Angel asked us an interesting question this morning. She wanted to know about our experiences of happiness during training months.
Many people answered along these lines: The time spent in class paying such close attention to movement habits and realizing you have more choices translates into realizing you have more emotional choices and can have more peace in your life because you don't act on impulse so much.
One person's answer: Happiness is a byproduct of the work we do, not something inherent in a training month.
I'm with that second person. I didn't give an answer in class because I needed more time to think about it, but maybe I'll say something tomorrow. If so, this is what I want to say. I think that looking for happiness during a training month is missing the point. The point of these 8 months, for me, has been to acknowledge the frustration, confusion, pain, terror, sadness, exhaustion, etc, this work brings up, figure out how to deal with it, and move on. There is happiness that can come during or after working through those things, but happiness is not my goal. I personally think happiness in essence is a little dull. I'd rather be a little unhappy but have interesting questions in my life to figure out. Wouldn't you?
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I think you can be happy and still have interesting questions to figure out. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat said, there are times in any given process when "happiness" is not really the primary experience, and that's just how these things work. Hopefully, though, you can always have some consciousness of the fact that, at some zoomed-out level, it is still ultimately a joyful experience.
The zoomed out view is extremely important, I agree. I just thought it was interesting that most of my classmates went straight to that view, missing the more day to day version of the question.
DeleteThese training months give me more time to reflect on my experiences, more time to appreciate the subtleties in my movements, my thoughts, and my own process. It delights me to have the opportunity to explore, to be inquisitive, and to learn new things within myself. The adventure I get to be on in my own body energizes the way that I experience the everyday, and it makes me happy. Happiness is in each moment that I'm present and in acceptance of my own experience. =) I don't see the point to being "unhappy"...happiness is the choice I make in each moment to honor where I am. =)
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