Moon Queen: What no one tells you… about Self-Worth and Self-Love
Being a survivor, of anything painful, is stigmatized.
And Self-love won’t ever come into full bloom until you are SEEN for all you have survived as an asset to who you are.
Yup, I am saying it. Survivors are an asset. A massive asset.
If you have survived something that you didn’t think you could survive, rest assured - it has no place in colonial over culture (but you already know that).
If you endured something unimaginable, or painful - you are often relegated to the realm of the “powerless to change it” or “probably deserving”. These are cultural myths, not facts.
Being a survivor of anything that felt “unsurvivable” has been equated with being a victim and is therefor stigmatized..
And being a survivor of anything you didn’t have the power to change covertly means - “you called it in”, somehow, someway.
You may even spend a lifetime trying to “figure it out”. . .
This is only further confused through pseudo-spiritual, ”you are the creator of your reality” rhetoric.
Might it be more accurate to say WE are the creators of OUR reality?
Do you see the connection?
If YOU create your own realities, and something negative, or traumatic happens - you created that too. And this becomes a very slippery slope of misapprehension (Yoga Sutra 1.2).
Altogether different than accountability.
I am not saying defer responsibility or accountability.
In fact, Block (2018) describes accountability as “first owning our role in creating any problem before we focus on the contributions of others”. This is clean. This is appreciating our impact, through accountability.
We try to make meaning from circumstances that are beyond our comprehension, and in the process we surmise things happen to us because we either “deserve it” or “don’t deserve it”.
It happens far below the surface of our everyday awareness...
Until we become conscious of the dynamic of “meaning-making” that is…
And still it’s like swimming upstream- this process of un-equating self-worth, or others worth, and circumstance is truly the task at hand.
The challenge we face as Yogis or “those who want to practice ahimsa/yoga ” (1st Yama of the 1st Limb of Yoga) is no doubt our complex cultural context.
“Ahimsa, rightly understood, is the ultimate weapon; it turns one’s enemy into a friend, thereby banishing the possibility of further conflict. In the practice of yoga, it is important to understand that the same life flows in the veins of all creatures.” – Swami Kriyananda
In a world informed by capitalism our circumstances are only of our individual making.
We separate ourselves from the power that unites us.
We are individualists.
We are our own makers.
In a capitalist world-view the body is laborer (think labor vs. birth or slave labor) and the body isn’t sacred (not to mention cosmic or magical), it is to be used for production or reproduction (the later for production).
But not every “maker” was “made equal” throughout these hundreds of years of colonization, all the way up through our NOW.
No Body remained sacred in this process (not even privileged bodies). Instead bodies were dissected and used for anatomy and empowering a mechanistic view of the body. Live bodies/humans were surveyed and turned into census demographics, a further dissection.
The soul/spirit/awareness was taken out of the equation, because it’s just too tough to quantify. And we have "work to do”.
Bonus Question: How do you think this has impacted your yoga? What is your language in regards to the body? Is it mechanistic, usury, purely functional?
The body was stripped of its magic and connection to all of life during this long process some call “transition to capitalism”.
Over hundreds of years, certain “makers” became masters, and others slaves or laborers or vehicles for reproduction.
Written in the very laws that uphold our current legal realities are words that make agency (the feeling of being in control of one’s life) second nature to some and elusive to others.
What does this have to do with YOU?
If you have been struggling with any form of stigmatization over something you survived but cannot openly share in communal space because HAVING EXPERIENCED IT makes you vulnerable to a culture that sees you as the creator of it - then this has everything to do with you.
If you have lost a child or friend, experienced medical industrial trauma, if you have been pushed into corners of culture for “affordable housing”, if you have got a divorce due to power dynamics or left an abusive partner…and can’t simply talk about it, because the culture doesn’t want to see how WE created this - survival is being stigmatized.
Your body knows that is a lot to carry and it requires your care to unpack that un-necessary holding.
If you have LIVED THROUGH an experience where you weren’t seen in the process - then this email is for YOU.
Check out this Video on the importance of seeing each other >> CLICK HERE
That small, but massive step in recognizing that WE need to be seen...is the KEY to UNLOCK a new experience of being.
And as Orland Bishop shares so eloquently in the video above, “Freedom is not the freedom to achieve something, but the freedom to be present to something.”
We have the opportunity to learn to MOVE DIFFERENTLY, AND BE DIFFERENTLY - with each other.
Maybe we needed the break COVID gave us.
To turn-off our long-time operating systems and TURN ON our shared, collaborative potential.
And because it would be annoying to leave you with no clear path to TURNING BACK ON, I want to say that...
There are so many ways to KNOW AND BE DIFFERENTLY.
I see the most powerful transformation in the sacred container of Retreat.
It is where I see the depth of yoga, with all it’s soul-stirring benefits — truly arrive.
If you want to take the next step in self-knowing and practice as a COMMUNITY of Yogis with the purpose leveraging of shared potential to TURN BACK ON…
Then this is for you >>> CLICK HERE
We were never meant to do it alone.
There is nothing taboo here, so bring your WHOLE SELF.
The Practice of Yoga is amplified by our intentional connection and shared potential.
Blessings on your path always.
PS. If you are telling yourself “you can’t take a week off” to take a retreat for yourself - mind-body-spirit style please reach out! I have taken over 52 weeks of retreat in my life (with no financial privilege I promise). It is a choice you make to see, be seen and know deep rest. Deep rest informs generative action, in my experience - always yielding a return on investment (which matters to the mind) . We study, we dance, we chant, we move WITH the magic of the awakened body-mind-spirit.