The space between

After a slowly pulled band-aid kind of week (one that ripped at every hair and pore imaginable), I took myself to the Berkshires for Kripalu's R&R weekend stay. Between the weepy good-byes and mad dashing for necessary dorm items at almost every big box store chain in the country, I knew I'd need a net to fall into once my adolescent chicks had settled into their new nests at boarding school. Recovering from the abundance overload in box stores is a culture shock in its own right, let alone finding yourself alone in a rented small SUV that had just previoulsy been filled to the brim with your teenagers' anxious energy, pillows, suitcases, and shopping bags. In the sudden emptiness, my audio book and little Ford Rogue were my only companions in the void of this new reality. Dave and Harry were managing the new territory at home with a half full house and I was driving North to lick my wounds and catch my breath.

Kripalu had been a refuge for me before-a familiar sanctuary where solitude could be soaked in with ease. It was the perfect place to ground myself - walking along the trails marked by hickory, birch, and maple trees, running streams, and that glorious butter shade of sunlight that seeps through the still green leaves and golden rod. Nature is always there to catch me when I'm tired, lonely or just running on empty, so I fully soaked myself in the terrain of the still green mountains, crisp bluebird skies, and sweater weather. And while I knew that the great outdoors would soothe and inspire me, what I didn't count on was an introduction to another, less earthly, version of being cradled.

The big shift happened during an evening offering of the singing bowls. (Mind you, it didn't start off great since I was one of the last people to arrive in a dimly lit room of at least fifty people- a bit of a shock to the system since I hadn't been in a room with more than 20 people January 2019. And to perpetuate my unease, as soon as I found a seat my stomach started making interesting noises in response the meal I had eaten just minutes before.) I digress... I had heard singing bowls before, mostly from someone's playlist in a yoga class or massage. However, in real life, in a crowded room with our masks on and my internal organs humming along to their own form of music, once the sound bath started I found myself hovering between the peaks and valleys of the vibrating bowls. When the bowls weren't "playing" but more vibrating in a faint echo kind of way, all you could hear were the human noises. Coughs, sighs, snores, stomach gurgles. But as all of the sounds became more familiar and their quiet more comfortable, I began to internalize these sounds with my breath, ebbing and flowing, freezing and thawing within the vast space of beginnings and endings, eventually finding myself in a space between the bowls and the breaths. A trusted stillness. A homing of silent flowing energy.

Within these sounds and echos I felt both brightened and dimmed as the bowls played out. It was as though my breath was a flame being fanned by a curious child and I surrendered to this new visceral experience with the same curiosity. I watched with my eyes closed to see where my breath would go, where I released and exhaled and when I needed to fill my lungs with air. The bowls invited me to follow my own presence, to witness to my own vitality, and the vibrations were clearing out the tightness in my heart while offering a tender space to lie with the heaviness I carried. This duality, the flow of effort and ease, brought me to a place of trust. A new space was created between the edges of my sadness and my possibility. And it was all okay.

Since I have returned home, I have mindfully recalled the sensations and awareness that I felt on the floor of that large, church-like hall through my every day surroundings. I watch the pelicans gliding inches from the ocean's surface and follow their paths of ease and flow, effort and precision between the hovering and the flying. I walk the beach at Neltjeborg and find my strides syncing up with the gentle clear liquid waves that fold over the sand and onto my feet and toes and my breath travels in and out without worry or thinking. I sit on my surfboard and watch Harry watching the swells, finding his rhythm of paddling and waiting to catch the right wave that will carry him and his board effortlessly towards the shore. And there is also the rainbow striped inner-tube that floats on the pool, sometimes still and sometimes dancing from corner to corner when the wind swoops up from the shore below. I take in its jolly play of skimming and resting in the cool aqua water, its response to the the elements with awe and innocence. We all know this flow- this dance of energy and lightness, the space of surrender and trust, the faith that the wind, water, air, earth will catch and release us to our own essence as soon as we can let go of the things that we are carrying, even if just for a few moments.

With love and reverence,

St. Sunshine