Holding Space For Healing And Trusting Life

Our minds can be demanding at times, wanting healing to happen right away. It can create high expectations and put pressure on the moment to feel a certain way. Healing is a mystical, intuitive, patient process... I share how to hold space with kindness and compassion for yourself and others.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

Are in a place where you can comfortably close your eyes just go ahead and do that.

And as your eyes close feel your shoulders start to soften and start to feel your breath just traveling a little bit deeper into your body.

Then placing your hand on your lower belly and feeling the breath rise and fall in that space so nice and deep.

Allow yourself to gently sigh your breath.

Go ahead take one more full breath in and exhale.

Okay and gently open your eyes.

So feeling this moment here as fresh.

I love how we take that little pause to breathe into the body and then as we come back it's like a fresh moment.

Our minds a little clearer,

We're here and the body is a little bit more relaxed to receive.

So today's talk it feels like for the majority of my spiritual journey and my practices over the years that I have reached some sort of shifting point,

Some like big massive moment where all of a sudden and practicing within my life and seeing it unfold and the joy of it it's like having this space and this patience and this compassion and just this lack of anxiety and impatience around like something needing to change in this moment or like something needing to be healed or different within myself or somebody that I know.

The past few months I've literally allowed myself and I think it's also just timing you got to like pay attention to just what's the divine timing in your life.

