Loneliness and expanding your relationships beyond humans.
Member Blog Submission by Jennelle of Body Mind Therapy
I wonder if we are more lonely than we need to be because we limit ourselves in where we get support, and what we consider a supportive relationship.
If I asked you who are the supportive relationships in your life? What would you say?
If you asked me a few weeks ago, I likely would have spoken to the humans in my life. My husband, my friends, my therapist, my family, and communities I am part of. These relationships absolutely support me, and they are also fraught with complexities. Sometimes they show up as support, and sometimes they show up as exhausted or down right challenging.
This past year, I have engaged in courses that have both validated and broadened my sense of relationships and support.
I am not going to put labels on this yet, as often we discount certain ways of knowing. The provable is more valid and true than the subtle or intangible. So I ask you to follow this journey of wondering with me, and see where it takes you…
Remember a place, where you felt peace and awe. Maybe it is in someone’s arms, maybe it is sitting in a tree, with a pet purring on your lap, or with feet touching a body of water.
Remember that time, that place.
Notice what surrounds you, what you see, hear, touch.
Notice the sensations, images, and emotions that arise in you as you remember.
Sense your connection with that place, or being. Honour and sense your relationship, your cord of connection to what you're remembering.
Let yourself settle into that support a little more. Breathe, and notice what that is like.
Be with that as long as you wish, then take a deeper breath, and return to now. The physical support of the floor or chair beneath your feet/seat. Return to your current surroundings, and arrive here, now.
Breathe. Pause. Then when ready read further.
This winter, I held a smooth brown ocean rock in my hands. I asked it to hold and absorb my sadness, and sorrow that was no longer benefiting me. I did this a number of times as I did my yoga/spiritual practise, as I meditated. A week went by, then I chose to set this rock on the white and snow covered ground in a grove to release, and allow the emotion to be let go and become compost for something new. There was a sense of an umbilical cord of connection. From near or far, I could send my emotion through the stone, and to the land.
This sacred ritual where I invited and practised the meeting of physical meets the emotional shifted something in my core. Shifted the way I relate, and am supported.
A cord, a web of connection became more tangible, more alive and accessible to me thru this ritual. I am connected and supported, and can ask for help. Tears rim my eyes as I write this.
I could discount this relationship with this rock, the sacred being-ness of the rock, of the land, and part of me wants to. And yet, I am inclined to honour and follow what works, what has nurturing impact. This practise had a beneficial impact for me.
Epistemology, a recent addition in my vocabulary, refers to ways of knowing that are culturally acceptable.
I will list some ways of knowing, and I invite you to notice the ones you lean towards, lean away from, and what you are separated from completely.
Thoughts, logical, reasoning, words, sensations, dreams, spiritual, God, Source, Nature, soul, mind, seen, felt, subtle, physical, emotional, images, imagination, intuition.
What do you give weight to and what do you discredit?
There is an epidemic of loneliness, separation, trauma and environmental catastrophe.
Your current way of knowing if familiar but is it worth limiting yourself to?
Acknowledgements:
- Grief ritual
- Anne who gave me a rock a few years ago, and spoke to that rock’s beneficial qualities
- Grace Sovereign song
