In these last 6 months I watched how my identity of being a 5Rhythms teacher is slowly dissolving. I can say this is an identity I spent a lot of time and energy building up and I loved all of it. I got a lot back from this identity. I had a great inspiration from my own mother, who was also a teacher. This identity is something I was proud of and helped me to feel good about myself.
In these last 6 months I watched how my identity of being a house-wife and a mother is slowly forming itself. I have been avoiding this one for a long time. Here I feel pretty insecure and I it always felt like it was a side job in a way. Not who I truly am. Not why I was born for. This identity wasn’t popular at my home when I was a child and I remember how I was instinctively attracted to mothers of my friends who were stay at home mums. I carry shame and guilt around this one which surely doesn’t help me to do it any better.
And here I am. I have never worked less in my adult life. I have never spent so much time at home since I am not travelling. I have never cleaned so much. And thanks to my husband who relaxes himself by cooking, I do not need to discover my inner-chef. Yet.
And here I am. With a lot of time on my hands. And also with lot of practice stored in my body and in my heart, imprinted on my mind: of how to stay grounded, how to keep moving following the heart, how to surf the waves of the unknown, how to take myself lightly and how to rest in the pauses. And this is one hell of a pause I must say.
It feels like I have to use the left hand for everything I do (I am a right hand person) and everything feels a bit off, not so comfortable, far from perfect and being in control, sometimes even silly and very vulnerable.
I ask myself what can I offer my own vulnerability?
A voice to speak up, even if it is stuttering. Enough breathing space to expand and contract and move around as much as it needs. A soft embrace when I abandon it, sitting back to back when I judge it, a holding hand when it is ready to go out of its comfort zone. I understood again and again why Gabrielle was telling us that she wants us to become 5Rhythms teachings and not teachers. When I am a teaching, I can be that while doing any job or no job. It doesn’t depend on how many workshops I teach or how many students come to my classes. I can be a teaching wherever I go and whatever I do. I remember how I did not understand how some people could come to the Teacher Training and complete it and then not be a teacher. As that was all what I wanted to do, so passionately and so impatiently. Now I know how easy is to be a teacher and loose the sight of being a teaching. How easy it is to (well at least for me) to be a great teacher, travel around the whole world, have fully booked workshops, truly shine on the dance floor and inspire people to move – and on the other hand not being able to bring that level of presence, patience, passion, perseverance and peace to my home.
And how easy is to put a value, a good or bad, successful or not on being a something, being a teacher, being a mother, being a wife. And how I can not do that when being a teaching. Teaching just comes through, it moves something in one way or another. Hard to even name what is it, hard to box it and then hard compare it with other teachings, hard to attach to it as it really needs to come through me. I let it in and I let it go. My hope is that at the end of this global and very personal pause, I come out able to use both hands in a more equal and balanced way. Love, Silvija |