​We hope that you and your loved ones are healthy and safe.  
 
I have done a lot of decluttering during the last four weeks. I'm a huge fan of Marie Kondo and just like she says: Once you declutter and tidy, you understand what is important in your life or what changes need to be made. After the clearing process, my triggers around not doing enough especially when it comes to owning and managing a studio have been staring into my face. There are also huge inadequacies around teaching and offering body psychotherapy. When I'm triggered or in psychotherapy terms when I'm in transference, it's like going down the rabbit hole. It has many complicated stages, thought processes, diversions, painful emotions, etc. Most of it is made up and old story. When reading Sharon Salzberg's Real Happiness, which is on the Forrest Yoga booklist, the following jumped out at me: the process is about starting again and again and again. The moment I want to go down the rabbit hole, it's about recognising it, being gentle with myself and then choosing not to go down there - again and again and again. Even though the rabbit hole might feel familiar, seemingly safe, diverting and somewhat comforting, it's not serving me. It has in the past, but not any longer. This is not about eliminating the rabbit hole either, it's about recognising earlier when I'm about to go down there.
 
I love the following paragraph out of Alice in Wonderland:
 
"... suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural);...."
 
It's about catching the rabbit with the waistcoat and the pink eyes earlier and understanding that something is not quite right; something got activated. It's about catching it earlier, looking at it, wondering about it and choosing not to go down the rabbit hole.
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We hope that the yoga sessions we offer can support you to stay out of the rabbit hole.  
Here is the link to the free class. Thank you Brian for making this possible:  
 
Free Recording of Live Streamed Class 

Whereas guilt can motivate us to do better in the future, shame often is very debilitating and results in us wanting to hide, not be seen and simply disappear. Even though shame is about the fear of disconnection, it actually keeps us imprisoned in the loneliness and isolation. Shame prevents us from talking to one another and thereby making it harder to get out of the spiral. And, we all have shame. Interestingly Brene Brown says that we can't eradicate shame, but we can be resilient to it, i.e. we can go through the experience and come out the other end being stronger and more courageous. Steps in becoming shame resilient are: recognition, awareness, reaching out and talking about it to the appropriate people.
 
My personal experience this week was that I made a mistake and I felt ashamed about it. However, instead of trying to cover it up or try to make excuses, I managed to just fess up to it, feel the guilt around it, feel uncomfortable and sorry, but also know that I'm not a bad person, because of that error of judgment I made. I had my own back in that moment. The way I see the process: It's about snuggling up to the uncomfortable and unspeakable places, becoming aware of them, feeling them and then also speaking about them.
 
My sense is that at the moment, a lot of deeper patterns and injuries are surfacing, accompanied by feelings of shame, anger, frustration and exhaustion. It's easy to move into isolation with that feeling that we are a bad person or that we have not done the work; that there is something wrong with us. I encourage to reach out to people you can trust and who love you and share with them what's going on for you.
 
We feel the live-streamed classes are an opportunity to check in, to connect with one another and to feel less isolated. We also understand that finances might be a concern of yours, so we've made one recording a week available to especially those of you who truly cannot afford a session. For those of you who have the means, recordings are available daily through our website, where regular class rates apply. Even though recordings don't provide the platform to connect as much and you won't get any live and tailored feedback, we hope they are still useful.
 
Here is the link to the free class. Thank you Janet for making this possible:  
 
Free Recording of Live Streamed Class