Gentleness
In this exploration into my food difficulties, I have come across many healing methods and traditions. Most of them point to stress as a source of health problems and what perpetuates them. Everyone has their idea about what to do, how to heal. What I have discovered for myself in this whole process comes down to gentleness. There's a gentleness I feel when I go inside, and I literally feel like a different person altogether when I stay connected with it. I wanted to write about it today.
Chinese Medicine talks about yin and yang, and what I seem to have is an excess of yang and a deficit of yin. Yin being the feminine energy. So I have been making an effort to live more yin-like, and this sense of gentleness arises for me when I do let myself live yin-like. So what does this mean. More than anything, for me it means to be in the moment. It has always seemed to come down to that in my experience. As a contrast, when I am not in the moment, then my mind is occupied, busy, at work - doing yang things. It is planning, scheming, analyzing, judging, comparing, calculating. It's a busy worker bee. It's doing the best it can, for me, because it thinks if it just works harder, everything will be OK. The gentleness in the moment arises when I let this hard worker take a break and go nap for a bit. In the moment means that as I pick up my pen, I am with my pen, I am not thinking about what I'll write until the pen hits the paper. I'm doing but I'm resting.
There's an elegance and beauty to this gentleness too. To let myself not be concerned about all those things that usually concern me, and to just organize the papers on the desk, or just chop vegetables, means that I can do these things with beauty. It's so pleasant to do it just so, just right, not just for function, but for aesthetics too. The papers form a neat pretty stack, the vegetables are vibrant and colorful. And I don't just push them to the side of the cutting board. I find a new clean plate to put them on while I'm cooking. My busy worker bee does not concern herself with aesthetics. She just wants to get things done. And it feels gentle and beautiful to take that time and pay attention to how I'm doing, not just what I'm doing.
Even fear applies to this because recently being in gentleness has meant that I sit with my feelings more. I don't just push them away as a nuisance, and I don't run away from them manically. When I have slowed down, and that mean slowed down in my mind, not just my outward actions, then I surrender to reality. And that means I surrender to the fact that a strong feeling is present, and even though I might have had a plan to do something in that moment, to love myself means to sit with it. It's like parenting a little child.
I'm learning to parent the little child inside. The stressed, scared, angry child, but also the artistic, creative child, and also just the child child, you know, the one that needs sleep, food, a bath, etc. The first step begins with stepping into the gentle parent and out of the child, a step I will be working to master for a while still.
Chinese Medicine talks about yin and yang, and what I seem to have is an excess of yang and a deficit of yin. Yin being the feminine energy. So I have been making an effort to live more yin-like, and this sense of gentleness arises for me when I do let myself live yin-like. So what does this mean. More than anything, for me it means to be in the moment. It has always seemed to come down to that in my experience. As a contrast, when I am not in the moment, then my mind is occupied, busy, at work - doing yang things. It is planning, scheming, analyzing, judging, comparing, calculating. It's a busy worker bee. It's doing the best it can, for me, because it thinks if it just works harder, everything will be OK. The gentleness in the moment arises when I let this hard worker take a break and go nap for a bit. In the moment means that as I pick up my pen, I am with my pen, I am not thinking about what I'll write until the pen hits the paper. I'm doing but I'm resting.
There's an elegance and beauty to this gentleness too. To let myself not be concerned about all those things that usually concern me, and to just organize the papers on the desk, or just chop vegetables, means that I can do these things with beauty. It's so pleasant to do it just so, just right, not just for function, but for aesthetics too. The papers form a neat pretty stack, the vegetables are vibrant and colorful. And I don't just push them to the side of the cutting board. I find a new clean plate to put them on while I'm cooking. My busy worker bee does not concern herself with aesthetics. She just wants to get things done. And it feels gentle and beautiful to take that time and pay attention to how I'm doing, not just what I'm doing.
Even fear applies to this because recently being in gentleness has meant that I sit with my feelings more. I don't just push them away as a nuisance, and I don't run away from them manically. When I have slowed down, and that mean slowed down in my mind, not just my outward actions, then I surrender to reality. And that means I surrender to the fact that a strong feeling is present, and even though I might have had a plan to do something in that moment, to love myself means to sit with it. It's like parenting a little child.
I'm learning to parent the little child inside. The stressed, scared, angry child, but also the artistic, creative child, and also just the child child, you know, the one that needs sleep, food, a bath, etc. The first step begins with stepping into the gentle parent and out of the child, a step I will be working to master for a while still.
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