Embodiment and the Enneagram
"Drop the story and find the feeling." --Pema Chödrön
A few weeks back I had an amazing professional opportunity to travel to England with a work team from the US. They were doing an offsite work retreat in a castle (!), and I got invited to come along and facilitate wellness offerings. I led group sessions in the morning and late afternoon, and made myself available for private sessions in between. The people were brilliant and engaging. The food was decadent and nourishing. The setting was nothing short of magical. Every evening I went to bed feeling a little jet lagged but also full up on the richness of the day. I felt grateful and fulfilled.
My initial flight home got delayed just long enough that I missed my connecting flight. I wanted to be home. I wanted to see my kids. I didn't want to miss the wedding shower I was supposed to be throwing my brother at my house the next day. As a very nice Iceland Air employee booked me on the same flight one day later and got me set up with taxi, hotel, and meal vouchers, I started to cry, and was a little surprised to find I had no resources left inside to pull myself back together. It wasn't until I was alone and dropped my bags on the floor of my hotel room that I got full access to my body and my feelings. I turned toward myself and got access to my needs. A wave of fatigue hit me. I was so tired. I slept for twelve hours straight. And when I woke up, I stayed under the covers with a novel, Kleenex, and a water bottle, gently tending to the needs of my body.
The story I had been telling myself as I was joyfully tending to others was, "I'm fine. I'm great." When I found the feeling, the story became, "And I'm tired."
We are always telling ourselves stories. We are always telling ourselves stories about ourselves. And because it is is constant, we can forget that we are telling ourselves stories, and we can forget that those stories may night be true or helpful. I think about this all the time. I wrote a book about it. And I still forget. Practices like meditation help us remember. We can step behind the story and observe it. We can notice it. We can parcel out if it is true and if it is helpful. We can allow it to arrive and fade.
The longer I've been on my re-embodiment journey of healing toward wholeness, the more I remember that our thoughts can lie but our bodies are incapable of lying. And often our bodies know the truth before our minds do. So in seeking truth, part of the work is to engage in practices that bring us back home to our bodies so that we can find the feeling.
I love Pema and appreciate the mantra abover. For me, the order matters. I struggle to drop the story first. But when I find the feeling, the untrue story sloughs off with ease. It was yoga teachers years ago who introduced me to the idea. In class, they'd say, "Drop the limiting story" during a peak in class or during a forward fold, "Let the story you have been hanging onto fall off the top of your head." I dropped some of the stories without even fully realizing it just by putting my body into these ancient shapes and feeling fully. Mostly, I had no idea what they were talking about. Years later, I know that if I engage in my embodiment practices (breath, yoga, writing etc), the story I have been telling myself will become clear and available to drop.
For me, instead of "Drop the story and find the feeling" it is "Find the feeling and drop the story." Order matters. In the hotel in Iceland, when I found the feeling, I found a more true story.
I am an Enneagram 2, which means I easily get swept up in other people's feelings and then act from those feelings. In the Feeling/Thinking/Doing triangle, I am thinking repressed. I can get stuck in the feeling and doing loop, and productive thinking doesn't show up often until I come to a full stop. Twos try to be in relationship with everyone. We think we are responsible for everyone, and we like to be needed. So in the castle, I attempted to connect deeply with all of people, tending to their needs and feeling their feelings. I loved it, and then when I came to a full stop, I realized that while building a nurturing, playful, safe place for them to belong, I let my own needs take a back seat without even noticing.
Because I tend to be thinking repressed as a Two, thinking about my thinking might not be the easiest entry point to embodiment. Feeling my feelings, however, can lead me there. For some other folks, it might work best to drop the story and find the feeling. For me, it looks like finding the feeling and then dropping the story.
Then, once I am in my mind and my body, thinking, feeling, and doing, I can use my ability to feel as an advantage and remember to feel my feelings as well as the feelings of others. I can carve out alone time to take a full stop and assess my needs, too. I can build mutual relationships that do not lead to burnout.
Looking back, the yoga classes when I had some emotional breakthroughs were the ones led by teachers fully committed to specific, interesting body cues to keep me in my body. Finding the feeling and staying with the feeling made it possible to drop the story. I remember this as a yoga teacher now myself, holding space for folks to return to the sensations in their bodies as a way of knowing, and as a tool of discerning which stories are truly theirs to keep.
What practices work for you to come back home to your body and find the feeling? Does thinking, feeling, and/or doing tend to be your entry point to accessing all three and experiencing wholeness?
Join me this August for a delectable retreat of rest and renewal:
Embracing Stillness In A Frantic World
Wild Rice Retreat Center
Join Twin Cities-based yoga therapist and ayurvedic health counselor Meghan Foley and yoga teacher and author Ellie Roscher in the beautiful woods of Wild Rice Retreat Center for a luscious weekend of cultivating quiet and calm.
August 15-18, 2024