Make the Passage

Stuck. Stagnant. Constricted. Constipated.

Yes, constipation.

We’ve all been there. Something interrupts our routine, and our intestinal track is out of whack. Perhaps this is related to how you respond to stress. Perhaps traveling is the contributing factor. Ideally this is temporary. You get over your stress or jet lag, chug a bunch of water and you’re back in action. But sometimes the body has a much harder time letting go.

Literally.

This was the case with me last winter in Morocco. We had a 2 night layover in Paris on the way, during which I indulged in cheese and cream. This surely didn’t help matters within my confused colon. I was a couple days into my Morocco visit and my constipation became all I could think about. We made our way to a little pharmacy in Fez to buy anything that would help me. Since I don’t speak French or Arabic I pantomimed a person struggling with constipation. The woman at the counter directed me to maxi-pads.

No.

I continued my pantomiming, pointing to my stomach, making a squeezed-up, painful face. She directed me to anti-diarrhea medication.

I wish.

At this point a man came out to assist. Apparently he had witnessed the interaction. With broken English he asked me, “Do you need to…(awkward silence) make the passage?”

YES.

He gave me something that did the trick. Ever since, I now pack prunes on all my long trips.

As much as I wanted to blame my constipation on travel and cheese, I realized that was only part of it. I had also been holding on to more stress than normal for months, without my usual methods of release and recovery. My body, being the intricate and wise system that it is, responded accordingly. The gut is our second brain, after all. This network of neurons lining our gut communicates with our brain, influencing mood. It is said that 95% of the body’s serotonin (a neurotransmitter implicated in feeling content and at ease) is found in our bowels!

We all get stuck at times, unable to make the passage. We get stuck in fear. Or paralyzed by the unknown. I’ve been stagnant myself these last couple years regarding how to evolve in my professional path, given the complicated changes in healthcare, in a manner true to who I am. But now as I return from leading an amazing yoga and surf retreat in Nicaragua with 18 other beautiful participants and a magnificent co-leader, I feel refreshed and filled with perspective. My belly is at ease.

After the retreat, I spent a couple weeks exploring Southern Nicaragua and Northern Costa Rica. I learned that crossing the border from Nicaragua into Costa Rica is chaotic and downright random. Plus, there’s this “no man’s land” just after you exit Nicaragua but before you enter Costa Rica. There are no signs, no one is directing you, and you certainly don’t want to ask for assistance from one of the militia standing by with rifles. They’re a little busy managing what has been called the single largest drug transit point in the Americas. With confusion and heavy backpacks, we kept moving forward and before long we were feeling the Pura Vida.

These are the gritty moments of travel that I love. It’s funny how I’m able to view these challenges as part of the adventure while I’m in another country but at home they’re annoying setbacks. So I’m setting the intention to bring this adventurous spirit back home with me and apply it to my professional stagnation. I hereby declare this my sankalpa —  sanskrit for a wish or hope that comes from your heart which you will make manifest. Specifically, I will create space for my dream: writing a book* and organizing more retreats.** This will be my practice, my yoga off the mat.

The ancient yogi Desakachar writes that definitions of yoga have one thing in common: “…the idea that something changes. This change must bring us to a point where we have never been before. That is to say, that which was impossible becomes possible; that which was unattainable becomes attainable; that which was invisible can be seen.”

Are you currently stuck in the feeling that what you want is unobtainable? Are you constipated by your fears? Is your belly holding on tightly as a way to keep it all together? Take it from me, the recovering perfectionist – being tightly wound will not protect you from the unknowns in your life.

Dealing with our fears is a complicated matter, of course. But for now, for this moment, we can start simply, one breath at a time. We have our body as a resource to retrain our mind, teaching it that constriction is not the answer, expansion is. Scientists call our gut the “enteric brain” full of neurons delivering information to our brain. Help your belly to communicate and tap into your wise mind, rather than your fearful mind. Instead of shutting down even more in the belly, turn to it as the gateway, the border crossing.

