Nourishing Yin
Would you like to go on a journey into yin? If so, you might find a space where you won’t be disturbed, where you feel safely held, and can soften and open without being disturbed.
While your eyes are closed, I invite you to let your whole body soften. Let your attention sink into your felt experience. You might take a few long breaths, focusing on the exhale, to let the whole body settle and gentle. Notice the weight of the body sinking into your chair, into the earth, and let your root soften open to the earth, as much as it can. Let your belly be fat, invite your solar plexus to soften with breath, the heart to soften, the hands, the face. Let every expression droop off of your face. Just here, soft. Let breath travel around your body, softening as it goes. Soften all around the things that are tight, letting them be here, letting them float along in your soft pool of being, little nuggets of tenseness floating in this soup of being. This is the call of yin, the voice that invites softening, sinking, receptivity, availability. The voice that calls us downward, to relax and dissolve, to give into gravity.
I invite you to imagine that you are surrounded by the walls of a most loving and safe womb. Imagine a fluid within this womb in which you float. Nothing you have to do, held in every direction by warmth, by protection, and by receptive, love-filled space. I invite you to imagine that you aren’t fully formed yet, a tiny cord of light from your belly button to the heart of Holy yin at the center of everything, tethering you, tracking you. As you float in sweet, warm darkness, imagine no harm, no harshness, nothing to protect against, nothing to do. Just softening open.
When I put my newborn baby in a bath in a candlelit room, she slowly unfurled in the water like a Chinese tea flower. That’s my invitation: unfurl, uncurl, unwind, like a fern, like a flower blooming open, sinking down, falling open. And whatever you experience in response to my words is perfect. The words are meant to evoke your experience, not to have you strong-arm yourself into a particular pre-defined experience.The call to yin, to melt into the unity of all things can bring up arguments. And they are welcome. Fear is welcome. Tightening is welcome. Holding on is welcome. Numbness is welcome. These are all love’s children, all blessedly welcome to float in this same benevolent holding womb.
I invite you as you float to imagine weightlessness, to imagine warmth. Imagine a kind of attentive holding, an embracing by an intelligent heart that knows and blesses you, that stands sentry while you float and unfurl. Let every struggle be given over to this weightlessness, everything you carry be allowed for the moment to float. And I invite you to imagine that every cell in your tiny floating body has its mouth open, its heart open, its arms open, soaking up the ions of love in the fluid. You are marinating in a brine of love, pickling. Let the aliveness you feel in the flesh of your body be that charged water flowing into your cells, blessing you. I invite you to soak, to let gentleness into your cells, receiving, like the ground receives the rain, soaking, like the open flower receives the sunlight, absorbing, filling, uncurling your tiny fingers.
Space. Water. Darkness. Dissolving, yielding, softening, gentling, taking in nourishment while you are protected by this womb from anything that is not utterly nourishing and perfectly tailored to you. Just for you, the temperature, the weightlessness, the size of the womb, the love that you are soaking in. For you. Tailored to you. There’s nothing you have to do but absorb. And you might consider as you sit or lie there to open your hands or tip back your face. Let the body be as an open cup. And please be so tender, so patient with yourself, whatever experience you’re having. Slowness. Patience. Space. Abiding. Merging.
We lose touch with yin to the extent that our environment doesn’t nourish and feed us in just the right way. When we have to protect against things, when we have to stretch further than what’s easy as young beings to get something that we need, we leave the deep rest and nourishment of yin to effort. When there’s no company to soften open again through tears, through trusting, we forget yin and we harden. And we create a kind of rigid strength, shielding ourselves, and unconsciously pushing ourselves without respite. Deep yin becomes a stranger to us.
Yin is healing, deep, deep healing. The waters of yin, of rest, of death, of gravity, call us down and call us open, to be rocked, to be renewed, to rest. For some of us the closest we get to true yin is exhaustion, when we finally stop. We finally soften when we have run ourselves into the ground. And if you notice any exhaustion in your body right now, I invite you to tune into it and its feel of heaviness. Let yourself not hold anything up. Let yourself simply float.
A core part of what I teach is the restoration of yin, of being, of softening, of sinking into zero, inactivity, receptivity and thus living from being. As much as I can talk about it, and talk to you from it, from tenderness, from stillness, from resting, from dissolution, this sinking down yourself (with any necessary guidance and holding) is far more instructive than anything you could read or hear. That you could feel in your body a softening, a mercy, the warm touch of loving company, an invitation out of alienation into a sweet welcoming embrace that needs nothing from you. And that you could be energetically rocked in that.
At first we need to know that someone has our back, that someone has the door, that someone has the yang aspect covered so that we can soften open. We need to be able to lean into another being’s energy, whether it’s a tree or a human, and feel that place where we feel weak, soft, like a flower petal, a slender waif, to lean into something solid. So as you imagine the solid walls of the holding womb, imagine a moment where you are not going to be dropped, you are not going to be poked, you are not going to be left, you are not going to be forgotten, but held in conscious, deep, tender regard. Let yourself love it.
