We are healing ourselves. We are remembering that we are not broken. Nor are we able to control when or where our healing takes place.
This work does move us incrementally back towards ourselves and that is an amazing feeling.
Yet how meditation and energy work does draw us closer to our selves isn’t all about love and light. Instead, sometimes it can mean finding out there are pieces of us that are untethered, uncontained and fluctuating. The feelings on both sides of the joy and fear spectrums can increase. But still, amidst it all there is still a sense that once I get past all that noise, getting to know another layer of my true self is a deep and beautiful reward. 💛
This blog post today is as much for me, as for you. To remind me that I am not broken. That this is the walk of holy melody. In all its brokeness as well as its wholeness.
Bowing deeply,
Gabrielle
