This week’s classes are based around heart openers. The poses, such as crescent lunges, bow and bridge, have you leading or lifting from your heart. Not only do these poses get your blood pumping, they also ask you to invite joy and vitality into your being. They ease you out of your head and into your heart. Needless to say, doing heart openers is not an easy thing to do when an uninvited, yet familiar, guest arrives in your heart. A fake it 'til you make it approach. Yes, the "d" word. (One of the most resonant descriptions for depression I've heard is the absence of vitality.) The vacancy leaves you small and limp, separate from the ones you love and the ones who love you. It's the tear in your essence that rips away confidence, esteem, any sense of belonging. The blank space that was once filled with friends and possibility becomes a harbor to aloneness and doubt.
With a nowhere to go/nowhere to hide mantra ringing through your head, you attempt to soften the edges of your separateness by taking a walk along the beach, meditating, asking for a hug from your dearest, crying, you even call a special friend who might be able to talk you through to some sort of sunlight. Food is wasted. Gatherings are dreaded. You cry. You pause. You are scared that this despair is never going to leave. You wish you could numb. You wear a mask. “It” could last days, weeks, or longer. You see the tool-kit out of the corner of your eye, you know the drill, you’ve been here before. You think, “How did I get through this the last time? And what did I do wrong to end up here this time?”
You try to find your center as you spool out over your edges. You stop resisting the ache. You surrender to the narrow emptiness. You lean into the visceral. You note the light reflecting off the soft wake of waves folding over Neltjeborg. You listen to the zwirring of the crickets playing their twilight tune. You feel the moments between a sticky stillness and a soft breeze. You smell the maybe with a spritz of your favorite perfume along your wrist and take in the home that is you. This reverence for the beauty outside of yourself reminds you to stay in your body. You are a part of the magic that surrounds you, for you see and believe in the magic that is there. You tell yourself to keep listening, to keep peeling away the layers that have become cloudy. To follow your innocent attention.
As the storm persists and the waves continue, you wake up on Monday morning. You still make your coffee and you still drive your son to school. You see the “homeless” woman who sleeps on the beach of Hull Bay making her way on foot up and over to the other side of the giant hill/mountain and down to Charlotte Amelie. She carries a backpack of belongings, an umbrella, an empty gallon water jug and a tied shut plastic bag of her trash. You see her most mornings on your way to school, on some leg of her journey. Walking slowly. Heart lifted. Gaze straight ahead. You offer silent blessings as you pass, having stopped once to ask if she needed help and being told to bugger off. You regard her bravery, her strength to live this way. You wonder why she chooses to make the beach her resting spot and not a shelter or a friend’s home. You harshly deliberate if she has time to struggle with something like depression when she’s just trying to get from point A to point B, each and every day, carrying her world on her back.
The next day, the waves are still present but the grip isn’t as tight. You see the woman who sells papers on the side of the road as you make your way down the hill into town. Her wide eyes and transcendent smile, her robust middle and sturdy stature, her entire glow packed into the cozy nest of her newsstand. She makes you think of Mother Earth, in human form. You stop your car. You hand her a green pen with a fake flower taped to its tip. Her face lights up like the night sky in a fireworks show. Her wide eyes grow wider, her smile more stunning. She says, “Bless you.” She hands you a paper. You tell her you don’t have any money and not to worry about the paper. She says, “You bless me. I Bless you.” You take the paper and continue driving. When you get to the stop light you take the paper in your hands and you see a photo of your son’s team on the back page. “Hurricane Champs!” You didn’t know that this news was being shared with the world, beyond your quiet heart. She had it wrong. She blessed me. She blessed me.
With an opening heart,
St. Sunshine, a believer of angels
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