Opposites Musing #1…Or, The Freedom of Opposites

I’m going to do a series of delicious bite-sized musings on the idea of opposites. This is musing #1.

One of the powerful tools I teach is a sleep-based meditation practice using the Daring to Rest method of yoga nidra. Students get into a state of deep, relaxed awareness where, with practice, they are more easily able to hold opposites. 

What sort of “opposites” do I mean? Glad you asked. Opposites like:

• Heavy / light

• Sadness / joy

• Illness / health

• Under-resourced / abundant

• Flawed / perfect

• Disbelief / belief

• Contracted / expansive

You might think that holding opposites is a recipe for insanity, or at least confusion. 

But here’s the truth - it doesn’t have to be and, in my experience, it’s incredibly freeing. 

Human experience is complex. And it can be a relief to acknowledge the truth of the both/and such as: I can love my children AND I can hate the conditions of parenting.

Instead, when we deny seemingly opposing parts of ourselves, we can’t entirely process and integrate our experiences into our being. By holding opposites, we are making more space to more fully be ourselves. With relaxed awareness surrounding each pole of the opposite pair, often a “third way” or some other fresh perspective has space to emerge.

What happens when you feel into the possibility that both ends of these poles have a time and place? Rather than being stuck in the judgement that one is “better” than the other, by holding both we expand our awareness to see how these things define each other. Indeed, we couldn’t have day without night by contrast.

It sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be. Often the hardest part is just getting ourselves to lie down and close our eyes so we can recruit our subconscious to do the heavy lifting on our behalf.

Do you want to know what’s even more interesting? Opposites can be pretty subjective. When I ask my students about their opposites, the pairings are so particular! One person’s opposite of “energetic” might be “lethargic” - and yet another person’s is “contemplative.”

Like fingerprints, our experiences have a universality to them (we all have them), while also having a particularity (they are mine) bounded by context. For instance, last summer my opposite of “exhausted” might have been “hopeful.” But today, for me the opposite of “exhausted” is “grounded”.

So what opposites are you learning to hold, and how does that feel?

DM me!