Let yourself inhale fully, generously.

Oddly enough, filling up is the key to emptying out.

Deeply exhale, moving into the lower lobes of the lungs, noticing the strength in your core at the end of the exhalation, your center of empowerment. Massage the belly. Befriend it.

Repeat.

Together with our belly brain, our breath, our adventurous spirit (and the occasional prune + probiotic gulped down with water), our doubts can move through that invisible no-man’s-land within and make the passage to the further shore.

*Forthcoming book is titled “The Pleasure Is All Mine: Your Path to a More Sensual Life”

** Aspirations for late 2016/early 2017 : wine country in Northern CA, a couple’s retreat in Tulum, and a yoga/surf retreat in Nicaragua. Send me your suggestions!

One Comment

1. Jennifer David February 17, 2016

   Other great things to travel with to keep things moving are Young Living’s Digize as well as Traditional Medicinals’ Smooth Move. Both easily portable for travel. Happy pooping!

   https://www.youngliving.com/en_US/products/digize-essential-oil
   http://www.traditionalmedicinals.com/products/smooth-move/

Sensual Healing with Ben Wa Balls & Bandhas

This blog post can also be found at elephant journal:  http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/07/sensual-healing-with-ben-wa-balls-bandhas-dr-rachel-allyn-adult/#idc-cover

What are ben wa balls and bandhas you might be asking?

I’ll start with the balls.

I wasn’t familiar with the term myself until recently. I was with two old girlfriends for a weekend away. One of them recently got a new car and was still learning how to manage the sound system. She described picking up her mother-in-law from the airport and while they drove away her car automatically resumed playing her “50 Shades of Gray” audio book. My friend fumbled to turn it off but this took a while and it was during a juicy part of the book. She recounted how mortifying it was, explaining “it was during the part when they talk about vagina balls.”

        “Ummm, vagina balls” we asked?

We were amused. Not only by the idea of something as weird as vagina balls but also why a mother who shuttles her two young children in this very car was nonchalantly listening to “50 Shades of Gray.” You go girl.

And so a conversation ensued about placing two small metal balls in the vajayjay to help strengthen the pelvic floor and learn about g-spot stimulation. There are different names for these magic bullets—everything fromkegel balls to venus balls to ben wa balls.

About two weeks after returning from this trip I got a package in the mail from my friend. Yes, my very own set of ben wa balls! Puurrfect timing given it was just days before teaching a workshop called “Yoga to Enhance a Woman’s Sensuality.” As a sex therapist and yoga teacher, I delighted in offering this workshop.

Americans in particular can have a top-down relationship with sensuality and sex as seen in these two problems:

(1) We are overly focused on the outcome (typically in the form of orgasm) and (2) We are stuck in our heads and disconnected from our bodies.

We are also a culture that likes concrete coping tools and formulas to fix things, so I offer this one: Sex Therapy + Yoga = Sensual Healing. A bottom-up approach.

Sex Therapy

When working with a couple, it’s no surprise that I focus on verbal communication between the two people. Just as important, I encourage each individual to listen to the language of their own body; sensations.

Sensations are the language of feeling; senses are the syllables, emotions are the words and thoughts are the sentences.

Establishing this type of awareness can be tricky when there has been abuse or emptiness for an individual, because most likely they developed a pattern of shutting down and disconnecting. These are the partners who may be frozen or rigid in the bedroom, or avoid sex altogether. We use the therapy space to safely uncover the reasons for disconnection.

This can go much deeper than simply being caught up in the to-do list or needs of the children. This can be about not trusting one’s body, not feeling worthy of pleasure, or associating sexual pleasure with shaming messages.

+ Yoga

Enter yoga. One of the best ways to have a body-conversation is with this mind-body-spirit practice.

