“May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be and feel safe. May you live your life in peace and ease.”
This is the loving kindness blessing I share at the end of all of my classes. Maitri is the Sanskrit word for loving kindness or benevolence, and the first word of my business name. The second word, Somatics, is from the Sanskrit soma meaning wholeness and referring to healing and homeostasis; the regulatory process of a body that is looking for harmony. We are made for healing, and the power of that healing is loving kindness.
I will never forget the first time I heard one of my yoga teachers say “your experience of feeling safe in the world comes from feeling safe in your body.” My mind retaliated, “yuh, right, no way.” The next time I heard it, my mind thought, “wouldn’t that be something?” There it was. The crack. In came the bright light of curiosity and an invitation to wonder. An invitation for possibility. For healing. For something different for me.
At the time I was recovering from an illness that devastated me in many way, and I wasn’t feeling safe most of the time. This is an effect of trauma. We are all together sharing the trauma of pandemic living and we see the fear reflected in our news, media, politics, and social media platforms. Reactive comments. Tight thinking. The need to be right. All of our human ways of trying to create order and predictability to feel safer in the world. It’s not wrong, some order and predictability are needed, but the reality is that life is unpredictable, and that feels pretty disorderly to our minds that like things tight, clear, and concise. So, if the world feels pretty unpredictable, how do you find safety? In. Your. Body.
Feeling safe is your body’s #1 priority! Without feeling safe enough, we don’t learn, grown, or connect with others. Flash forward (almost 10 years now!), with hundreds of hours of yoga and trauma studies; thousands of hours of teaching; and even more in practice, I have gained profound healing for myself. I have been able to share those healing practices with others. And I am fortunate enough to be able to offer you these tools!
May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you live your life in peace and ease!
