Lag Time

The practice of yoga is about enhancing our awareness and experiencing the connection between our body, mind and spirit. Many instances exist in which we experience this connection within the same moment.

We see the face of a golden retriever puppy and our heart melts. We have an argument with somebody and we feel our teeth clench, a tightness in our stomach and our shoulders rise. We get a phone call that we didn't get the job and we slouch forward and hang our heads. We catch an early morning sunrise that infuses light and color stretching across the sky and we have no words as our breath has been taken away.

Our senses perceive, our bodies react, our spirit soars.

But, when traumatic events happen all of these deeper connections might not occur simultaneously. We see the ravages of Mother Nature; a loved one passes away; we get a medical diagnosis that we weren't expecting; we lose our job; our beloved pet dies. In these moments of life that seem to hold unbearable challenges, we do what we need to do in order to get through it. We donate money, we volunteer, we grieve, we job hunt, we set a course of action.

My thought for the week is the idea that there is a lag time between traumatic events and their full unfolding. We get through the obvious but fail to recognize an undercurrent of emotional upheaval that comes with it. It may not even show up until days, weeks or months after the initial event. Here are a couple of examples of what I'm geting at...

My father passed away when I was 19 years old and I went through a tremendous grieving process at such an unexpected loss. Many years passed (24 in fact) when during a yoga training, I felt a different kind of grief over his death that seemed to arise from some deep place within my cells and soul. It was another layer of grief that had been stuffed down so deep, that it wasn't until years later that I was ready for it to surface and meet it face to face.

Another example is when my husband, Ed, had a heart attack in 2009. He went through the physical trauma of open heart surgery and recovery, yet it wasn't until we were in Australia some 4-5 months later that the emotional element of the event truly hit him.

With all this being said, the point is to always hold ourselves in a compassionate embrace. That the interwoven strength of our physical body, to our emotional/mental selves to our deeply held spiritual being cannot be denied, much less ignored. Our yoga teaches us to be with what is...whatever it is. To know that all feelings are valid and that healing on the different layers of our being takes time.

All of us are healing from something. Honor what it is and recognize that it is part of our human experience and there is no greater practice than the practice of love and compassion. Try it on yourself and see what happens.