Expanding Horizons



Great poetry moves us. It calls us to a deeper place within ourselves and can enable us to dwell there for a time. 

To dwell where we may attain new insight or allow whatever arises to be okay — be that; pain, fear, disruption, joy or distress.


For me, philosopher/poet David Whyte’s work invites such contemplation. He speaks eloquently of asking invitational questions. Questions which invite us to look deeper, to begin to see more clearly. To recognise that as humans we have a tendency to repeat the same questions, the same patterns. Patterns which can constrain or free.


All the great wisdom traditions invite deep exploration, inviting us to open into new questions, to see beyond what we have experienced. To ask if what ‘we know’ is real? Does it continue to serve us? Whyte speaks of threshold places — those times when we are uncertain what to do, which way to turn, how to address what is troubling us. He suggests these are the times to open ourselves to invitational questions, which have been waiting for us all along.


Mia Segal, a Feldenkrais practitioner, who trained first as an Alexander Technique teacher speaks of the art of questioning. Mia is clear that it is not about answers, but of being open to the questions. What am I attending to? Where is my awareness? What is it that constrains? Where or what can I release? 


Again and again, life offers us new challenges, opening us toward new knowledge, insight and growth. This experience can be ungrounding, a fearful place. We can feel adrift, untethered. 


I have lived and continue to cycle through such experiences as I move through life. Faced with significant new challenges in the last few years, I find refuge in and am guided by modern and ancient wisdom. The practices and philosophy of Insight meditation and yoga; poetry; inspiring podcasts (such as On Being) which asks deep, open questions and the somatic traditions of The Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais. 


These practices have provided me with many insights, eliciting a new sense of the ground, of allowing what is painful to emerge.  They allow me to dwell a little more easily in what is, as far as I am able at any moment. Each day I choose again to open myself to today’s ‘visitors’ (Rumi), to see how I may be reinforcing habitual patterns and open myself to new questions. 


To greater possibilities that lie beyond.  


                                      


1.  Whyte D, Everything Is Waiting For You, 2003, Many Rivers Press, USA

2.  The Art of Quesioning



Anne teaches yoga and the Alexander Technique in Boronia, Australia and online. If you are interested in finding new ways to experience yourself, to explore or encounter your life questions contact Anne to book a session. 


 more see Mindful Movement Education.


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