(Pigeon Pose- Helps increase mobility in your legs and hips. Deeper stretch in the inner  groin, thigh, and hips. Small backward bend and push your torso up with your arms to open heart center. This is one of my favorite yoga poses.)

I want to take this moment to thank everyone for their feedback on my previous entry, you guys have touched my heart in ways you can’t imagine. I really appreciate all the kind comments and to those who opened up to me about their own experiences. Thank you for sharing your story with me. Sharing is empowering, it takes courage to open up, it’s much harder than just reading some else’s story. Whenever someone opens up to me, I feel honored, flattered even, being able to gain their trust to open past doors. You learn a side of someone that you never knew and begins to understand why they are the way they are.

Knowing you are not alone is very important and most of time we don’t actually need someone physically next to us to make it all better. Sometimes we don’t need anyone to try and help us fix the problem, we just want an open ear that listens but does not speak. We are not looking for solutions, we know what needs to be done but are just having a hard time. There are reasons why people keep their problems to themselves, mainly because we don’t want to talk about it. Why? Because talking about it isn’t going to make a difference, let alone waste energy and everything still sucks. Once in a blue moon we might want listeners but are afraid of judgements, opinions, directions, and a bunch of comments. We want to share because we are trying to save ourselves, to express our minds so our thoughts do not swallow us. We are not looking for opinions on how to live life or handle the problems. Simply put, we just wanted to let it out for the sake of speaking it out loud.

Silence is louder than words. Listen just to listen and not listen with the intention to respond.

I remember back in college, I had a classmate in acting class. We were working on my project together (I think…I can’t recall correctly or not) and we went to grab lunch together. It was a very brief lunch break but we shared an intimacy that I didn’t expect and was caught off guard. We were talking about food one moment and the next thing I knew she was sharing one of her deepest personal experience with me. She told me she used to suffer from anoxia. She was still very thin and food was a sensitive topic to her. She opened up to me and I listened to the glimpse of her life. She said she was trying her best to eat but nothing was working until one day she ended up in the hospital and stayed in therapy for years after that. Now she doing a lot better she said. She described her reasons and I’m not going to go indepth with it but she said she was also in depression.

When I was listening to her, I felt a different type of connection to her, like I understood where she was coming from. Why she was in a dark place and just couldn’t pull herself out. Listening to her made me fluster with emotions that I buried deep inside. We don’t want to be depressed, no one wants to be dull, we didn’t put ourselves there intentionally. We fell and fell hard. We couldn’t stand up or at least not yet.

So next time when we talk to someone we should be careful with our words. Instead of asking why do you feel that way, ask opening ended questions such as what made you feel…how did that make you feel. A sentence starting with the word WHY makes it feel like an attack, an insult, as if you did something wrong, purposely. Even if you didn’t mean to insult that person. They need to feel safe to share their emotions with you. Don’t force it, just let it be.

We all want to be there for the ones we love, we just need to learn how…

Lots of Love (lol),
D