How Vulnerability Leads to Freedom
This post was written on Wednesday, September 11, 2019.
It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and eighteen years ago on this day and at this time, I was watching the images on television of the twin towers crumbling to the ground. I remember the overwhelming sense of vulnerability I felt.
We all felt it.
Everything stopped, and at that moment we were forced to grieve the loss of our ideals. We lost a sense of safety. We no longer felt protected.
How many of us can still physically feel what it was like to stand in that moment, believing our world was crashing, and not knowing what was to come?
Any time there is loss there is grief. And that grief can have lasting, profound effects on our physical and emotional health. Grief carries powerful information, yet it’s our human nature to want to avoid it.
As I wrote in a previous blog, grief isn’t just a physical feeling; it’s a wound that takes place on a soul level. It’s meant to be deeply felt. But we’re so caught up in distracting ourselves with all the busyness of the world that we rarely allow ourselves to pause.
But there are gifts to be found in the grieving process.
When we acknowledge the pieces of ourselves that we’ve lost, we actually get to the other side and experience a renewed sense of freedom and wholeness.
I learned this first-hand In 2016 when I attended my first Breathing Beyond Grief™ workshop. Here I was introduced to Transformational Breathing®; I have to confess, though, that I resisted the work at the beginning. I didn’t do it very consciously because I didn’t want to go that deep. As a result, I experienced pain that was so severe I couldn’t sleep. I did NOT want to be in my body. But pain finally makes you surrender. So on the last day of the workshop, I made a decision to stop resisting and let go and was amazed at how peaceful I felt. I finally got a sense of being held and connected to Spirit.
The next day I felt even better. I looked in the mirror and looked ten pounds lighter.
As I’ve continued to work with the breath, I’ve learned that just being in the presence of our true selves brings peace, connection, and lightness. The spirit lives in the breath.
That’s the gift.
It was important for me to do the work myself so I could help others through the process. Now, three years later, I’m excited to be assisting Jennifer and Carter in their Breathing Beyond Grief™ workshop beginning Friday, September 27.
You don’t have to have suffered the death of a loved one or a specific, recent loss to attend. Grief shows up in many ways.
The workshop will include writing a timeline of significant periods in your life, and you’ll learn Transformational Breathing® techniques to integrate unfinished business from your past.
As author Marianne Williamson writes, “When we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
That sounds like freedom. And it all begins with the breath.
Register HERE to attend.