April 2021

“Many of us have the idea that emotional energy is like fuel – if you spend it, use it, give it away, then you’ll have less. This energy, however, is not a commodity the becomes depleted with use. Like the blood in our circulatory system, it needs to flow, to be used up, and will replenish itself and keep us healthy.” GABRIELLE ROTH

 

The teaching of the Wave has been a solid ground on my journey of learning about emotions as well as for holding space for others to do the same. 
The Heartbeat level of 5Rhythms has brought to me so much understanding about the interconnectedness between my body and my heart, as well as between my movement and my breath. 
This is for me a place where healing can happen. 
 
So many times I heard others (and they were not The Beatles), and even myself say things like: “Oh just let it be.”  Like it is a piece of cake. Like there is only a short distance between this place of discomfort where I am now and this place of deep peace. For me this is the journey. And sometimes we need more time in one of the phases then in others, depending on a situation.
 
I also realised that if I am usually struggling with the rhythm of Flowing that I might struggle with the part of the journey that Gabrielle taught as “let it in.” Or if Chaos rhythm is something I try to avoid by checking on how everybody else is doing in the room, I might need more practice in the “letting go” part.
 
Gabrielle called the following the “L-map”. Each of these 5 steps are somehow not enough on their own, they all complement and support each other. I can not use “let it go” for every situation. “Let it be” is not always an answer for everything.  This is a also a Wave.
  
LET IT IN
 
I focus my breathing on the inhale. I open my body for the movement. I open my senses for the life of this moment. I flow with these sensations, emotions, vibrations inside of me. I let them flow around and with each other. What I see, what I hear, what I taste and smell, what I touch, what I sense and feel – it is all here for me, for my attention only. 
 
And after I gathered all the information I need, my personal experience wants to be communicated, it wants to make contact with what is outside of me. Whatever I let in and move with inside of me, and carry with me, it needs to come out eventually in one form or another, in one shape or another. 
 
LET IT OUT
 
What can really come out from me and through me if I let nothing and noone in? Do I make empty promises? How do I (he)articulate myself clearly? How do I regulate what comes out of me based on who is in front of me? What is the message I want to have come through? Where is the safe space for me to freely and fully vent, scream, spit it out? Sometimes the only way for me to make a decision is to put out all the options, lay down all the cards. 
It took me a lot of practice to shorten the gap between when somebody would hurt me and me saying “ouch!”
 
LET IT GO
 
When I am in pain, I can cry it out, dance it out, shake it out, twitter it out as much as I want, but eventually, to be free of that pain, I need to let it go. 
 
There is a part of me that jumps on a problem like a pit bull, and I come at it from all the sides, and I try this and I call that person, and I Google that, and I ask for help, and I pray, and I push it all the way to the edge- the edge of surrender. I kill the shit out of the problem, and it may even feel like I am trying to resuscitate it when I finally realise I have truly done everything I could, I did everything that is in my power, and it is time to stop holding on and let my hands go. 
 
LET GO OF LETTING GO
 
I feel there is never enough work with letting go, there is always some new shit coming out, on a daily basis; so it is a true medicine to recognise a moment when it’s time to let go of letting go. I get that when I clean the dust at home, and while I am cleaning it from my furniture I can see the new one falling down in the same moment.  It is somehow like that the very act of letting go of my past is still keeping one of my feet there, and if I truly want to be in this present moment I need to also let go of letting go. 
 
Time for a break. Time to chill. Time for a cake. Time to take it easy. Time to relax. Time to celebrate what I cleaned and cleansed and released so far. Time to notice the softness of relief. Time to feel the lightness of emptiness. 
 
 
LET IT BE
 
And then arriving to this place – it might look like magic. And that magic was actually a whole journey. A journey full of snorts, sweat, tears and wanting to give up. Mixed with some cake. Sometimes too much cake. The funny thing is that when I arrive to this sweet spot, I realise it was actually always here. It is not a place at the end of the rainbow. It is more like the vast clear blue sky behind the clouds and thunder and rain and sunshine and stars. It is that place where things make sense again thanks to the wisdom thanks to the each step of the journey (especially those steps through the time when nothing made sense).
Here and now I can take a deeper inhale and a longer exhale. Here and now I can even find some closure.
 
 
PS 
Although I used the word cake more then I used the word dance in this text, this text is still about the dance.