My body has become soft and so has my yoga practices, artwork, and coaching. This might sound negative at first glance but I assure you it is the most wonderful transformative experience.
First of all the idea of being ‘soft’ has carried a rather undesirable energy, being associated with weakness, or having no boundaries and being a pushover. But this is not what I’m writing about here.
I’m sharing about my personal discovery and experience of softness in my life and perhaps there is something here to inspire a softening in your own life.
SOFT BODY
Not only is my body softer, it is soft in ways that I’ve considered undesirable due to my past conditioning of what is beautiful and what is not.
Today my body is wrinkly with soft folds of flesh rather than firm and toned.
I remember fighting against this transformation that comes with age. And interestingly, it was mostly an unconscious fight. The softening of my body is something visibly seen on a daily basis, but I had bought into the eternal maiden a long time ago. A myth that only serves the marketing and sales of many products to stay looking ‘young’.
I remember the closing scene with Emma Thompson in the movie Good Luck to You, Leo Grande where she stares openly at her naked aged body in the mirror with acceptance and even love. It’s a powerful moment.
I’ve deepened into this acceptance too. And it’s been freeing. It’s given me a deeper understanding and experience of Santosha, a Sanskrit word meaning a kind of inner contentment not affected by outward changing conditions.
And curiously I find that my body can be soft and still incredibly strong.
YIN
My yoga practice is also softer. More Yin. Feminine and receptive. Contemplative and meditative. Less actively doing. I no longer feel I need to sweat to feel like I’ve achieved something in my practice. My attention is more drawn to the spaces between the breaths. The spaces between the poses. The spaces created by long holding stretches held in stillness. The spaces that allow the personal self to dissolve and the freedom from concepts, beliefs, and identifications that we tend to attach ourselves to.
I don’t strive to be some version of perfection in a yoga pose, nor in life, knowing there is no such thing.
This softening in yoga practice is a process that takes me beyond the mind that creates and holds onto all sorts of learned concepts, identifications, perfectionism. A dissolution of hard rigid edges and instead inviting a soft inner gaze and curiosity that expands into that eternal presence of being with what’s there that is not a thought.
SOFT ART
We are each, in our own way, creative beings. Maybe we’ve narrowed that definition for ourselves and think, no I’m not a creative person. But that’s impossible. We are part of an infinitely creative universe. There is no separation.
Our creativity is enhanced when we give ourselves space and allow for life’s energy to flow through. And when it does come into an expression, to not judge or be critical but rather learn from the experience of creating, making, expressing. This creative process is so much more enjoyable when there is no attachment to the results.
Lately I have been drawn to a kind of softness in the art I look at too. It’s interesting to notice what attracts your attention at different times in your life. Having an awareness of what kind of creative expressions you like to look at informs your own creative expressions. Be curious about this.
In view of softness, I find myself enjoying the qualities of peacefulness, spaciousness, and a sense of freedom in paintings I look at. I endeavor to express this in my own art making.
Next time you go to a museum or art gallery, try using a soft gaze and let your body be involved and not just think about what you see. Soften your gaze and take the time to be still while looking, letting the mind relax and soften from its habit of categorizing, labeling, describing, preferencing, dismissing.
SOFT COACHING
My coaching style has changed. I don’t follow a strategy or have an agenda. I never really know what’s going to transpire. There are no hard edged rules. It’s more about coming into alignment with who you are. And this ‘you’ is not a solid thing but a flexible and fluid energy of being. Who you are and what you want is not coming from only mental perspectives but rather from deep soul led stirrings that arise from within our unique human design.
I love supporting clients to soften and let go of the busy overwhelm that comes with too much doing in their life. To slow down and explore what it means to be true to who they are. I find this helps us build a fluid and flexible foundation for enjoying life and our work.
I often go to the beach and I notice the stones and shells that have been softened around the edges. It reminds me that this is what being open to the flow of life is like. Our life experiences help us soften our hard edges and then, with grace, we may find ourselves dropping deeper into the soft belly of being.
With love and gratitude,
Aesha