This August, the same as every August, I pause my online and in-person classes. I need a break. My planning mind needs a break from thinking about what to teach each week, to the small groups who ardently show up to learn. I love teaching my classes, I enjoy the group energy, the supportive and often fun repartee. I started teaching in groups for just this reason – it’s more social and less intense than the deep dive into Self that happens in the one-to-one lessons (I also love that work too, it’s just different).
When you learn as a group, you’re not only learning from the teacher, but from each other as well, and there’s a magic in that. Something quite unquantifiable is created, a slight change in the dynamic as the attendance shifts and changes, and as confidence grows throughout the year. Everyone bringing their energy into the mix – the hypothetical cauldron. I like the uncertainty of it; it keeps it interesting and feeling alive.
But I need a rest. A rest from showing up each week and holding the space for so many at once. Even when the group is small it’s still group energy to hold. It’s a “tiring” that’s hard to explain. I need to take a pause from being reliable, in charge, the teacher. And truth be told, they all need a break too, because learning this work – awareness, presence, embodiment – is not a linear process.
As we come to the end of July and get ready to say farewell until September, (making the usual jokes about how much home practice will happen) I’m reminded of my Alexander Technique student days. With the long summer holidays ahead, my fellow students and I felt anxious that all the good work would be undone unless we were fervent in our practice. However, we were reassured, and encouraged to relax into the process of integration, because once this work has begun, (the steady and expanding awareness of oneself and environment), it doesn’t get undone. You can’t close the door on awareness.
It’s not just about learning…
There’s a process of allowing in all learning. That moment as we step away from the teacher to find out for ourselves where we’re at, is when we allow our version of what we’ve learned to come through. Whether it’s writing, cooking, painting, dancing or personal development, it’s the YOU that’s the missing ingredient, until you go out on your own it’ll be the teacher’s version. We can’t know the magic that we bring to something until we do the thing on our own, until we draw from that creative void within us, bringing forward our version of what we’ve learnt. A learning embodied is a wisdom from within, it’s the learned skill seasoned with your essential you-ness!
As you step away from your teacher (whatever you may have been learning), have confidence that you will show up for yourself to do what needs to be done, when it’s needed. Allow the work to settle to land in your body and mind. Enjoy the feelings and experience the everyday from this new way of being, this sense of embodiment, connection, freedom.
Your personal self-development practice, whether it’s mind, body or spirit focussed, can look the way you want it to look – and that might not be lying on a mat or sitting crossed legged every day. It might be stepping into nature to grab a still moment. It might be rolling down a grassy hill so your inner child can play with your kids.
Whatever you get up to this August remember it’s fun to bang a drum, laughter IS the best medicine and always dance like nobody’s watching. En-joy!