Hey beautiful
I was walking with a friend this week who shared with me how she feared to open her heart. This is a woman who I know as a passionately caring and generous mother, partner, daughter, healer, a lover of art, music, science and fun.
How she feared to open her heart because her love was too deep and powerful to show it all without losing herself.
The light within! – Marianne Williamson
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
How to shine without burning out? How to open your heart without losing yourself?
You don’t have to show everything all at once to be seen / remembered as loving.
You are love.
So part of the answer is to use time. To build over time.
(which you’ve already been doing – your tolerance has increased and you don’t even know it)
Timing.
Schedule it.
Day by day.
Bit by bit
Build capacity for flow.
For leaning back into love and support so you can feel more love and give more skillfully.
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As I listened to my friend speaking, I recognised the desire to open my own heart.
And also a feeling of confusion that came with that.
I could imagine a swinging door of giving and receiving happening in the front of my body.
It felt busy, muddled and chaotic. Superficial.
Entertaining perhaps, but not deeply rewarding or productive.
Or even what was needed or wanted. Not what was wanted.
At that moment in our walk, we came around a corner to a bridge at the the bottom of the hill, where the creek we had been walking beside flowed right under our feet.
What if opening my heart means opening it to a clean (and cleansing) through flow?
So opening the back of my heart to receive an inflow of meaningful support and love
So i can open the front of my heart to offer a meaningful flow of support and love.
How would it feel to lean back, rest back into support and love, to enable the offering of support and love to the people and world in front of me? (including my future self!)
Rest back into the embodied memory of support and care of my ancestors, the joys of my own experience, the wisdom of trusted professionals and the kindness of friends and family who I really know have my back.
As many of my wisest mentors remind me – we do this together!
Receive help and support enabling me to offer help and support – let love, help, support flow through me.
Short answer, in summary:
To open your heart, lean back into strong support.
Simply resting back, leaning into the support of a chair or couch changes your physiology so you can mentally and emotionally shift from work focus towards ease and pleasure.
You could try that right now.
Take a moment, lean back. Give yourself time to soften and notice the shift from narrow focus, got to get stuff done, don’t interrupt me. To ahhh, there’s time, i can breathe for a moment.
After a while, you may also notice other thoughts arising which feel less friendly. More or less along the lines of “get back to work!”
Ironically, the deep work to be done here is in relation to these very voices, feelings, emotions.
The good news is that’s enough for today, and now you know both how close ease and pleasure are and also one of your edgy edges, where your greatest growth potential lies.
Closer than you expected?
Your practice, should you choose to accept it, is to remember to lean back and breathe into a moment of time and ease as often as you are willing and able.
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In the first 1:1 embodiment coaching session inside Freeing the Invisible Woman, I guide my clients through just this process, enabling them to tune into what would be possible for them when they receive the accessible love and support they long for.
And in the first optional bonus group session my clients will have the opportunity to lean back and rest into the love of the ancestors, channelled by my friend and mentor, modern mystic and Ubuntu poet Yolanda Sokiri-Munn
If this sounds like sweet medicine, the kind of love and support that could set you in motion with commitment along an exciting new path, please reach out. Enrolment is open now for the 8 seat August cohort.
Learn more at Freeing the Invisible Woman, or book your free Discovery Call here.
