Rewriting Roles
“Tragedy is the time when you are forced to rewrite all the roles about how your ecosystem works because you don’t get to have the pride of making sure everyone else’s needs are met before your own.”
~ Kate Bowler~
One of the almost imperceptible yet super delicious things I’ve really missed from the past two years is the bhav that is created within a group and the art of enabling its creation. For me, as a leader, it involves the exquisite intuitive process of making choices, often small, and often from the wings, that are unnoticeable but give a rich payoff. It involves a gorgeous dance of being able to stay with my own backbone and simultaneously be receptive, and yes, sometimes acquiesce my own desires in order to gain something more spectacular than what I had planned. It is the art of serving the dynamic of the culture shaped by that specific group at the precise time and place in which it exists.
The fun thing though is that the group dynamic doesn’t just come from me. It can’t. I am merely the guardian of whatever kind of space we decide to co-create together. Which means that in order for it to really spark, each person must feel safe enough (because nothing magical ever happens in complete safety), respected, seen, and most importantly, must be willing to buy in and participate. Carry their part. Each member of the group, including me, holding a string that gives the umbrella around us just the right amount of tension.
It’s real yoga in action— the 5th and 6th limbs darhana and dhyana— which activate our ability to stay within as well as go outside; see the big picture with all its details; care about the self as well as the other…
And after two years in a pandemic, what we want and need is so different than what we wanted or needed before. It’s tempting to continue to try to slog and make things what they were before, but our energy levels and the demands on our resources have made it so that we really do have to figure out how to pivot and adjust to what we need and are capable of right now, moment to moment. We are in our advanced yoga practice, ya’ll.
That made this retreat quite refreshing and different from any other I have led. I had to be really quiet inside myself in order to be able to understand and listen to what was being asked of all of us for the most gorgeous outcome.
This year, the chance to process and reimagine our roles, take care of one another, practice, assist, meditate, laugh, sing, hug, eat delicious meals, and engage in vulnerable, deep, and sometimes scary conversation was life giving. Being mask-free, and cell phone free for a week that felt worry free was so needed in my animal body. I am left feeling humbled and grateful for the opportunity, the community, for touch, the natural world, for tears, conversations, but most of all the laughter. Oh my Goddess! The LAUGHTER!
Though I am fortunate enough to live a life I love, a life I don’t want or need to run away from, I am still always in awe of the magic and beauty of travel and time spent with friends. There really is nothing like it.
Keep your eyes out for the next retreat Fall of 2022 for whale watching season… And for those of you who keep saying you are coming ‘this year’ for the last nine years, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the time is nigh. Come! The sooner you do, the sooner you get to come home again and again.
