My 6-year-old daughter couldn’t get to sleep last night. She said “mummy, I feel sad but I don’t know why”. We talked. My temptation was to tell her not to be sad and list all the reasons to be happy. Instead, we talked about where she felt sad. We explored whether she was feeling happy as well. She was! We shared wonder at the way we can feel both happy and sad at the same time.
She loves to dance, so I said:
Life is a dance between opposites… we float around sadness for a while, but then we can flutter on over to twirl around happiness too.
She liked the image of dancing between her feelings.
We talked about how it can work with sensations too. I described the sensation of sinking into bed with a heaviness and she said “yes, and mummy, I feel light at the same time as if angels are lifting me”. Yes, that’s it! The sumptuous heaviness of getting into bed at the end of a long day but the floaty lightness it also brings.
The beautiful thing about life is that we’re always just a dance… just a moment… away from the next opposite emotion or experience. We can be frustrated yet peaceful. Quietly serious then exploding with giggles. Exhausted yet energised.
Just a dance away.
We get so consumed by the ‘why’ – the thinking mind’s analysis of our emotions and sensations. Yoga nidra meditation encourages us to simply be with what we are experiencing and explore into the beauty of opposites.
Play with this today.
Feel into your opposites.
Enjoy the dance.