Healing’s timeline
Healing's timeline, a study in nonlinearity, the roundabout, the indirect
Despite our best efforts, healing has its own timeline, and we are partially at the mercy of it as well as willing (or non-willing) participants in how it takes shape. Not only does recovering from an experience that leaves an impression on the heart, mind or body require time, but it requires a certain multifaceted process beyond time, including our daily habits, our practices, our social engagement. It necessitates awareness of our past, acceptance of our present and faith that a future we want to step into exists beyond our current horizon.
Yogic effort always includes what we do to reduce the obstacles in ourselves, what hinders our thriving. Until letting go “happens,” the last step, it’s also an intense effort. The process echoes meditation, where we start off with an intense effort that softens as we gain traction. This month’s meditation, which you can take as a drop in if you haven’t joined the course, hones the skill so we may access it when needed outside formal practice.
The effort has to go along with self-reflection. Knowing yourself is integral, and how can we best do this? Through relationships. As someone who likes to hash things out and figure it out and get to the bottom of it and take care of it then in there, I have a distinct MO, when on autopilot. I also have an MO with Yoga, with long, smooth breathing, prāna flowing and mind steadying. Still, impatience can overcome me when people and things don’t function at my speed, especially if it feels chronic. I’ve learned that identify with being diligent, dedicated, fervent about closing loops, navigating to the center of spirals and tying up loose ends. Resolution is like the eye of the storm, and come hell or high water, I’m getting there.
I do this automatically. And I prefer that those I’m in relationship with do as well. If they don’t, I’ll properly nudge them to. I stepped into the role of facilitating that with a friend this week, with the best intentions, and they expressed it rubs them the wrong way. I don’t want to rub this person the wrong way. I want to rub them the right way. I like them. But they just don’t get with my program. Whenever I try to impose my ways of instantaneous resolution on this person, it doesn’t work.
I tend to be a touch preachy. Maybe more sometimes (although less so in my ripening as a human in this embodiment). It’s not just resolution that matters to me either, it’s justice, women’s empowerment, racial equity, environmental health, personal choice when it comes to our and our family’s health and medical decisions. As a matter of fact when I took the quiz in elementary school of what I should be when I grew up, it was either a lawyer or a school principal or a priest. So this pattern is deeply ingrained. Is partially why I am successful in my work as a teacher, because I can hold the space for learning and guiding. At the same time, if I carry that into my home life and my love life and my professional life beyond the degree it’s needed, it’s inhibitory.
So healing on my own, is one dimension, but interacting with someone else who’s also healing or not even healing at all is another dimension. Even just this week I’ve had a major success in healing one rift from this summer. The success occurred with a long term relation after nearly six month’s time elapsed, included my apology five months ago and their version of accountability and a delayed apology many months after my own. A cushion of love and support in each of our personal lives, as well as a feeling of empowerment in each of our personal lives nourished our ability to mend. Love was able to re-emerge. Healing happened, separately and together. I couldn’t do the work for her, nor she for me, but each resulted in an eventual reconciliation
Other cases we may have to heal alone, whether the situation is ongoing or long gone, whether the person is here or gone, willing to do the necessary work, or not. What the healing has in common is a releasing of the attachment to grasp the suffering has on our being. When this happens, gradually, over time, non-linearly, we find moments of liberation that aggregate into a newly formed, evolving relationship with our pain. Strengthening our practice strengthens the ability to let go.