teaching

Why is “finding” ourselves a journey? Decades, a lifetime can be spent in self-discovery, alone, in relationships, in catastrophes, in quiet moments of daily stillness.

We live in layers. There are the surfaces we present to people, what can be seen in photographs, heard over the phone. These are the layers that are our personalaity, our habitual postures and expressions. What lies in the deeper layers, what only we can feel ourselves— that is the place of discovery, and the source of everything that we layer and live above.

As the body, so the mind. The initial stiffnesses and weaknesses of the body are worked through in deeper and deeper layers, until we can feel not just muscle but bones, ligaments, arrangements of organs, and the most exquisite sensitivity of all: the skin.

Easier to the the body, easiest to work with someone deeper into the journey, a deep sea diver who can traverse the depths and the shallows and speak with assurances, shine the light, say: this way, turn here, like this.

Because to discover, we need mobility: and again, as the body, so the mind. We need to become unstuck from our habitual ways of living, the stress and stiffnesses that we feel in different ways but all act to anchor us in the shallows, seeking the magic we know is here, somewhere, close by, within reach, if only.

This is the gift of the teacher-student relationship. To walk the less travelled path, together, to explore what is within and what is possible, together. When we trust ourselves and those who support us, we reveal what is below the surfaces: the clearer, stronger, lighter: you.