opening of the heart
It is Sunday. Sacred Sunday. The fire in the studio is flaming as I sit down to honor the day.
I am in the midst of an amazing workshop called Heartbeat with Jonathon Horan, son of the creator of 5Rhythms, a movement meditation. This weekend, we are smoking the peace pipe with our emotions- embracing them as part of who we are and what we are becoming. Fear is my emotion- anxiety, paranoia, distrust. Yesterday, I danced it through my tears to reach the layer of sadness that lay just under the surface. Sadness grieving for those things I have left behind, those that will never be, and for the emptiness of not allowing all of me to live outloud. On the other side, I see a glimpse of emancipation. Liberation. Celebration. I feel the heart starting to crack open...and it is divine.
Here are Jonathon's words about Heartbeat:
My intention as a teacher, and in my own emotional evolution, is to practice staying present with feelings. So it is with great tenderness that I approach this journey into the heart, the part of us that beats and pumps and gives and receives and takes the old and transforms it into the new, purifying us, every minute of every day. Using the 5Rhythms as a map to how our emotional energy morphs and moves, we will explore our emotions as energy, as power, as part of being human.
The wilderness of our hearts scares us. We haven’t been taught to track our feelings, much less respect them. In fact, we often feel ashamed of them when they do pop up. Even in our own families we hold back, dismiss and deny true responses. Even in the dark of the movie theater we swallow our tears. This is very sad. We’ve lost our spontaneity. Why do we give fear so much power?
To befriend our emotions, to not be frozen by fear, is our destiny on this dancing path. Fear is the clearest meter of our edge, the edge where we feel comfortable and grounded. When we start to feel uncomfortable, it’s a challenge. A challenge is an invitation to move from who we are into who we are becoming. The bigger the fear, the more important it is for us to face it. It’s not just a stoplight, it’s a huge road sign: COME DANCE WITH ME.
Let’s take the time to stop the world and pay attention to our hearts. Our attention is like a spotlight. Feelings live in our body parts, and when we shine the light of our attention on specific body parts, memories crack open and move, dissolving the hard hold they have on us. Shapeshifting through feelings as they come up will open us up to their messages, their symbols and their signals.
One of the single-most powerful acts we can do is to share our vulnerability. The more we open up and dance through our feelings, the safer the environment becomes to explore our edges. These dances will be our offering to the bigger world. They will be our prayers for peace.
- Jonathon Horan
copyright 2009 Alisa Barry
I am in the midst of an amazing workshop called Heartbeat with Jonathon Horan, son of the creator of 5Rhythms, a movement meditation. This weekend, we are smoking the peace pipe with our emotions- embracing them as part of who we are and what we are becoming. Fear is my emotion- anxiety, paranoia, distrust. Yesterday, I danced it through my tears to reach the layer of sadness that lay just under the surface. Sadness grieving for those things I have left behind, those that will never be, and for the emptiness of not allowing all of me to live outloud. On the other side, I see a glimpse of emancipation. Liberation. Celebration. I feel the heart starting to crack open...and it is divine.
Here are Jonathon's words about Heartbeat:
My intention as a teacher, and in my own emotional evolution, is to practice staying present with feelings. So it is with great tenderness that I approach this journey into the heart, the part of us that beats and pumps and gives and receives and takes the old and transforms it into the new, purifying us, every minute of every day. Using the 5Rhythms as a map to how our emotional energy morphs and moves, we will explore our emotions as energy, as power, as part of being human.
The wilderness of our hearts scares us. We haven’t been taught to track our feelings, much less respect them. In fact, we often feel ashamed of them when they do pop up. Even in our own families we hold back, dismiss and deny true responses. Even in the dark of the movie theater we swallow our tears. This is very sad. We’ve lost our spontaneity. Why do we give fear so much power?
To befriend our emotions, to not be frozen by fear, is our destiny on this dancing path. Fear is the clearest meter of our edge, the edge where we feel comfortable and grounded. When we start to feel uncomfortable, it’s a challenge. A challenge is an invitation to move from who we are into who we are becoming. The bigger the fear, the more important it is for us to face it. It’s not just a stoplight, it’s a huge road sign: COME DANCE WITH ME.
Let’s take the time to stop the world and pay attention to our hearts. Our attention is like a spotlight. Feelings live in our body parts, and when we shine the light of our attention on specific body parts, memories crack open and move, dissolving the hard hold they have on us. Shapeshifting through feelings as they come up will open us up to their messages, their symbols and their signals.
One of the single-most powerful acts we can do is to share our vulnerability. The more we open up and dance through our feelings, the safer the environment becomes to explore our edges. These dances will be our offering to the bigger world. They will be our prayers for peace.
- Jonathon Horan
copyright 2009 Alisa Barry
Labels: fear., gabrielle roth, heart sense, heartbeat, jonathon horan
posted by Alisa Barry at
8:04 AM
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