A New Found Awakening
My new found awakening: “To let your body love this world that gave itself to your care in all of its ripeness, with ease, and will take itself from you in equal ripeness and ease, is also harvest” Jane Hirshfield
The meditations that I have recorded this week are about lovingkindness and also being with pain and suffering. I realise that both are closely linked to my relationship with my body. I have written previously about developing a deeper and more loving and accepting relationship with the changes that have occurred during the perimenopause and the menopause.
Until now, I did not believe that I would be able to enjoy the fruit of a more satisfying and joyful relationship with my body. I have spent much of my life in conflict with it and my life within it has felt hostile and uneasy.
Time spent in transpersonal psychotherapy, integrated with mindfulness practice, has shown me that many of my unmanageable life experiences and feelings have been buried deep within my body. I have read many books on the subject, but until now I haven’t been able to turn the table and find the wisdom within me and allow my body, that gave itself to my care, to love this world.
“... I did not believe that I would be able to enjoy the fruit of a more satisfying and joyful relationship with my body.”
Rachel Podger
This realisation uplifts me and it fills me with hope for the future and my life within the menopause. It allows me to deepen my connection to the practice of loving-kindness and to give more time and space to the pains that I experience at moments when I feel frustrated by the limitations that have been imposed upon me by this time of my life.
Unless I come into a relationship with these limitations, I remain threatened by them and ill at ease within myself. Now, when I have a pain in my neck or back, I allow myself some time and space to pause and reflect on what my body might be asking me to acknowledge.
I feel excited to celebrate the harvest and take joy from all that she still has to give me, I’m sure she will love this too! There is a tenderness to this new found awakening that takes me back in time to being a baby and the feel of skin when it is soft and demands the gentlest of touch and care. As a menopausal woman, why would I not give myself this care? I hope you can too.