‘We’ve Got to Go Through It’
Every October while purchasing prepackaged Halloween costumes, I think of the handmade bulldozer outfit that my mom lovingly created for my then 3-year-old son Maceo while she was undergoing chemotherapy in the fall of 2017. Maceo and I made her a gift in return: I recorded him reading the children's board book "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" so she could watch the video during her chemo infusions. The kids in the story pretend not to be scared on an epic pursuit in which they encounter one obstacle after another. This line was my mom's favorite:
We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it.
I teach a monthly breathing and meditation class online to my cousin's office. A few weeks ago, it fell on the same morning as my dog Suzie Taylor was having surgery to remove two mammary tumors. (On Thursday, I cried tears of relief with the news that they were benign.) I wish I could say I maintained yogic calm before, during and after the surgery. I did not. It was, as it so often is, an experience I just had to go through.
In the class, I taught the same breathing and awareness exercises that I did myself while laying awake at 3 a.m. that day. At times I've felt like a fraud for teaching yoga and meditation when struggling with insomnia myself. But increasingly I realize that the tools that help me to cope can help others as well. Each of us in our own way is going through it, with ever-evolving challenges and heartbreaks. Just as Suzie Taylor got a new lease on life, my family's beloved longtime babysitter fell critically ill; now my worry has transferred to her, as have my prayers.
While I am always hungry to learn new techniques to regulate the nervous system, I often return to the old favorite of alternate nostril breathing, which is said to balance the right and left sides of the brain. This month in your Right Side Up Library, I've added a 12-minute practice called "Breath 3rd Eye." (Subscribe for free access here.) It begins with alternate nostril breathing and then moves to visualizing the breath enter and leave the body in the space between the eyebrows, the area that energetically represents our center of intuition.
This is the second of three recordings my mom made on the same day in April 2015 when I had a miscarriage. (For that whole story, see last month’s newsletter, or read about it here.) Next month, I'll share the third, a beautiful meditation that all these years later was a such gift to discover.
As always, if you try any of the practices I share and want to tell me about your experience, just hit reply -- I'm all ears.
Love,
Sara
Some of my writing
"Guiding My Sons Through the Cycle of Life and Death" in the anthology "The Future of Us" by Moms Who Write
"On My Hands, Navigating Motherhood, Pain and Grief" in Issue 5 of The Handstand Press magazine