Case in point, my “Yoga to Enhance a Woman’s Sensuality” workshop. For women, as compared to men, sensual healing is about addressing the whole body versus solely focusing on anatomy. Women can be particularly challenged in the area of slowing down, not feeling guilty if they do, and owning their basic human right to feel pleasure.

The workshop was well attended and many who couldn’t attend asked that I teach it again. There was clearly a yearning for this type of conversation. I ventured down this yummy topic through discussion of everything from ben wa balls to bandhas (a yogic concept involving an energetic and muscular tightening and lifting of the perineum and/or belly).

I led them in experiential exercises that connected them to their bodies in a slow and erotic manner. I saw firsthand how women crave this discussion with each other and within their bodies, but rarely give themselves the time, space, or self-justification to do so.

The yoga studio is an ideal place to engage in this conversation because yoga is a philosophy that encourages showing up as you are, free from shame or embarrassment. I received questions from students that ran the gamut from ‘how do I use yoga to recover from sexual trauma?’ to ‘what yoga poses help my sex life with my partner?’

I explained to the students that through movement—whether it be walking or breathing or yoga—we increase our sensory output, stimulate nerve endings and extend our field of perception.

Sensuality is a gateway to passion and allows for a charge within the body. We can all start this sensuality practice by closing our eyes as we take the first bites of food, feeling the tangy sweetness of the strawberry or the bitter earthiness of the chocolate.

It’s ultimately about connecting moment by moment to our present experience rather than living in the frenzy of the next one. Listening to our sensations encourages curiosity and exploration within our bodies rather than judgement. This leads to greater understanding of how bodily cues inform us, keep us in balance and help us thrive.

Slowing down and listening on a sensual level can lead to enjoying beauty in art, gazing at the colors of a sunset, savoring the way a yoga pose relieves tension and having vibrant, intimate, look-me-in-the-eyes sex.

(Equals)

Sex is a wonderfully mysterious endeavor. I recognize it takes more than a workshop and some ben wa balls to achieve the kind of sexstacy we may aspire to. But if we bypass the foundation of our sexuality, the sensations, we run amok in the kind of sexual disconnection that even the best sex therapist can’t “fix.”  

Get on the mat + listen to your body sensations + reclaim your right to feel pleasure + let go of the outcome = reacquaint with our fabulous sexual selves. And maybe even the person lying in bed next to us.

Save Your Cards

My client asked with a shaky tenderness, “Maybe I don’t even know what love is? I don’t think I ever learned what it means to be in a healthy relationship.” It was an ah-ha moment. After months of sorting through the details of the relationship and conflicted feelings of whether to stay or go, it boiled down to these fundamental questions.

Of all the reasons that bring someone to my office, nothing permeates more than issues surrounding relationships. Clients come for clarity regarding relationships between lovers, family members, friends, colleagues, and (it is my hope) the relationship with their own self.

The nuances of relationships transcend and overlap the many stories that bring people in. There is a seeking for answers to questions: how to find a lover, whether to stay with a lover, how to maintain one’s freedom in a relationship, how to feel inspired with their partner, how to ensure everlasting passion, how to be understood and show our real selves (assuming we know what that is), how to be sure we don’t scare them away, how to keep from running away ourselves. We want to know what it means if we “fail” at this? What might be regretted later? Are humans even meant to be monogamous? Like the client in my office this can lead to a search of ‘what happened to get me to this place?’

I’m not there to give answers (sorry to burst your bubble if you thought that was the case). Aspects of it will always be a beautiful mystery. Yet there are many psychologists and scientists who study these questions seeking answers. Currently I’m enjoying the wisdom of Esther Perel’s book “Mating in Captivity.” We cling to science to ensure we make the right choices and will be okay.

Until we arrive as some semblance of an answer we cope by retreating into our “love stories.” I hear many of these — narratives of when they met their partner, why they don’t have a partner, how the love faded, how they drifted from lovers to more like roommates and perhaps lovers again, how they don’t deserve to be loved. We all have these stories. Over the years I, too, have created my own. They gradually became less fact and more fiction due to my biased “memories” filling in the cracks over time.

