Who Stopped You From Sharing Your Vulnerability?
{Photo via Tumblr}
By Stefanie Honeder
The Yoga practice opens us deeply to the art of living a truthful life, repeatedly.
Today I found access to another point, in any layer that was beyond any physical sensation in my heart during my asana practice.
A heart-opening Cobra in the middle of the practice suddenly ignited a sense of opening a big black hole in my chest, and it felt as though a gentle healing of breath and life energy found access to a place that was hurt before.
The opening was kind of hurting in a somatic physical sense, but I knew deeply that it was no reaction and sensation from my physical body.
Whatever it was, I am convinced that it was the never-predictable healing and life-igniting transforming force of Yoga aligning our hearts to our life path, aligning our hearts to our dharma repeatedly again, and opening our body and mind to allow breath and healing in.
When we feel lost, there are millions of loops and ways how yoga brings us back.
Some say those are miracles. I say this is the evolutionary force of life itself.
Yes, Yoga wants us to live up to our full potential.
I kept wondering the whole day what this kind of felt sense of a black hole in my chest was.
Million times we were hurt, when we shared our vulnerability.
Someone punched our hearts, stabbed into our wounded parts with words and actions, ignited needles into our emotional heart. We feel it all.
Especially as kids, our hearts started to hide behind a wall of protection, depending on which surrounding and family we were growing up.
Which encounters helped us to open up and just speak our truth from our heart without any fear? Which encounters and situations closed us down again?
We remember those that hurt us, and project that built-up protection wall and reactions to similar situations in the future again.
Our heart wants us to stop and takes care of us of not getting hurt again.
Opening up? Never dare that again. Sharing our truth, our desires, our ideas of life, our experiences, our deepest longings, our desires, our fears, our traumas, our vulnerable places are one of the most courageous steps we embark on again and again.
The Yoga practice mends those wounds and transforms those emotional, mental and physical layers that remember all our experiences into a new open chapter.
We learn to perceive situations with fresh eyes and a new perception again.
Now, I dare to open up again and speak my truth.
What can you share from your deepest place of vulnerability?
What do you want and long to share from your deepest place of your fearless heart?
What is the truth that longs to be expressed?
With whom do you want to share it?
Is there any truth you wanted to share with someone for such a long time and never managed to speak out because of fear? Are you repressing that longing of just telling a special person that one sentence or that specific story?
I remember that it has always been that inner battle to speak from my vulnerability, from my sensitivity to my family members.
Would they think that I was just a weird child, a totally crazy one, too hyper-sensitive, a misfit?
From a place of wonder, from a place of feeling that lies were spoken all around, I started to protect the heart of my inner child and learnt the art of listening, finding acceptance, observing how people speak, behave, project on each other and end up in unnecessary disturbing fights.
The vulnerable and curious excited child, who wanted to speak about all the wonders perceived, transformed into a silent observing one.
Making friends, creating relationships in the process of growing up, were mostly challenging to me, when it was about just speaking my truth and felt sensations.
I never really answered when someone asked me: how are you doing? Instead, I turned around and described something else. Better not tell someone about my feelings…
When the door of a friendship opened, where I felt safe to open up, I embarked on a journey of sharing fearlessly all vulnerable parts.
When I felt someone doubting or distrusting any description about my felt inner truth and emotional realms, I shut down and closed my heart.
The wonder of vulnerable craziness called (inner) life was closed for that special someone
The art of protection started to build up in me.
When we grow older, we learn to discern more and more when to open and when to close. We just do not want to step into that pain that we remember from past experiences again.
Our heart stays closed in similar situations that might give us the painful feeling again.
I know that we all have those wounds in our hearts that were imprinted, when we shared our stories and experiences that were just so deeply human and part of our interrelated vulnerability.
Those wounds were not only hurting, but also giving others access to manipulate our minds, emotions and trust in our own felt experience.
Do you know the vague and blurry feelings and sensations of not exactly trusting your truth and intuition? That is the place and wound that was manipulated in a specific situation in your past with another one making you doubt your truth and heart.
Sometimes it can also feel like too absurd and ridiculous, when we open up and share that deep place of wonder and truth that wants to be expressed from the depth of our experience and heart.
Sharing my story and vulnerability. That happened a million times when I shared my deep sense of wonder and excitement of any observation of my world with an ex-boyfriend.
Apparently this happened for so long that I shut down that sense of true wonder and excitement of being alive until I became a grey lady.
Happily, a break-up cut this bond early enough to heal my colorful world again, which needed several years.
But here I am again. Delighted. Full of wonder. Full of hope.
I keep on allowing the force of life and trust that life is good into my heart, and invite you to share the deepest places of wonder, excitement, all vulnerable parts and stories with me and the rest of the world.
I urge you to learn, and trust you to really observe, when and with whom you open up your heart and with whom you’d better stay with superficial small talk.
Trust your truth and trust your vulnerability. Here, a profound curiosity and wonder is ignited within. Stay excited with all that will arise when you share your world from that place.
*****
Stefanie Honeder has moved from photography to writing since starting her Yoga practice. While being fascinated about the power of words and going on with her writing, she is teaching Yoga and committing her life to explore and study Yoga, creativity and art in all forms, so she can support others to grow and live their (creative) potential. She is based in Vienna meanwhile. You could contact Stefanie via email, her website, her blog or Facebook.
{Stop and Listen}
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