But for so much of my journey so much of my life before I even started practicing meditation or yoga I was in such deep resistance to life like pushing at it so hard had so much anxiety was so overwhelmed and I had so much impatience and this impatience was around like needing to feel better in this moment like needing to feel good and okay right now like almost a panic type of feeling and I didn't know what to do about that and so a lot of myself ran into escapism and just getting away from the moment getting away from life because I had no idea or no capacity to hold this comfort or to hold pain or to hold the in-between the in-between of stories the uncertainty the mystery right and these are things that terrify us and from a survival level it makes sense that we do want to have some sort of mindfulness around well why is there discomfort because it's there for a reason right there's something off but sometimes we don't know what that is and sometimes we don't need to know what that is right now in this moment and that's when that impatience can come through and I've lived much of my life feeling quite impatient and quite disconnected from contentment in this present moment I think that's what leads a lot of us to this space or to this journey or to insight timer or to our yoga mats is just this deep discomfort we have around uncertainty the mystery of life and an inability to hold the immensity of pain that may be present within ourselves or within other people and it is painful right it's challenging then as I started on my spiritual journey and I started you know doing what I could to better myself I was seeing some benefits from that I was okay I need to continue down this route but still I found that even though I was on this on this journey I was still pushing away at pain I was still pushing away at no I don't want to feel this way I want to feel this way right and I want to be in this spiritual high space and I don't want to feel the discomfort I don't want to feel the changes and the uncertainty and the loss like I just want to be able to be free and not experience any of that and so still during the journey there was still so much resistance and pushing on a level and there still is within me it's like it's totally gone but there was definitely energy within there that was like you know like bad energy low energy too much energy like overwhelming stuff the external world too much this and that you know and it was just like a different way of conceptualizing the same kind of energetic that I had before I started my spiritual journey which was like don't want this want this instead you know and this instead became like states that I'd access of like bliss you know bliss or deep ease or deep flow within my life that came from a spiritual practice but I was pushing still so much at lower frequencies or times that I would spend like feeling discomfort in myself you know it was this pushing and this pulling at life this like grasping at something and this pushing away at something else and that felt very exhausting because if I see that within myself right and if I'm viewing my life that way that's how I start to view everybody else's life and my family my friends and everybody around me so if they end up in a space where they're in discomfort or they're living through uncertainty or they're dealing with some pain or challenge I didn't have any space to hold space for that within their lives because I was not very good at holding space for that within my life because I was still in some way trying to escape that so pushing it away is something I did not want to experience and wanting to experience something else right and so that just fueled the impatience you know oh I just want to be more enlightened already I just want to be more spiritually free already I just want to be more aware already I just want to be just want to be just want to be etc etc etc and you can see how that is playing into the same energetic as even before the spiritual path when I was just like oh I just want to be feeling happy I just want to be feeling peaceful what is going to get me there and you could be doing other things to try and get you there but in the spiritual journey you could be doing a lot of other things like meditation or yoga trying to get you there but it's still the same energy of running away from pain or discomfort uncertainty or the mystery and the healing process that we are all going through within our lives so I just found that very interesting and curious and so my ability to hold space for healing it's not great you know your ability to hold space for healing pretty much is just another way of saying your ability to hold space for the unknown the mystery and discomfort within life right and there was a point within my journey where I thought oh maybe I'll just get to a place where I'll like never really experience discomfort that like discomfort and pain will just be like so minimal because I'll be so spiritually high and vibrating in these great ways and it just will like minimize and I think it's been I've been contemplating this a lot because that's the tendency of our minds is to think that like okay for us to feel for me to feel better for people my life to feel better we have to get rid of something we have to get rid of the pain we have to get rid of the discomfort we have to get rid of the emotions we have to get rid of whatever obstacle is in the in the currently in the way in order for us to feel okay now I kind of held that to that belief but then over the years as I've noticed more and more and more and more it's actually not so much that those things have disappeared like yes they've lessened as I've been more mindful about what energy and what choices I'm making and not making I can definitely minimize you know the discomfort and the suffering to some degree if I'm making choices more in alignment with my heart taking those courageous steps not sitting through something that feels out of alignment for an extended period of time like yes you have control over that so on one level that's true but in another level the pain and the discomfort the mystery the unknown is integrated into the fabric of existence and so any thought about like okay we're just gonna get rid of that forever or in the moments that I feel super joyful I'm just gonna pretend it doesn't exist it fragments us and allow and keeps us kind of trapped within the space where we are either clinging to life or pushing away from life what has happened over the years and within the past few months especially for me is a change in relationship to those experiences we have so my wisdom I can share with you is to think about it that way think about your relationship to these experiences that will be present and will be here because they're a part of life and to put down the angst the impatience anything you may have around this idea that we are going to one day somehow be totally free with yourself or with other people from experiencing anything discomforting or painful ever again maybe you don't have that but I'm just saying our mind can sometimes go to those extremes you know thinking that okay we just need to get rid of these things instead of being with them and changing your relationship to them in the present moment so that's where I found the most liberation is changing my relationship to what's present not pushing away what's present so what's present could be you know things that you're healing from on the physical level an emotional level a mental level maybe you're healing from some sort of addiction or maybe it's someone you know in your life that's going through that process right very hard processes of healing and it's about what is your relationship to that experience that's happening without needing that experience to change in any way that's where the liberation is found I found is not needing the experience to change in any way not needing the moment not needing anything to change at all and if life is exactly the same now as it will be forever say I know it's obviously not going to because it changes but if you were to see it that way that I am going to be totally you know okay with whatever this is no matter how painful or jarring or terrifying it is what is my relationship to that because that experience is painful or discomforting that we want to change is actually the mystery and the unknown that we are staring at in that moment because we don't know why it's here we don't know why we're suffering we don't know why you know when it's going to change and so what is our relationship to that and the relationship to that that has