Relaxation, Royalty and Radiance

My most recent two clients were both talented young women who were, by the time they got to asking for a session, exhausted. I knew before I arrived at their home that they needed rejuvenation. One of them said she wanted to work on the next steps in her life after completing graduate school just a few days before she actually graduated. Listening to the fatigue in her voice, I said, how about if we start working with rejuvenation, and focusing on where you are, right now? Because this moment matters. The relief in her expression was more than enough to tell me that I had hit a particularly resounding chord.

Too often we try to move too fast. I am including myself in this critique - quite a number of difficult situations in my life arose from moving too fast, and not paying enough attention to where I was and what I was actually doing. And the result is, too often, that I missed where I was.

So what happened when I focused on rejuvenation and being-here-now in the context of Sacred Bodywork?

To my surprise, in both sessions, I ended up treating them like royalty. I wrapped them in blankets so that they were warm and felt protected (both sessions were on unseasonably chilly days in New York City). I annointed them with oil, sang blessings over them, and rubbed their feet. With one lady, I read poetry by Thich Nhat Hanh. We told stories about princesses and Queens and what it meant to reconnect with the princess/Queen within us. They sighed, they dozed, they laughed. I laughed. We laughed together.

With both women, I felt I was touching some part of them that was royal - though both were "just" intelligent, caring young women finding their way through our crazy world. It made me wonder about the relationship to royalty, living in the moment, and rejuvenation. When we let ourselves be "pampered" - a word that itself is often associated with royalty/special-ness - we connect with our own royalty. Of course, there are many problems with royalty. I don't advocate monarchies as a political system to help us negotiate complex change brought about by climate change and the ramifications of generations of elitism.. But with both women, whether I was working on their feet or their head or their heart chakra, I was impressed with my own sense of how precious they each are. I remembered being a little girl and wanting to be the princess - something my parents, as best as they could from their middle class social position - indulged. It wasn't just about getting what I wanted. It was about feeling loved, cared for, and my own agency.

It is also, I now think, about rest. As adults, having moments of rest and being taken care of is critical. Being in the moment gives us access to deep rest, and even to a joy that can subsequently radiate from our selves when we are rested. Perhaps, when I saw their "royalty", I saw their "radiance" - something we often associate with royalty. Radiance is often associated with the Divine. The divine is often associated with royalty. And so the supposed wisdom of the king or queen is often associated with radiance - their power radiates from them, impacting and touching all in their kingdom.

My Quaker heritage - and many other traditions - holds that the divine spark is in each person. Some creative spark is in each being. Moments of radiance are possible for all of us, coming not (only) from an external power but also from within. (In another post, I'll go deeper into theologies of the dark and what it means to embrace the dark, but for this post, I'll focus on radiance.)

Rest can lead to radiance, an expression of the divine that for too long has been held by the elites alone. Maybe all of us are queens (etc) or maybe not. But I find that all of can radiate love and joy - and rest/relaxation is one of the key ingredients to making that possible.

And then what?

Does there always needs to be a "then what"? Radiating for the sake of radiating is enough.

And (not "but") - when we can radiate from within, the next step can become clearer. As well as a renewed sense of choice - where we are is, on some basic level, enough.