Which is why it was such a gift to rediscover boxes full of old cards and letters from friends and ex’s as well as old journals going back to 7th grade. They were stored in 2 bright red boxes from Ikea that had been locked shut many years ago. I somehow managed to lose the keys. It wasn’t until I had to move that I was reminded of them and became curious. I brought them to the cabin with the intention of keeping them in storage. One day while me and my Beloved were at the cabin the time seemed right to investigate the contents.  He smash the locks off with a hammer and opened them. Low and behold it was quite the time capsule. I still haven’t been able to read some of the old journals for fear of what I might find. But I did delight in seeing the birthday cards, evidence of a time when people actually wrote down their sentiments and used snail mail.

I wasn’t prepared to find the old letters from my Beloved who now once again sat there with me. Our love story goes that we were together in college, went our separate ways for 17 years until we reunited again. (I guess you can thank electronic correspondence for some things). The reunion was just as romantic as these letters he’d written me many years ago that I saved. We sat on the screen porch nestled in our own little tree house at the edge of the lake. I listened with nostalgia as he read postcards sent to me while in the heart of our relationship. They were gushing with the adrenaline and sweetness of a 19 year-old. Then the tone shifted when he read a letter written about one year after we broke up. (I broke up with him. Don’t ask why I did that…when you’re 19 years old do you really need a reason? Maybe the answer is in one of those journals!) In this letter was his sadness, longing, regret and recovery from the relationship ending. His words were poignant and unlike a typical 20 year-old college kid. I suspect his open heart and raw vulnerability scared me off at the time, but I cherished it now. I started crying. He teared up as well. I was grieving all the lost years together but also reveling in the gratitude of being reunited. Could it be that here was a love “story” that had truly existed beyond my imagination and come full circle?

Tucked amidst the cards and journals was a poem. I think I had torn it out from a wedding program.

 “Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.” ~Louis de Bernieres

Happy Valentines Day.

Perfectly UnExtraordinary

Do you suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out)? Do you deflect compliments rather than say thank you (“What, this old thing?”)? Do you drive while simultaneously talk on the phone, eat lunch and change the music?

These experiences can be due to a number of factors. They can also be subtle examples of being a perfectionist.

It takes one to know one. I am in recovery myself. (Disclaimer: I use the term perfectionism here to mean mental rigidity and expectations that are unrealistic and all-consuming rather than a balanced sense of healthy striving and goal-setting.) A small example of my recovery — as I type this, pain shoots down my back and neck. This is less about working long hours at my computer or sitting in my therapy chair. It’s pain from waterskiing last weekend. I simply had to get up on one ski. Never mind I was in no condition for it. Apparently I needed to prove to myself I could still slalom ski and cut waves like I did at 15.  I now pay the price!

I’m often humbled by the ways I still get seduced by what Buddhists call the “wanting mind” which whispers you’re not enough. I observe the ways I pushed myself waterskiing and now chuckle at the silliness in loosely associating slalom skiing with self-worth. It’s a remnant of the girl I was starting in about 5th grade. By day I was a teacher’s pet with pens, notebooks and binders that all matched. By night an insomniac mentally recycling the next day’s plan in order to get it right.

Somewhere along the way I started letting go of the type A people pleaser. Somewhere along the way I learned that what truly connects us are the imperfections we all share.

Sadly we’re bombarded by messages that disconnect us, even within the world of yoga. The most popular yoga magazine displays cover models from a narrow demographic. The hyper-focus on the perfect body in the perfect clothing while ‘doing’ the perfect yoga pose fuels new versions of inadequacy, control and separateness from one another. This is antithetical to yoga’s original intentions over 5000 years ago.