began to ease more over the past few months within my life and within this process is just having more patience more trust and more compassion alongside these experiences within life right within yourself or other people the the this is holding space for healing and being able to hold space for that does help by having you know regular daily practices whether it's yoga or meditation or breath things that help you expand your awareness so you can feel into the part of yourself that is bigger than just this physical body you can feel into the part of yourself that expands into the energy field and connects with everything around you right and from that space deepening that connection does help you hold a stronger and more grounded and more faithful and trusting relationship to what's present in the moment okay and another piece that I've really I've really been contemplating and leaning into with all of this thanks for the hearts loves is just the fact that if you really think about life right like do you really think that there is a mistake happening here you know within your journey or within somebody else's journey do you think that you're not healing fast enough or you're not in the process you're supposed to be in or that you're the person you love is somehow like going through some like huge mistake of the cosmos to be in the experience that they're in right now like do we really think that you know because if you get really quiet and listen get really subtle with life and start to feel into it it's like there is so much that's happening on an intelligence that is so much greater than I know that my mind will ever be able to understand in this lifetime I understand that there is a limit to my will and to my trying because the energy and the and the field that is beating my heart that is breathing my body that is regulating a million different systems within my body that I can't even begin to understand in such a precise way that I can be alive right now is absolutely wild and the fact that that energy is also shifting the seasons and growing the plants and blooming the flowers and growing food and spinning the earth around the Sun this is a field of energy that I think we've all been trying to understand for probably the extent of our human existence but as I feel into it I really don't think our mind has the capacity to understand it it's like a little mouth trying to bite off like a massive thing it's like just can't get around it you know and so that's the moment that we have to lean into trust and faith because what we are having trust and faith in is that field that I just talked about that is beating your heart that has chosen you to be alive in this moment that has chosen to breathe your body that has chosen to regulate every system in your entire every organ everything that's going on in your body the entire how animals migrate how they move the earth the planet plants it is that's life what is life it's this invisible field that is creating life that's what's you without your heartbeat and your breath not life but with your heartbeat and your breath you are life you are alive and you are alive because you are in this body that has received this intelligence that has been beating through your body breathing your body since the day you were born and will continue to until the day that you die so this energy field what are you trusting in you're trusting in that and if you're not sure can I trust that it's like you've trusted it to breathe your body every moment of your entire life until now you haven't thought in your mind oh I better breathe in I better breathe out I better breathe in I better breathe out I better breathe in I better breathe out because I have all this anxiety and I don't trust that life's just gonna breathe me I better keep using my will to breathe my body because if I don't I'm going to die I can almost guarantee you haven't had that experience so whether you believe it or not there is a part of you that already deeply trust life because you've trusted it to breathe your body in every single moment you've trusted it to beat your heart you've trusted it to grow your food you've trusted it to grow your plants you've trusted it to bring fall after summer to bring winter after fall to bring spring after winter to rise the Sun to to have the moon cycle you know is the way that we experience it in earth because earth is cycling around the Sun so just recognizing that like is that intelligence off is that intelligence a mistake or is it a miracle you know that's a question that you really got to sit with because when you get deep into it it's like is that a mistake did it mess up do you trust it or is it a miracle is it incredible is it mysterious yeah it's mysterious for sure it's mysterious of course right and what else is mysterious right these things that you're experiencing in your life right now thoughts no one's ever seen a thought unless they have some extra senses or powers that I don't but I can't see thoughts I can't see the words going through my mind across the screen right now I can't see emotions but we know they're there but how do you know they're there because you're experiencing them okay but is that is that also running on a broken intelligence or is there intelligence within that too is it working with everything together yeah it is everything is connected through this field and it's invisible and we can only see part of it right so when it comes to healing and holding space for healing how you hold for anything is trust it's faith because you can't will or think or convince yourself into or or learn your way into understanding the unknown and the mystery you can't so it has to come from a different place and it comes from that place within you that is life that deep within you knows like I trust so from that place of trust right it's running on this intelligence running on this mystery like how can you possibly know with your mind what you need to be going through or somebody else needs to be going through or not going through or how quickly you should be healing or not healing or how you know like how how would we ever know that and the pressure that we put on ourselves or the pressure and the impatience and the expectation we put on other people on ourselves and other people to feel better to change already to be different it's like all of that is coming from the headspace and yes we can take right action action that feels aligned with our hearts in each moment that we feel like would be of service to ourselves and to other people in the moment with what's present with current experiences curtain current stresses current pain current suffering we feel like there's something intuitively aligned that we can do let's do that you know do that for yourself knew it for their people but your ability to do that from a space of being that holds the energy of patience and compassion and love that's coming from a place of trust and also through that place of trust you trust that people will be healing and you will be healing and the planet will be healing in the exact rate the exact time that it's meant to and that that's already happening so as you take action within the moment it comes out of this gentle place of peace and love instead of a place of oh we just got to do this because you just got to heal already and I just I can't you know I can't be around you because your pain is too much your sufferings too much or you know why can't why can't you just heal or why can't I just heal or why can't why can't it just be better already like and I get it and I have compassion for that like I have I understand I've been there you know but it's like it's letting go of the outcome and the timeline of the outcome when it comes to healing I find it's incredibly usually for the most part unproductive and not helpful to set a timeline or an expectation on when you think you're supposed to be healed from a certain thing or when you're supposed to feel better when the person you love is supposed to feel better when they can just get over their thing already because if they could get over it already they would be over it already and they are not over it already because they're still within the process of burning through things within pain and suffering because another thing that I've contemplated with is just like the amount of things that have released out of me that have been you know challenging to have within my personality or how I am as a person has really released out of me through pain and suffering and it was only through sitting through that burning pain of suffering and pain that I was able to