What is your Naked Truth?
According to a 19th-century legend, the Truth and the Lie meet one day. The Lie says to the Truth: "It's a marvellous day today"! The Truth looks up to the skies and sighs, for the day was really beautiful. They spend a lot of time together, ultimately arriving beside a well. The Lie tells the Truth: "The water is very nice, let's take a bath together!" The Truth, once again suspicious, tests the water and discovers that it indeed is very nice. They undress and start bathing. Suddenly, the Lie comes out of the water, puts on the clothes of the Truth, and runs away. The furious Truth comes out of the well and runs everywhere to find the Lie and to get her clothes back. The World, seeing the Truth naked, turns its gaze away, with contempt and rage. The poor Truth returns to the well and disappears forever, hiding therein, its shame. Since then, the Lie travels around the world, dressed as the Truth, satisfying the needs of society, because, the World, in any case, harbours no wish at all to meet the naked Truth.
I read this story and it instantly penetrated my soul. If I am to be a truth teller, if I am to be a spiritual guide, I need to share my naked truth. So, here it goes:
I will always reflect on this season of 2020 as the season that almost crushed me. And it had nothing to do with Covid. In these last few months, my life partner, a man I truly love, closed his heart to me and our future, my father passed from Covid and my 23 year old daughter moved across the country. I find myself in a very quiet home now (all the time) with only my 13 year old and trying to balance all I have to do with my work and with making sure he is well physically, emotionally and mentally (recognizing that he has also loss so much). My story is there are days that I find it difficult to find motivation to get up he is my WHY on those days. Those are the days that I long to be met in my collapse but there is no one to meet me or pick up my mess or to care for my son if I remain there. So, I get up. I do what I need to do to get through the day. I move my body. I take longer walks, I feel my tears, I listen to podcasts, I pet my dog, I meditate, I write and I play basketball with my son. Until the grief hits again.
Grief is a strange companion. It can be very quiet and unassuming and then, out of the blue, it wakes itself up and can become very big, scary and overwhelming with an unexpected flow of emotional ranges: anger, loneliness, deep, deep, penetrating heartbreak, intermixed with gratitude and love. It will usually be triggered by a song, a poem, a longing. It would be easy to bypass and use my spiritual teachings to heal my grief but I have made a commitment to myself to practice Embodied Spirituality which means that I 1) honor what my body is feeling and needing and I move towards that first, and 2) find spiritual meaning in the right time… these days it is absolutely the practice of non attachment and trust even if those concepts bring me to further tears. I also have been practicing “husbanding my feminine” (Christian Pankhurst taught me that concept) which, in practical life means giving space and safety for my raw and vulnerable expression to be released and then being able to reel it so that I can get out of bed in the morning and do the work I need to do, coach my clients, teach yoga, be present to my son. It is like letting go a bit at a time (although the times can last for a few hours) of the tension, the grief, the fear and then, putting my big girl socks on so that I can adult and see the bigger picture in my life and be on purpose. It’s not about doing one or the other but finding ways to integrate all that I am and all that I need in any given day. Doing only the feminine will lead to collapse and inability to cope in life. Doing only the masculine will keep me detached from my emotional expression and needs (the bypass). When we can allow the feminine to be expressed with the safe container of the masculine, we truly trust in our ability to be fully who we are.
Another blessing of these times is that I have faced many of my shadows (those parts that I don’t want you to see, usually triggered by another- I’ll save this for another blog or for my book) and been able to befriend them and see their gifts through my “mat” work which has been very healing. I am grateful that I have been able to do a deep emotional hygiene cleanse throughout this journey with the support of my Heart IQ™ community, family and friends. It has kept me grounded and able to build a bit more capacity each day. What that looks like is doing daily practices of tuning in, following the breadcrumbs through my pain to my openness and my joy (which is not the absence of pain but rather feeling fully alive in all of my emotional ranges, even the ones that feel deeply painful), rather than trying to push it or numb it away. Then, I follow the longings of my body. Moving slowly, dancing wildly, singing (like really really loud) without a care, crying, or simply being in stillness. Finding my way to where I feel nourished (right now I am writing from beautiful British Columbia), and unapologetically taking time for myself to feel, to write, to BE.
As I go through this very difficult season, I have experienced a level of spiritual maturity that has taught me to be present and very tender with my heart, even when her cracks and breaks feel fresh again. And, I have had many realizations that come through as medicine and longings which I will now express as claims:
I claim:
💜My tender, vulnerable and open heart
💜My messiness and my uncontained feminine
💜My openness and my ability to choose when I want to consciously close for safety
💜My need to not have to do it all...and all perfectly... and love myself in my incompleteness and imperfections as I love you
💜My longing to seek support and have my needs met (and welcoming new imprints for this)
💜My longing to be in total collapse and be ok in those moments and to know that I have the capacity to husband my feminine
💜My longing to share my voice and my mission through teaching, speaking and writing
💜My longing to know that all of my experiences refine (not define) the richness of my life
💜My playful child
💜My JOY
💜The freedom to live where I choose to feel nourished
💜My abundance
💜My gift of creating community
💜My gift of helping others open their hearts (which gets deeper with my own inner work)
Today I claim 💜 my truth and my sovereignty.
What truth do you claim in your life? I would love to hear your medicine and what you claim moving forward. And please know, that, today, I am and will be ok because there is a part of me that truly trusts deeply in the unfolding of life. There is a part of me that can stand in celebration and joy when I make these claims and allow myself to fall in love with and make love to all of life even when, and likely because, I feel my pain. And, there are some pretty cool things happening in my life right now that I will fill you in on in Sept.
Whether you are going through a difficult season or not, I am here for you without judgement, with love and always with so much gratitude for meeting me in this space,
Diana
Xoxox
As I have gone through these seasons, I have continued to access my creative portal and am happy to share some upcoming offerings:
1. I will be offering a 50 hour yoga, meditation, mindfulness and coaching for Special Needs Children (which also applies to adults). This will be a 7 day program offered on weekends over Sept/Oct. Please click here for details: https://www.dianalockett.com/ysn
2. My 200 Hour YTT will remain a hybrid model with 6 months of online live and pre-recorded classes and the final month as a cumulative live retreat. This retreat will be at an off the grid farm outside of Mount Forest. Please click here for details: https://www.dianalockett.com/ytt
3. I will continue to offer online classes through the rest of the summer and into the fall. I do not know for sure if Prayati Yoga (Dan’s studio) will re-open fully however, I am choosing to step away from a structured teaching schedule to ensure that I can be home with my son and to ensure that I can remain fueled. Here is the link to my youtube channel that now also includes weekly coaching tips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5WF3Krv1PQWn324zbaqjSA?view_as=subscriber
4. The Yoga Coaches online program for trained yoga instructors will be launching in Sept. That has been a pretty cool collaboration with my daughter for all the yoga teachers in the world who long to refine their teachings. I will share more in a few weeks.