There is a sweetness to softening and tenderizing. This is the first level of coming out of the grip of the over-yang stance of rigidity and over-activity our culture models. To ease the system into softening is no small thing. Sometimes we need help: massage, cranial-sacral work, being floated in a hot spring, a cozy bed, a heavy fuzzy cat, someone to hold us, a conscious sinking of our felt experience into every inch of our body. Tears soften us, shaking fear out of the body softens us. The physical act of bodily softening is a metaphor for the entire apparatus of the human doing to soften open into being. To dissolve in unity, to melt into the ocean of consciousness.
As you soften, I invite you to relax your organs: your heart, your liver, your stomach, your intestines, your kidneys. Let them all soften. Let your body become energetically porous and imagine your cells exchanging with the energies and air that surrounds you. You can even picture each of your organs being rocked in the arms of the Beloved. Your heart can be rocked and sung to, your belly can soften out of the grip of fear and harshness into a reflection of Beloved-ness, of preciousness. Now the Holy can find you and soak your body in Love through your felt awareness.
I had a dream some years ago that felt like an offering to us all. I dreamt I was in a room in the basement of a student’s house, where I have held some events. The room was pitch black and I was absorbed in meditation, dissolved in the darkness. My eyes were open, my body was still, and I was floating as this luminous beautiful dark, dissolved and blissful. Halfway upstairs on the landing, I heard my student talking with an elderly professor and his wife who were very dear people to her. She really wanted me to meet these people, but I was transfixed by the beauty of my experience. Nevertheless, my love for her had me rise to join them. I started to ascend the stairs, my eyes still open as they met the light, but I was visually blind from the dark that had dilated my pupils. As I walked, all I could see was the beautiful darkness. Despite my body’s movement, I was still softened and dissolved.
As I walked sightless I thought, “Surely my eyes will become accustomed to the light by the time I reach them.” The sense was that I would need some level of active principle with which to meet them, even if it was as subtle as simple sight. However, as I continued my ascent, my pupils were not narrowing from their wide open state. I remained absolutely blind, residing in darkness, utterly receptive. Not even the yang of sight, never mind of any faint sense of personhood or agency rose. My eyes were huge windows into the dark, my body and being entirely dissolved and open, and this is how I met them at the landing. I held their hands. They could look into me. I was only dark receptivity, utterly surrendered to it.
There was a sense when I woke that I had been shown that it was possible to move through the world, including in relating, utterly surrendered to and in trust of this radical level of receptivity, of blissful dissolution in the dark Beloved. That it might be time for this loveliness to enter into the everyday world through us, through the one who reenters life from the hidden protection of the darkest room in the basement to the landing where this could meet others as no one, as nothing, as darkness, as utter receptivity.
The only thing that helps us to feel strong enough, protected enough, and safe enough to show ourselves in this yin, is the embodiment of the Holy, the reclaiming of Holy ground, of Holy breath, of Holy love infiltrating every cell of the body, noticing the places that are crying out in us, and bringing the Holy’s tenderness there. Whether we borrow another being or a tree, we can seek out every tight fist that lives inside of us and let it feel ground and warmth and a regard that lets it know it’s precious, it’s safe, it’s wanted, it’s lovely, it’s alright. It’s alright to emerge. Slowly we can grow strong enough to live this open.
We need strength. We need the capacity to act and to move, to stand for things, to create structure. This is yang and it can balance yin in a beautiful integration. Ideally this yang, rather than being a rigidity that grows out of fear, grows organically out of this softened open resting in the ground of being. Then yang gathers like sparkling energies from the roots of a tree, rising from this great ground of being, tiny roots through the whole body collecting Divine energy, so that it might travel up our roots into our bodies and express itself as clear action. But before yang can rise in such a beautiful and organic way, it needs the nourishment and support of grounded yin, of resting in being.
Yin flows when we are supported enough to soften out of fear. The minute our attention moves ahead of the moment, the body can start to tighten, unconsciously protecting itself as it realizes that its sovereign, consciousness, is not staying at home. In this call to return here, soft and open, I am calling you to yin. I am calling you to dissolve in this amniotic fluid of the Beloved that surrounds you. Give yourself back to the ground, return whatever you have built, whatever you think you are, whatever has formed, to the dissolving sweetness of this darkness.
The beauty of the healing property of yin is that it will leave nothing behind, nor skip over anything. It does not require anything to leap over or out of its developmental cocoon or womb until it’s fully formed and drops out in its own organic timing. This organic wisdom is the domain of yin. Everything is seen without judgment, whether it’s newly born on wobbly legs, learning and loud, extra awkward in its teenagerhood, or fully formed, aging, rotting, falling to the ground, or utterly still as a seed. All is embraced in the arms of yin.
Yin and yang are meant to be dancing. Yin absolutely needs its partner yang. Because we have not had a balance or been held in a balance, our beautiful receptivity feels like something that we can’t reliably access, nevermind show or live from. Instead of an active, empowered, charged, alive and nourished receptivity, we have passivity or we have exhaustion. And instead of a beautiful strength that serves this knowing of surrendered, connected being, we have fear-based action that preempts the organic flow. And we have a rigidity inside of our bodies in place of strength.