Connection to our own self begins by having the courage to step on the yoga mat simply as I am… hot mess. speedy mind. pissed off. blissed out. wanting to hide. comparing to others. rising high. falling over. crackling joints. epiphany. sensations. exhalation. out of my head. back in my head… I arrive and I practice how to ride the wave of emotions within me rather than distracting from them, denigrating myself, or projecting onto another. (Practice is a powerful concept, perhaps the second most important factor in behavior change second to self-compassion). Most days I arrive at my mat and actually let go of unhealthy striving and simply settle in. One day farther from being the 5th grade little-miss- goody-two-shoes and another day closer to the real, raw, middle-aged woman. Another day closer to allowing the flaws and the scars but also the compassion and the wisdom.

May we all adopt the definition of “perfect” in the eastern sense of the word rather than the western sense. In the U.S. perfectionism is unachievable because it’s a neverending cycle. There’s always more money to make, more work to do, more power to have, more improvements to the mind and body, and more adventures to behold. In the eastern sense of the word we are born perfect but the ups and downs of life can interfere with remembering our inner light. Our perfect self gets buried under the rights and wrongs, the not-good-enough’s and the he-said-she-said story lines of life. We lose our true essence, our innate goodness and become stuck in the gap between who we are and who we think we should be.

Popular researcher Brené Brown speaks of a prevalent modern form of shame in which we never feel we’re extraordinary enough. We have gone from simply never being enough to never being extraordinary enough. How American of us to push it to the next level! The rise in anxiety and insomnia in our culture clearly exemplifies how harmful this concept can be.

I love this passage on letting-go by Oakland poet Marvin K. White, which is essentially an ode to allowing ourselves to be un-extraordinary once in a while:

… is so not into working harder than everybody else today or trying to be smarter than everybody else, showing up earlier than everybody else, leaving later than everybody else, taking the assignments that no one else wants to take. Is not into over achieving or grinding today. Is not fighting for that promotion today. Is not going to feel bad about taking his eye off the prize and disappointing everyone who had a higher hope for his life. . . Is not going to regret jumping from dream to dream and praying not for world peace or cures but money and clothes and homes on every continent and then not really believing in their possibilities. Is so alright with the local news of his life and the neighborhood newsletter of his story. Would be okay if he was one of Oprah’s least favorite things. . . Is so not into fighting to get in through the front door when the back one and the windows all lead to the same room. Is not into feeling stronger from what didn’t kill him. Does not want gain to come from his pain…Today, he is feeling common and pedestrian and willy-nilly. Today he cannot commit to excellence or to honoring his fray by trying to rise above it. Today he is rank an filed. Today, he has will to not try to convince himself that he is better than that. Today, what ever happens will happen because his is a life unremarkable. Today if you ask him how he is doing, he will tell you, that he, is “Aiming low.”

For more insights on letting go of rigidity and unhealthy perfectionism, attend one of my upcoming workshops this fall called Yoga for Overachiever’s and Perfections.

Reunion Grief

Recently I fed my sister’s cat while she was away.  She’s fostering him until he can return to his original owner. His name is Nernie (it was originally Ernie but as can happen with pet names, a nickname evolved).  It took a couple days for Nernie to warm-up to me.  Even then as I reached my hand out to pet him he would alternate between eagerly approaching me followed by retracting and hissing. I knew he was lonely, but his fear dominated.

We’re not so different from our fury four-legged friends.  As human-animals we too can hiss, swat, and scurry away from our innermost desire.

Nernie’s behavior reminded me of “reunion grief.”  Contrary to how it sounds, it’s not the hassles from the annual family get-together or the disappointment at who actually shows for your high school reunion.  It’s a complex psychological process that occurs once you finally get the very thing you longed for after years – perhaps a lifetime – of waiting, wanting and yearning.  Break out the champagne and celebrate, right?  Oddly enough, for many this can be the beginning of a journey that includes sadness, fear, anger, avoidance, and self-sabotaging.

