Secret Power

People like Butch fanned my desire to study Yoga Therapy and Stress Management through yoga. When it was time for deep relaxation, Butch’s body was so rigid it actually annoyed me at first. Lots of different thoughts ran through my head. No job is worth that! What kind of childhood caused this? What do you have to hide? Who are you angry with?

The powers of observation, according to Patanjali’s Sutras, cannot be overstated. Not just observation in the sense of sight, but in observing all the senses and the sense of energy within and without. This training of the observation begins with one’s own self, and if you can get through that, the powers of observation can offer a world of information. Just by the way a person walks or carries himself/herself, one can often understand something about what is happening in that body, maybe even in that life.

So when Butch consistently failed to relax the body in any sense of the word, I became curious about what would drive a person to this degree of tenseness.

This inquiry, of course, led me to my own experience of holding tension inexplicably in the body. Overbearing religion? Relational abuse? Extreme shyness? As I thought about the options, the answer was simple. The secrets in our lives can often keep us in the flight or fight syndrome (eventually wearing out the adrenal glands, by the way). Frederick Buechner discusses at length the telling of these secrets in his excellent book, Telling Secrets. His advice? Release the power of those secrets by telling them.

I understand the power of secrets very well. As a child who grew up in the midst of a highly-publicized, lengthy, and hostile divorce, I understand the fear of someone recognizing your name from the newspapers. When I was old enough to think I had any control over my life, I did everything I could to distance myself from the recognition, pretending to be ignorant of the whole ordeal. Being the level-headed 20-year-old that I was, I even joined a religious cult thinking that would solve some of my problems. Ha-ha. But I could never escape that haunting feeling that people wanted to ask questions or worse, that people felt sorry for me.

It wasn’t until years later that first shield against the truth broke exposing my innocence. That light came on after reading an article about such things in, of all places, a Readers Digest. How many children of divorce grow up to finally realize that they were not a part of their parents’ problems? In the midst of the war parents forget to let the kids in on this little secret. The article even mentioned us as a group, as in group therapy: Adult Children of Divorce or ACDs. Sounds like an illegal amphetamine.

The cracking of that first outer shell can open layers of emotion that have years of pain to muddle through. It seems easier to stop and close the door here. It may be more difficult, but it is far more rewarding to work through the secrets, working through being the appropriate concept. That fear of the truth has authentic pain to it, but facing that pain encourages you to a broken wholeness, a quirky authentication that quantum physics will validate (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). Or think of that broken wholeness of Jacob’s encounter with the angel, limping happily as he left the battle, the injured winner. Or Arjuna questioning Krishna, then going on to live his life as usual but with new life on the inside. Surviving to live this new life is the only way to win. Opening up the secret is powerful, giving that power back to you while birthing a new you.

At first, I really got angry with the Divine for forcing me into situations where I was compelled to discover me, openly laying out my secrets. However, I have ended up laughing at the ridiculousness of my fragile ego, finally relaxing into the injurious truth. Broken but happy and, quite honestly, feeling more whole nonetheless.

Occasionally, when observing yoga students in deep relaxation, I’ll see a smile, a twitch, or on very rare occasions, a grin. The magic has worked again. Someone has released a secret, glimpsed the truth in its compelling absurdity. I have no expectations, of course, that Butch will grin during deep relaxation, he smiles so rarely anyway. But maybe one day I’ll get to watch him relax into his new truth and see that physical rigidity turn into softness, releasing a bit of mental anguish.