You Tube Lay Your Burdens Down Again Lay Your Burden Down With Lyrics

"You wanna wing, y'all got to give up the shit that weighs you down." ~Toni Morrison, Vocal of Solomon

I had a massage today, a gift from a honey friend.

Every bit the gentle, competent therapist worked on the tension in my dorsum and shoulders, nosotros were silent.

I liked it that way.

Not because I wanted to remember, simply because I did not want to think. I did not want to worry, distract myself with trivia or plan. I wanted not to think at all.

I have lived also much in my head for almost ii years, my body bearing the brunt of an incredible series of losses, tensions and shocks. I struggled to costless my heed in meditation, but  information technology had never been harder to sentinel thoughts go past without stepping into their tangled stories. I was a beginner again, on the absorber.

I also became, literally, inflexible. I could no longer curve hands at the waist and affect the ground with flat palms. I could not become through fifty-fifty the gentlest "regular" series of asanas without agony. I could non plow over in bed without feeling that a hand gripped me only above the sacrum.

I did non willingly call back of sexual practice, dancing, or going for a long walk.

I could not go by my head, where I was living backside tightly locked doors. It was a very busy place, all upwards in there.

My body was really just a problem, like an abandoned building with asbestos in the walls. Things injure, things didn't work, it got too tired too fast and made me feel former. I didn't want to die, exactly, just I wanted to feel meliorate by fiat. I ate right, I followed all doctor's orders, and so I should be healthy.

(My body was a jankety, ratchet cheat, and I kind of really hated information technology).

For the first part of the massage I tried non to think. I tried, actually, to be entirely present with what was happening, the hands unravelling my shoulders, my back, my neck. I kept finding myself in the middle of a mental tirade about some by injustice, or making plans, or wondering if my back looked equally fat every bit I suspected it did.

As I do in meditation, I kept bringing myself back, but it was a struggle.

Then, only after I turned over on my back, these words appeared like a sign in my brain: "lay your burdens down."

Lay your burdens down.

I thought nigh the things that had haunted me, bedeviled me, and been constantly on my mind (and in my shoulders and my back) for and then many months. It was an impressive listing. It doesn't matter what'due south on it; everybody's got their ain stuff.

I thought about the artificial distance between my brain and my body, the damage done to this sturdy, serviceable vessel that never deserted me no thing how I neglected it, judged it or piled on it psychic burdens also painful to keep in the prison of my head.

It had become a dumping ground, my poor body, un-loved, united nations-cosseted, under-used…abused, actually. Because bodies demand to dance, they need to rest deeply, work difficult and exist touched by loving hands, fragrant oils and ocean water.

Our bodies give us then much, if we listen to them—that heaviness in the breast that means it'southward fourth dimension to cry, and the eventual ease that ways that particular storm has ended. The plummeting gut and sweaty palms that cry for condolement and support in the face of fright.

I had ignored all of that, or made faint stabs at reparation followed by self-recrimination when I could actually do the yoga, or the meditation was half-assed, or I just couldn't open to the person trying to comfort me. It was my mistake, I was a bad Buddhist, an inadequate and fat old yogi and a disingenuous friend.

It was a heavy burden, a mess, a source of shame and limitation and real, physical pain.

But I could put it down. All of it.

As the therapist made long strokes up the sides of my neck, something broke loose:  I was the neck, I was  her manus, and I was the warm tingle where they connected.

I was in my body, I was not thinking, and when I did remember, I thought almost dancing. Which is crazy considering I don't, I can't, I won't

But I could?

I imagined being ane of those people who could move their hips just right, sexy, grounded, not thinking merely moving from instinct. I have always hated dancing even when I am alone (have that in: even when I am lone) because my heed is then keenly aware of my physical awkwardness, my fatness, unsexiness, frizzy-haired ridiculousness.

What if somebody looked in the window and saw me jerking around, sweaty and flushed?

I could lay that burden down.

I could live in my body, my trustworthy body that would ever tell me truth about where I was, and how I was without benefit of drama or byzantine stories near why things happened or what might happen next.

I could love my body with the gentlest of yoga practise equally I heal from conveying such heavy weight. I could take more massages to set myself free. I could

Put

That

Brunt

Down

And

Fly.

(Or dance?)

Dear elephant and desire to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

francodrefoldn.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/05/lay-your-burden-down/