One of my besties, Cheryl, said to me "Have you ever gone to a Korean spa?" to which I replied, "No!" So on a recent trip to San Francisco, the two of us headed to the spa for a "scrub and rub", an 80-minute exfoliating and massage service. I had no idea what to expect and was treated by what I now affectionately call my 90 pound, 70-year old Korean ninja body worker named Helen. As I was laying on the table, I felt something under my hands and thought to myself, "I wonder why there's sand on the table?" before I realized that what I was feeling was my own skin that had been sloughed off. As the treatment proceeded, it continued to get better and better. Exfoliation in any place that could be exfoliated, warm oily massage, fresh grated cucumber face mask and finally, a rinse off with warm milk. Not only did I want to tuck Ninja Helen under my arm and carry her home with me, but I felt deeply relaxed, cared for and almost sparkly! Shedding skin was not only skin deep but reached into that place of what it feels like when we take care of ourselves and allow others to support us in the process.
That same weekend, another friend that I visited had been having a challenging time with work and personal relationships. I suggested that a trip to the Korean spa and taking a layer off might make her feel better. She said, "yes, just like a snake shedding its own skin, maybe I need to do that too!". And all of this has led me to my thought of the week, that of what it means to shed our skin.
Sometimes, it's an actual physical process in that we lose skin cells and hair daily, and other times it's a metaphor for our own process of transformation and growth. If we connect to the natural environment, it's shedding its skin constantly. Think about trees dropping their leaves and outgrowing their bark; hawk's moulting and losing their feathers; beach sands shifting and changing the shape of the shoreline. Nature has an inherent cycle of dropping the old to bring in new growth and regeneration.
We are heading to Mission Beach in Far North Queensland, Australia in a couple of weeks, where I'll be running my sixth yoga retreat at Sanctuary. As you approach Sanctuary, you drive up and over a hill, getting an expansive view of the Coral Sea and at the place where the road takes a right toward the retreat center, there's a path that meanders down to the beach. And although all of this is a familiar scene, each time I've arrived, it looks slightly different. The beach has changed just a bit, a new stream has either grown or subsided and the rainforest canopy continually shifts from the previous years. It's as though each cycle of letting go brings about a familiar yet altogether new scene. Since I have only been there during the southern hemisphere's winter months with sometimes several months between visits, I notice how the area has shed the skin that I knew and is presenting what has grown in its place.
We often don't notice what is waiting to emerge from within ourselves because sometimes we're so close to it that we don't see or sense it. But all of us have an opportunity to let go of the old skin of our ways to make room for new growth. My thought of the week is: what are you letting go of so that you can sense the newness of your own being? What is sitting behind the curtain of your current skin that's ready to awaken?
A number of years ago, I worked as an assistant to two hand therapists and one of the things they would do was to debried injured tissue. I would watch one of the therapists picking away at the old skin and would feel a bit queasy as she did so. She looked as though she were really into the process of doing it. I asked her one day how she could remove the old/dead skin from a patient's hand and she said, "When I take away the old tissue, what is lying below is new, healthy tissue. It means that things are healing." That moment shifted my paradigm around shedding skin.
We know that sometimes growth waiting to emerge can be uncomfortable. I don't know how they know this but it's a painful process for a snake to shed its skin. But this letting go allows them to be bigger than they were before. So, notice what's waiting to emerge from deep within you. Perhaps it's a seed that was planted a long time ago and is ready to manifest.
Perhaps heading off to the Korean spa will be enough to spark it into reality! Happy scrubbing!
No comments:
Post a Comment