Be a River

I hope you all had a nice long weekend and a wonderful Easter to those who celebrate. Last week a friend of mine was sharing a revelation she had regarding the chance to free herself of trauma that she had been holding onto. She said “I am a river, not a container”.What she meant by this statement was that she was learning to let the things that serve her stay while letting the rest flow through her. 

I thought about that proclamation often in the days after our conversation and I began to notice the opportunities in my own life to “be a river, not a container.”  In both small ways… the everyday annoyances that we allow to “put us in a bad mood” to the bigger baggage of people in our lives that we allow to be deposited in us, that opportunity presents itself all the time if we are paying attention to it. 

The river is a powerful metaphor for how we move through life. Rivers evolve and change; at times they are not more than bumbling brooks and at others they are wide and rushing powerful forces of nature. They twist and turn; and with PATIENCE and PERSISTENCE they can cut through mountains to create valleys. Their currents run in all different directions at different times and at spots along their path there are even places where their current appears to be moving upstream or swirling around seemingly heading nowhere. 

This is us. We are not always (or often) headed in a straight line, rather our journey twists and turns and curves and we may find ourselves headed upstream fighting resistance at times. However just like the river always finds its way through, we have the chance to do the same. 

As the river flows, it deposits what it needs and lets the rest continue on. We have this power as well and this is what we practiced on the mat last week.  I asked my students to let go of expectation and resistance and to “find a flow” that worked for them. Taking what they needed and letting the rest flow through, softening into resistance to allow some of it to release and allowing their journey to be what they needed it to be, even if it was resting in childs pose. 

With patience and practice we can truly learn to “be a river, not a container.” By starting small with the things we find that set us off, over time we will begin to observe the power we have to take the learning that serves us from the challenges we meet and let the rest flow through.