(Please note: I created this with the intent for it be an audio podcast. Which is there…you can just hit play. But if you want an intro to this episode, read on below. It isn’t a transcript, it’s is more of a summary and reflection of all that I recorded. Either way, enjoy. xo)
I started thinking about the swish, and all things swishiness during my recent retreat to Costa Rica - where we had the opportunity to swim in bio-luminescence and what felt like a sea of stars.
The thing about this bio-luminescence is that to see it…you had to “swish” or “swirl” the water with your body. There literally needed to be something moving around, to create the chemical reaction that activates the “light” that can be seen.
Which got me thinking.
Because another thing I’ve been thinking about are the Kleshas – the 5 roots of suffering as described in the Yoga Sutras.
These causes are:
Avidya: ignorance and confusion
Asmita: ego/separation
Raga: the attachment to pleasure
Dvesha: aversion to discomfort and pain
Abhinivesha: clinging, fear of death
Because when I came home from the retreat, I felt full. My heart, my soul, I was living and breathing all things magnificence (my word of of the year).
And then…life happened. As it does.
It happened out in the world with the inauguration and new administration and all of it’s upheaval and policies directed to separate us.
It happened in my body with first a yucky cold and then a broken toe.
And it happened in my personal life with a situation that resulted in me feeling…well…not great…and honestly, a bit frozen.
As I sat with it all, I started – one mini-moment of a time – to notice that perhaps this was a moment of swishiness. Of activation.
The silver-lining girl in me started to wonder, if maybe underneath it all…was a truth, and a kernel of magnificence that wanted to be revealed, in it’s own time and it’s own way.
I’m not there yet. And I’m also not trying to find the silver lining, and ignoring the hard stuff (which I spent a lot of my life doing…so this is progress.)
But what I did remember was a practice that I love, that harnesses the idea of impermanence. That not one of any of the “things” – good or bad, defined me.
This practice, of remembering “Neti, Neti” (not this, not that) was like a balm.
Rather than ignoring the swish, or wishing it away – it sees what is being swished. Both the hard stuff and the delightful stuff – and creates the possibility of spaciousness. The possibility that I am not – (and we are not) defined by these singular, and always changing moments.
Neti, Neti with the swish created a doorway for me – towards what is eternal. Towards the truths that live within my soul, as opposed to the winds that are ever-changing.
Neti-Neti, not this-not that, is something you can whisper to yourself in meditation. Sometimes I journal it, just writing and re-writing the words neti-neti. I breathe it in during yin yoga shapes. I feel it vibrate as emotions come and go. As thoughts take hold. (It is also a great practice for when you wake up in the middle of the night and your mind starts to race.)
Let me be clear: neti-neti doesn’t make the swish go away.
But for me at least, it allows me to lean into the swish instead of fighting it.
And for me, that is where the magnificence lives. In the allowing.
Because the more I allow, the more ease can find me. And that…that is where peace and freedom…and yes, magnificence, lives.
xo,
Elena
P.S.
If you’d like a guide to help you create space for the swish,I’d love to support you.
Maybe that looks like joining me on an upcoming retreat to Corolla, North Carolina, Castine, Maine, or Cambutal, Panama.
Or maybe that means joining the Thrive Circle membership for on-going practices in sacred community. (which you can try for the first month free!)
Or maybe it means grabbing your own Thrive Journal to come home to yourself one day at a time.
Or maybe…you aren’t sure what it means. If you, I’d love to chat with you about what might be most helpful and delightful for you. You can comment below or schedule a free discovery call HERE to see what might be possible.
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