As I was saying to Johanna yesterday: I want to know what this stuff is that keeps causing tension in my hips and SI joint. It's been there so long and even though I make progress with it, it is just very stubbornly there. Better some days, worse on others. She said the answer would probably come little bit by little bit.
It didn't. I came in one big gush this morning. Remember we learned some intense hip opening stuff on Saturday. Then I did hip openers (with and without tennis ball) yesterday morning and we followed up that day with the review of all we'd done, including, yes, the hip openers again. So this morning we start with meditation and yoga. You guessed it: hip openers. Saul is walking around in class adjusting everybody, but I kid you not, every single hip thing he is right by my mat: Lean back there, Marleen, a little deeper. Now take the feet wider in that squat, Marleen and now let go of the tension in those hips (and to my great surprise down go the hips). Give it a Kali breath (Kali - goddess of destruction). And to top it off he demos a one sided Happy Baby on my bad hip that just about kills me. I swear I never mentioned the hip/SI thing to this man.
Five minutes later we sit in thunderbolt and I think back to when this whole SI thing started: I was about 22 and was living with Klaas. Suddenly it hits me. This was when I started trying so hard to make that relationship work, trying to make him happy, and started losing sight of what would make me happy. I really lost my center then and got into the habit of sacrificing my joy for someone else's. The sacrum by the way is the seat of the second chakra, which is associated with joy and pleasure and creativity.
Now don't get me wrong. I will always be grateful for that relationship because he is the one that forced me to find my voice and start speaking my truth in my late teens, breaking down the glass wall between me and the rest of the world in the beginning of our relationship. But by the time we were living together we had established a pretty toxic pattern of push and pull on his side and dependency on mine. And that is when my hips and back started hurting. It seems so obvious now. At that point in the class the hips and the tears won.
So why are the hips still bothering me 18 years later? Still related to the same problem, I am sure, even though this marriage is nothing like that past relationship. One of the things that attracted me to Dave in the first place was that he didn’t have a mould he thought I should fit, he loved me just the way I was. Emotions and sloppy housekeeping skills and all. Not that they don’t irritate him, but it doesn’t cause crises in the relationship. I don’t feel that I am sacrificing my joy for him, he'll support whatever I want, even if it's not something he would have chosen.
But as a woman it can be a struggle not to disappear in the roll of wife and mother. There is a constant pressure to keep everything running smoothly, tempers harmonious and everybody happy. Nothing wrong with that, but is easy to lose sight of who you are as a person, as a woman, while you are doing that. When life gets hectic and demanding, when I run from yoga class to grocery store to kindergarten pick up to the laundry pile reaching the rafters in the garage, my SI joint starts complaining, especially when anything emotionally stressful is added to the mix.
Add to that struggle the fact that I left most of my support system, my 'village' behind when I moved to the US, especially the people like my parents, Rik, Nettie etc. who were always willing to support and encourage the path of personal growth. Not that I haven't found good friends here, but personal growth isn't a topic often discussed. Maybe we need an older generation to lead us in that. I also feel I am more reserved here in the US than I used to be. Things I say are already often considered very direct over here, if not rude, so I tend not to say as much. Dave isn't the 'let's sit and talk things over' kind of guy either, so I am more quiet than is good for me, I think.
So yeah, this course is intense, body/mind wise. But in the mean time, after just 4 days I am wrapping my right leg behind my left in Eagle pose and am squatting down with my heals on the floor. And that is just the physical stuff. The implications for the mind are boggling.... Yesterday Sara pulled some cards for me and the one for the future showed a person with pieces cracking off like a shell breaking. That's about how it feels right now.
P.S. My commitment to try everything that's offered means I will have to go do a sweat lodge tomorrow evening. Ooh boy, do I not love the heat. Can't wait.
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