A New Lens for Wounds

Last night during the opening of my 500-hour teacher training Grace said to make our wounds our wonder. And today while letting this land, I thought back to one of my favorite Kafka short stories, “A Country Doctor,” in which the doctor gets called in the middle of the night to treat a woman with a wound---her name means rose and he describes the wound with flower-like imagery. So I started thinking what if a wound is really a reflection of deep beauty but we don’t look at its potential. Priti shared a story about a woman who refused to even see her wound and chose instead to ignore it. It persisted for 8 months until a shaman told her to look at it and acknowledge and accept it. After a month of this practice, the wound disappeared. And so I think about how many of us carry our wounds, both seen and unseen, and when we do heal, how do we bring this healing to all of our subtle bodies---all koshes so that we can be more unified and integrated. The practice I really liked was to notice a feeling and say it is present, rather than to say I am that feeling. For example, doubt is present, rather than I doubt myself….in this way, even the languaging is about acknowledgement and acceptance instead of identification with a fleeting state of emotion---the chitta vrittis in yoga language, but instead find ease and breath in the compassionate observations of living.