Seeking healing, whether for physical, emotional, or spiritual wounds, is always connected to seeking freedom. I heard Ram Dass echo this in a talk that he gave at a yoga conference many years ago. He urged the audience of eager Western yogis not to mistake yogic practices as being about bringing health to the body or relieving symptoms.
“Don’t let anybody seduce you into believing that these practices are about anything other than getting free,” he said.
When I look around me at the health and wellness scene, I see a lot of people who look trapped. Blogs documenting ever-more restricted diets seem to be a reincarnation of that old Puritanical ethic of deprivation dressed up with beautiful digital photography. Too many of the women in the barre classes I’ve been taking here in DC have the pinched, expressionless, stoic appearance of someone enduring a necessary penance. A friend of mine who is a former spin instructor gave up teaching because she “couldn’t stand to be around so much self-loathing.”
Who tricked us into believing that health and wellness is about anything other than getting free and then enjoying that freedom on our own terms? All of this strength that we’re building, this self-care that we’re doing, this dedication to our routines—what is it really for? What end is it really serving, beyond the measurable goals logged in inches, miles-per-hour, calories in and calories out?
It’s natural for a defensive voice to spring up when you start asking these questions of yourself. Be prepared to hear it, thank it, and dismiss it. Of all the lifestyle interventions I teach my clients, this is perhaps the most important. I can hear the fear in their voices as we talk about self-compassion, or about letting go of unnecessary food restrictions, or about saying “no” to the obligations that are keeping them from hearing what’s in their hearts.
“I really do want to have more time to go hiking,” the defensive voice says, “but my family expects me to contribute. I’ve always been the one who will be there for my parents.”
-or-
“Yes, I know that being this strict about my diet is making me crazy….but I don’t want to gain weight again….and now I feel like there are just so many foods that I feel uneasy about eating…”
At a moment in history when there is so much suffering in the world, so much threat to our Mother planet, and such disparity between the haves and the have-nots, there is a particularly insidious nature to these traps that we find ourselves in. I’m making the assumption that since you’re reading these words, you have been bestowed with a great deal of privilege. You can read. You have access to technology. These two things alone give you (yes, you) more power than our grandmothers ever dreamed of.
Who are you to stay trapped when the world is calling you to make a difference?
How can you be part of the change that you wish to see in the world if you are undernourished (physically, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually), obsessed with unattainable standards of “health” and “beauty”, or confined by an addiction to being constantly busy?
Healing is not selfish. Healing, true healing, is one of the most radical acts that you can undertake. It’s a pursuit of freedom, not one of deprivation nor of carving the body into a status symbol so that it can fit into the expensive workout clothes that only go up to a certain size.
When you are free, you can run (or walk, or crawl, or wheel, or type) from cage to cage where your brothers and sisters are suffering, waves of joy spilling out from your heart and breaking over your face, and spring open the locks to their cages. You can make donations, send emails and cards and sign petitions, show up at rallies, spend the afternoon cleaning up a local waterway.
When you are free, you make a difference.
When you are free, you become a beacon of hope for others who’ve never seen freedom before.
When you are free, your life is utterly your own and yet, the song of your heart echoes through all of Life, touching everyone you meet.
When you are finally free, you can keep following the trail of roses that your heart will leave for you everywhere. You will hear your own heartbreak and have the space to respond. You will hear others’ suffering and know that they can find freedom, too. You will have a small lamp with which to throw light on their paths.
You will be a beacon of healing, justice, peace, and enduring love. These gifts will wrap themselves around you where the trap used to be.