let go of these things that I was clinging to or being and I know that sounds very vague because I don't have a specific you know story or idea of something specific right now but it's just like the burning through the pain and the suffering that we go through other people go through I feel like in my journey as I've witnessed it is the path that we walk through the flames to be able to arrive at a space where we can even understand what compassion is that we can even know what love is or presence is and we can even be able to give that to ourselves or other people on the other side of it but if we try and escape the pain or the suffering too quickly before our souls are ready before we're meant to release that pain or suffering we can miss out on a lot of that kind of burning through you know things that have made us feel out of alignment such as like the reason I feel like I'm patient now or even have any connection to patients now is because I've been through so much suffering and pain that has burned through my impatience like my impatience has been burned through so much and now I'm just like okay you know it exhausts you to that point where you surrender like like that suffering pushes you to surrender and you know that because I'm guessing a lot of you the same way that many of us have begun on us on a path of searching is because we were in a place that was so low and so dark and so rock-bottom that we didn't really potentially maybe this relates with you or not but potentially care if you were alive or not and so you were okay to have your ego structure die because you were just not attached to it at all because you're just like this is just horrible this was I'm in the deepest suffering and pain of my life and when that ego structure was able to die because you're able to give it up then you were able to rise into the spiritual self and your connection to something that's greater than just the finite experience of your body in this lifetime so that suffering has a purpose that pain has a purpose and I truly believe over the years going through this and witnessing my life and other people's lives that it will release at the exact moment that it's meant to and not before then and who are we to sit around with our righteous minds our bodies and ourselves that are afraid of pain and suffering uncertainty and the mystery to try and put pressure on our change or expect somebody else to release their suffering before they're ready to and really do they have a choice in that I don't even know I'd argue probably not I feel like a lot of the spaces when suffering or pain breaks and actually releases is up to that infinite intelligent field that beats our heart that breathes our body this is life and in some unseen mysterious way the moment that we're meant to release something the moment we're meant to make a change we will do that because we'll feel that and we'll be committed to that when the time is right whether it's giving up a habit or whether it's letting go of a relationship or whether it's starting a job or whether it's starting something that to follow our intuition like the moment that we believe that that is necessary like I don't really think that's up to us it just kind of happens and all of a sudden this matters and that's probably the same with other people so can we hold space for wherever somebody is within their journey of healing no matter what that looks like and understand that even the smallest little changes that maybe we don't understand because our path looks different than somebody else's like their thing that they have overcome could be something massive for them and even though they're not in our opinion of like as healed or as enlightened or as conscious we'd want them to be it's like how it's kind of not very kind of us to put that forward through this space of righteousness that like we know and they don't you know because it's like how do we know we have to have one foot and we have no idea and if we are putting our righteousness over somebody else all that is is a reflection of our own mistrust of life our own mistrust of the unknown of mystery and our own lack of faith that their path is exactly as it's meant to be and that we are we can help out when it feels right in ways that feel aligned out of a state of being in contentment because we're not putting that pressure or that expectation on to their path becoming something right away that we think it's supposed to be because we don't know so just recognizing where that's coming from and then recognizing that that's okay and understanding that vulnerability within you is okay and I can relate to that too right and that from that place of vulnerability of like okay I don't I don't know everything and I feel scared that I don't know everything that's probably the root of the most of our minds within this human experience is the fear of I don't know you know I don't understand why am I here duh duh duh etc etc etc but it's like being able to release from that is not knowing per se but to understand that you're meant to live in the unknown and that our mind is probably not supposed to understand and we're probably not here to logically know life but to feel life and through that be able to trust and have faith in it enough that we don't need to know so we can release that pressure and that change our relationship to the unknown and as our relationship changes to the unknown in the mystery releasing expectations more and more of outcome or what being healed is supposed to even look like for ourselves or other people then we can allow ourselves to just be with the experience of the moment and celebrate the little changes a little bits of awareness that happen within us or other people and at the grounded most rooted core of it we can be here just simply just witness and be witness to other people's evolution without interfering with it judging it or throwing our righteousness on it and we can be here and be witness to our own journey our own evolution our own healing without putting expectations on it being righteous even over our own healing because who knows we need to have room for the mystery that other things could come in that we just don't know right and so taking action as we know it feels right from a state of being that is holding that contentment through the trust of life is where we're going to be able to deepen our compassion our love and connection to not only ourselves but everybody around us who is also going through very potent and challenging healing journeys because the thing that we need the most in this world right now I feel especially since globally we are going through a deep healing process is trust and compassion and how are we going to have trust and compassion for the world if we don't for ourselves and we don't for the people closest to us so allowing ourselves to change our relationship to what's present whatever the pain or suffering is recognizing that our fear to that is just a surface of the fear of our of the unknown and the mystery that we don't want to face within ourselves and within life which is one of the deepest fears for all of us but it's okay because with time with practice connection to self connection to breath there's a feeling that arises through the body that just knows that we can trust that energy that beats our heart the energy that is cycling the system the energy that is that is life and that it's it's working on a timeline out of wisdom right and through that process we can allow ourselves to hold a relationship of compassion with time and contentment with time bit by bit you'll get closer bit by bit you'll notice changes but it's a lifelong journey so adjust your expectations accordingly but just little bits closer to that we can finally get to a place where we're not pushing away and I don't want that I don't want pain I don't want suffering we can be in a place where okay it's here and that's okay that it's here I know why it's here I trust that it's here I trust is gonna let go when the time is right I trust it has a purpose while it's here for myself for other people for the world and I don't have to cling to states where I feel super blissful and free and amazing all the time because that's just another experience too that can be weaved in to the network of life that everything's present so can we be here with all of it right that's the courageous act and the courageous step for being here with life right now so I'll end it there

Reviews

Another great lesson! I love your perspective of how we should truly be trusting life and our journeys. It’s given me much to think about. Thank you!