(dis)comfort levels

On the day I got the Reiki Attunement, we had to do some group-type things that required us to close our eyes.

For some most people, closing eyes in a group can be very uncomfortable.  Especially when you are closing your eyes and doing something you've never done before.  There is that overwhelming temptation to peek, just to see if you are doing it right. And an even more overwhelming temptation to peek and look how stupid everyone else looks.

(hint: Never Peek.  If you keep your eyes closed and just do what feels right and natural, you are doing everything correctly and the people who are peeking will think you are the bizzy and do exactly what you are doing, making everything that feels right and natural to you feel right and mostly natural to everyone who looked to you and saw you with your eyes shut and doing what your body does all by itself)

I was pretty lucky because I was in a room full of people that I sort of know.  People who work in Parenting under the same City Money that I work under. People who I look up to, people who have the same underlying philosophies about being parenting professionals and parenting educators and just plain old parents.
And one other girl who was really cool and turns out she lives in my neighborhood so I can't wait to be better friends with her and I fingers-crossed hope she doesn't google my name and find this blog and read this and think I'm crazy because now I'm blogging about her and what if she never returns my calls or the email I sent to her saying I'm available for coffee or for lunch whenever she is because I'm pretty flexible especially if she doesn't mind an almost six year old tag along.  Her hair was really pretty too, and she kept doing that thing where the pony tail goes out and the pony tail goes back in and sometimes it's up high and sometimes it's down low and it was really all just follicular magic.

Anyway.  I'm usually pretty comfortable closing my eyes in front of people, thanks to improv and attending so many squishy warm warm professional development classes and City Funded parenting classes (I know I've reached a certain level of comfort within the universe when I can be locked into a room full of untethered maximum security prisoners and shut my face down completely.  Good or bad, you be the judge) and other stuff where they make you close your eyes and last Saturday at the Reiki Attunement wasn't much different.

But I did something I've never done before there in a circle with my eyes closed and my hands clasped around two others'.  I chanted, along with the entire group doing the same, my own name.  Starting out really quietly, like a whisper.  Then spoken, then sung. 

Sung the way you might sing your baby's name, the way your name probably hasn't been sung since you were a baby. 

It was pretty powerful.  And really super unnatural for me and really hard to do and my voice choked up and hardly came out and I'd like to try it again but I want an empty house and a finger or two of something strong and I'd feel much better if maybe the neighbors aren't home either, just in case they hold glasses to the wall or whatever.

Honoring yourself as someone who is loved and cherished and wanted and valuable and precious and and and is really outside of the everyday spectrum of normalcy.  For me at least.