When a being is born, it soaks in being. For nine months, it rests in dark liquid, resting and being. Nothing active required, entirely supported. After birth the baby is again held in arms, laps, safe places where it can get used to being in the world. Slowly we explore and grow strong, building capacities to support our wide openness with voice and action, and together the soft open heart and the mature capabilities integrate into a whole sturdy heart, connected and ready to maneuver in the world.
Same for any of the places where we want to reclaim our strength or our capacities. First the yin of softening into being, healing any stored up pain, finding ground in being, We’re rocked and dissolved, and allowed simply to be so that things can be birthed and strengthened through us organically. This requires held spaces where we can be supported to simply be, and safe as we try out new capacities in our own organic timing.
The maturing of yin includes a recognition of its value, of its ways. At first yin has no words, because our culture barely allows us to dip our toes into its depths, nevermind rest and resonate and saturate in its beauty. From there we can allow our minds and voices to surrender to what emerges from its depths. Yin shows up as gut feelings. When we hear someone speak from yin, we recognize its deep nourishing wisdom. Words come to yin as we become conscious of it and able to rest deeply into it, surrender our immature yang need to control, and open.
In my work, there is a container set for resting soft and open. A yang structure is built for yin to appear, for people to open, to download energy from a kind of open portal, like the pupil of an eye or the heart of a flower. We open to being and might feel sweetness pouring through. It’s the raw power of life. It’s the raw power of love. It’s deeply transformational.
It’s also deeply challenging for beings who are frightened of the gap. If it is not carried with an awareness, a respect and a wisdom, imbalances, harm and disruptions can occur. To turn on the high beams in an environment where that hasn’t been invited, either explicitly or energetically, is to drop a catalyst into an unwelcoming and potentially hostile setting. So I notice that the way that yin moves here is that it requires containment in order to show up at 100% strength. Containment for this is expressed in the way that we quiet ourselves at the beginning of meetings, the way that there’s a guided meditation to invite people to soften, the way yin is given the podium and those who have learned to recognize its gifts attend, the way the events aren’t drop-in, there is a certain structure. The voice of yin is given the authority to lead from being—this creates a vessel within which yin can be glorified for all of us, to come through us as portals, to drench us in its sweetness, and to invite us to open.
Frequently when I’m speaking, the depths of silence will have me drop everything–any train of thought, any sense of forward movement, and call me downward into simple, soft, wide open abiding. If we’re not aware of the beauty and power of yin, we will miss these invitations. We will fear we are losing our minds. We will work hard to get it up, to control. We will miss the way that it peeks out of its cave and spills its light. If we are looking for objects, if we are looking for discrete things, for actions, for content, for stuff, for reference points, we will miss the energetic, quiet revelation of yin in a child’s face, in a loved one who is about to tell us something vulnerable, in a weeping friend or an exhausted coworker.
When my daughter was young, her wisest utterances would be preceded by a kind of yin silence. You could feel the energy of it. There would be a hushed, charged a d pregnant quiet, and she would be sparkly and deep in her eyes. You might find yourself whispering. You would know that church was starting. Then she would say something from that depth, her words emerging from the source of a pure spring. The earth needs beings who can feel, see, know, and embody yin, being, the vibration of life, the sea of consciousness. Even before events are born, they arrive as energies. And when we are softened open, we can feel these energies and we can step into them, direct them for the good of the whole.
Yin rules my teaching. I give everything that I am to the dissolving waters of the moment, allowing yin to reclaim every cell of my body. I turn into a softened, open downloading station. If it has nothing for me, if it has no words, so be it, no words. If it has outrageous words, so be it, outrageous words. If it takes an hour to give birth to the beauty that it has prepared, so be it. And in between the bits of content, and sewn throughout is emptiness, what I call the dark. It invites us into our depths and welcomes everything to its breast – to be seen, to be known, to be embraced and welcomed home.
When we let our felt experience and the presence that is aware of it be paramount, our eyes can become soft, and our attention buried in our felt experience. The eyes become receptive–unfocused receptors–into which the visual field falls. We can feel our breath, our weight, the vibration in the bodies. We can let these words fall into our hearts, the contents of the moment fall into our silence. In this way we meet each other as being, as emissaries, wide open portals of the Beloved’s love. This to me is the most beautiful thing about yin: the dark, yielding openness charged with love. Anything that’s brought before it is blessed.
What if our planet, and the planets of our solar system, and all of the stars that we can see, are held in a dark womb? I invite you to picture every cell in your body like a mouth or an open hand, drinking the quiet, drinking the tenderness. Let anything in you that has forgotten that it’s precious look out from the safety of your own nest. Let it show itself with only tenderness to greet it.
Join me here. Soften open and abide as a field of invitation and embrace for whatever has been harshed on, whatever is hidden, whatever has been banished. Let this energy of loving emptiness reveal itself. Welcome to the dark, deep, womb heart of the Beloved: travelers, aliens, derelicts, homeless, desperate, in pain, terrified, agonized, stalked, raw, helpless.
From the heart of the universe, there, there, precious children. We are all her children.