Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
– Chinese proverb
I have always heard that being part of a community is an important thing, and, yet, I always had trouble finding a community that fit me like a glove. I concluded that there was not a community for me, that there was not a community that fit the specifics of my interests enough for me to call that community home. I have recently had an experience that has changed the way I interact with a group and this experience has helped me find a different way to establish and experience community. I now realize that my previous expectations for community were the wrong expectations.
For the past three years, I have been studying, learning and exploring in a Body Mind Centering® program called the Foundations in Embodied Anatomy and Yoga, taught by Lisa Clark and Amy Matthews. Twenty people committed to the program and met every 3-4 months spending all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday together. I initially signed up for the program because I respect and admire the teachers and I wanted to continue learning anything and everything that had to do with Body Mind Centering. I enrolled in the program because I wanted to deepen my own experiences and understandings of myself in relationship to this approach. Another way to describe my motivation three years ago was that I was taking this course for me. I wanted to play, experience, explore and spend time in my own body. I teach and engage with others all day long, and I had the idea that I wanted to make this program a time for me. However, when the program began, I noticed immediately that there was a lot of group sharing, “circle time” as Lisa and Amy called it. I thought, “Oh, shit, this is not what I need, this is not what I want”.
I had not had a lot of experience sharing with a group of 20 people. I have had many opportunities through the years to share in a group but I have always found it to be uncomfortable and anxiety-producing. I would always choose to listen and support others when they shared their experiences as my way of contributing to the group. I have always thought that I don’t particularly like to share in groups, but that this was just who I was and what I preferred. During the last few months of the program, I began to observe a gradual and surprising shift that helped me realize the ways in which I struggle with sharing intimately within a group. I noticed I was talking more and I wasn’t as nervous to open my mouth. Sharing just happened without me doing anything to force or make myself talk.
So, what was different about this group?
When attending a BMC class or workshop or sharing in circle time, there is an emphasis on each person being responsible for practicing personal self care. Each individual takes care of their own self and takes care of their own needs AND, at the same time, is respectful of everyone doing what they need to do when learning and experiencing a wide range of material and information.
An example of self care in this context would be that someone might take a nap during the class, even while the teacher is offering instruction. Another example would be if someone needed to move a lot during a practice that is prescribed as a still practice. Examples of the type of respect that this format requires would be not judging or criticizing the person that needs to nap or needs to wiggle about during a still practice. Regardless of what self care looks like for each person, the group holds everyone’s experiences by expecting that everyone’s experience be unique and different, and by truly accepting this range of experience. And, in turn, everyone in the group is more inclined to be more aware of their own needs because of the space for individuality and the beautiful feeling of acceptance. Each person is allowed to be as they are and each person is accepted as they are. This is especially the case during circle time; everyone spoke from their own experience and did not, as a rule, comment or challenge or interrupt when someone was sharing, which contributed greatly to the feeling of acceptance and support. And, surprising to me, no one abused this unspoken etiquette of respect and support throughout the program. And, also surprising to me, this led to me sharing in a way that I had never done before. And, sharing and being witness to others sharing, intimately and over time, led to a sense of community that I had never experienced before.
The FEAY program, with the model of self care and acceptance, opened me up to new experiences, led me to trust the group, and allowed my words to be listened to while the group held my experience. With my new sense of and value for community, I realized that a community holds the experiences of everyone in it, regardless of how they participate. It comes naturally for me to listened and hold space for others, but this practice opened me up to receive and allow others to hold space for me. It was so amazing to receive support form a group. I did not know that I wasn’t allowing a part of me to relate to others. And when I did, my relationship within the group changed. I related to the community differently and I experienced myself differently within the community. I became a part of the community, a part of the whole, while maintaining my sense of self.
It is one thing to practice yielding into earth, receiving support from the earth, trusting the earth to hold you, and it is an entirely different practice to yield into a group of people, receive support from the community and begin to trust that a group of people can hold you. The community expressed itself like our bodies…the whole body mattered, not one part of the community was more important than any other part. We all individually and collectively evolved together over time, holding space for each other while each of us discovered our own potentials and how to be with ourselves and in community at the same time.
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
– Chinese proverb
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