On having exactly what you need,even if it’s the last thing you wanted.

I’m so excited to share with you some of what I’ve been encountering as I’ve started to expand my yoga and sound healing offerings, as well as what’s been coming up for me as I’ve stepped into (or been forcibly thrown into?) my practicum semester (wherein I’ve gotten to put on my therapist hat and finally begin working with real live human beings!).

So, like I mentioned, I just started in on therapizing (is that a word?) real, live clients. Like, fully fleshed out human beings that have sons, and daughters, and mothers, and sisters, and brothers, and grandparents, and favorite baristas, and enemies, and situationships and so on and so forth. I’ve also started diving more into one-on-one sound healing work.

With that being said, the responsibility and care I feel towards this work has been giving me some real good, real BIG imposter syndrome. Like waking up in the middle of the night covered in sweat “they’re gonna find me out” imposter syndrome. The first few weeks of the semester especially, I found myself battling to shove down the part of me that wholeheartedly believed I wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t old enough/ready enough/wise enough to do this work.

And the thing about battling a part of yourself, is that it typically doesn’t work at all. In fact, it tends to make the part louder and more insistent. This was my first realization and unfortunately while it was exactly what I needed, it was definitely not what I wanted.

I’ve been so used to powering through, putting my nose in the books, and keeping those parts of me locked in a padlocked protected safe-house in my heart, but this work is demanding me to take another look at how I relate with myself, because (un)fortunately, it’s also how I relate with others.

As I’ve mentioned before, I strongly believe that we come to yoga, therapy, sound healings, meditations etc. completely whole - and that means that each and every part of us has Goodness/divinity/Spirit within it, and a purpose that maybe we just don’t have the insight yet to see.

For me, the tricky thing about sound healing, therapy, and yoga, is that (un)fortunately, all the tender parts have a tendency to spill out. I typically find them spilling out in exactly what I’m teaching (anyone notice my emphasis on belonging lately? on self-compassion?). And (un)fortunately, these themes also seem to be resonating with a lot of you.

So thankfully here, we can both learn together. Together we can learn to reside more in our sense of belonging, and wholeness, and self-compassion (root chakra work, wahoo!). Together we can start to integrate all of our parts into the wholeness of our being, even those that we’ve deemed unhelpful.

Have a part that needs tending? Book a private yoga class with me!

And while that imposter syndrome and self-doubt still come up for me, what I do know is that I’m better for it. Being able to fully admit to myself that I’m allowed to fumble forward, laugh at myself, and keep on trekking has been such a difficult but rewarding journey that I know isn’t even halfway over.

I know that I wouldn’t be able to be the teacher or therapist or guide I want to beunless I truly learned how to hold these parts in a soft cocoon of compassion. To allow them to be fully held and supported in the warmth of my own light of acceptance.

And I know that this lesson is exactly what I need, because it’s my sacred duty to walk with you into the fire of your padlocked parts as well.

One last word on this: when we start to accept all of the parts of ourselves and realize how our actions towards others mirror that which we experience within,we are directly enacting the yamas (social ethics) of Ahimsa, non-violence, and Satya: truth. When we walk in our truth of full acceptance of our parts, recognizing our wholeness and our power, it becomes almost effortless to reside in that space of non-violence. When we relate with compassion internally, we relate with compassion externally.

And of course this doesn’t mean that we are pushovers. Not even close. Compassion and non-violence in my book (and in the yoga sutras) essentially means doing no harm, but taking no shit. There’s a ‘firmness’ to the definition of ahimsa that sometimes can be lost in translation.

When we end class, you might notice me saying that I hope your practice not only benefits you but those around you, and this is exactly what I mean. Yoga provides us with the means to quiet the mind, go inside, and start compassionately witnessing ourselves. And in our current world, there is a high calling for you to enact this kind of self-activism.  

So here’s where I call to you. What are you noticing that needs to be witnessed? What are you noticing that keeps coming up for you, time and time again? How can I support you in taking the padlock off of that cage within your heart, to let those parts of you be heard? To be held? To be compassionately witnessed?

Need some TLC? Book a private sound bath with me here

I’ll leave you with a quote from Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS therapy, which is quite yogic and psychedelic in nature:

“How we relate in the inner world will be how we relate in the outer. If we can appreciate and have compassion for our parts, even for the ones we’ve considered to be enemies, we can do the same for people who resemble them. On the other hand, if we hate or disdain our parts, we’ll do the same with anyone who reminds us of them.”

- Richard Schwartz in No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model (2021).