Picture this example: a little boy goes away to day camp. When his parents pick him up that evening, the boy cries at the sight of seeing them. This is because he managed all day to cope without mom and dad; upon their return he is flooded with feelings of sadness from having tolerated the missing of his parents all day.

Dr. Pat Love * explains reunion grief in terms of what happens when we fall in love: If you really want something for a long time…it becomes a painful subject. The longer you go without [it] the more you begin to associate it with pain. When you finally get something you’ve wanted for a long time, your anxiety goes up because your psyche associates it with pain. [Then] after you accept that you’ve now gotten what you’ve longed for, grief is not over. Once someone has the courage to let themselves be loved, the longing ends but the grief begins. When you finally get the love you longed for you begin to grieve for all the years you lived without it….Like any crisis or stressful situation, when you are in the middle of it you are coping; you don’t have time to grieve. But when the crisis is over, that’s when the strong feelings come up.

Reunion grief can emerge in other situations beyond romantic love. It may arise upon finally seeing your dream career come to fruition. For another, it may begin at the end of a chronic trauma to which they are no longer living in survival mode.

Whether it be romantic love, professional purpose, or the luxury of feeling safe, there’s a special challenge that arises for those who have coped for so long without something essential to their livelihood. Without an understanding of this type of powerful emotion, one can shut down, second guess, numb, act irritable, or disconnect from their true love or true path.

It begins with awareness. Most of us are not aware of how we keep our potential at a distance. Perhaps you’ve self-sabotaged achieving a professional peak by procrastinating on a deadline for fear of failure. Or maybe you ruined a romantic moment by picking a fight for fear of being vulnerable in the relationship. Others pursue little bits of chaos even when their life is stable and content. We are unconsciously aware of the fact that it’s not the struggle or the pain we fear (we grew accustomed to that) but experiencing fulfillment and pleasure. What a totally foreign concept!  And if we were to allow pleasure in, would we get soft and mushy and render ourselves even more vulnerable to loss?

Consider the following practice to greet love, fulfillment or pleasure at your door: (a) recognize your past suffering from going without (b) refrain from reacting, and instead be a compassionate witness to the feelings that arise (c) ride the wave of emotions, staying within (not distracting with procrastination, picking a fight, reaching for the cookie jar…) (d) begin to soften into the sensations as they become more familiar and you eventually respond in new ways. Then repeat steps A through D over and over as you gradually learn to receive.

Oh and one more important step…the hardest barrier to allowing yourself to receive: not feeling you deserve it.  When I first heard the poem “The Truelove” by David Whyte many years ago in my yoga-teacher training, I didn’t even know that I didn’t even know how to see myself as deserving. He states,

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

Let me suggest that just because we didn’t have IT (true love, our dream job…) doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve it now.  Let’s challenge the idea that because we were deprived it meant we weren’t deserving.  Honor our resilience for the years we went without, and the ways we coped. Recognize that anything truly worthwhile comes with the risks of loss and discomfort from time to time.  The only other alternative is to go live in a cave.
Whyte concludes:
because finally after all the struggle
and all the years,
you don’t want to {drown} any more,
you’ve simply had enough of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory and any darkness,
however fluid and however dangerous,
to take the one hand you know
belongs in yours.

Practice making a choice: to live in love or to live in disconnection and fear.  As foreign as it feels to surrender to your love or your livelihood, you will adapt and you will find a huge smile on your face when you do.
I wish I could explain this all to Nernie. I wish he would accept my hand held out to him, revel in the affection, and delve into some deep purring.  Whether you’ve got two legs or four, have hair or fur, paws or hands, hiss or purr, know that we all yearn for this deep connection to our rightful path.  Know that we all deserve it.  Go ahead, roll in the catnip, indulge in the pleasure, and let yourself be stroked the next time someone comes to feed you.

*Pat Love, Ed.D. “The Truth About Love” Published 2001