Look, I know some of you don't/didn't have wonderful and loving relationships with your Dads. But on this Father's Day, I challenge you to be brave enough to try something. I believe very strongly that for most of us, our parents' intentions in bringing us into the world were overwhelmingly positive. As I said in my last post Come What May, once I saw through their eyes "the pure, unadulterated impulse to create life and to love, and that I was the recipient of this human urge, the outcome of this miracle of nature", it forever changed the way I perceived them as my parents.
Even though my pre-Valentine's Day post, How Do I Love Thee?, considers primarily maternal and romantic love, I believe that the yin and the yang exist in all love relationships. The epiphany that I can love my parents, children and partner unconditionally and yet not sacrifice who I am and my own needs by having boundaries in all relationships was incredibly liberating for me. That, and standing in my parents' shoes and really trying to channel the primal love instinct that led to my creation.
It was a visualization facilitated for me at a workshop years ago that really turned my head around about my parents. And I'd like to re-create my version of that experience for you today as you honor or grapple with (or both) your own relationship with your father. Accessing transformation of any kind through the body first which will, in turn, create an opening for our habits of mind to expand and change. The most effective tool for doing this is breathing meditation.
1. Sit comfortably but erect, easy in the body, energy up and out the top of the head. You can learn the proper mechanics of diaphragmatic breathing on my post Umbrella Breathing.
2. Breathe into the belly becoming aware of the sensations in your body as you scan and relax from the top of the head to the toes. Practice breathing until it feels automatic and your body is relaxed on the outside, awake and energized on the inside.
3. I'd like you to picture your parents at whatever age you were born. Reconstruct the scene from photos and stories and picture them in great detail-- what they might have worn, where they might have been living, the time of year, etc. Breathe in the essence of your parents at their happiest together.
4. Now imagine the day your Mom told your Dad she was pregnant with you. Play out the scene in great detail; the joy on their faces, the way they embraced and felt their excitement at the prospect of having created you and of bringing you into the world and into the family.
5. Picture your parents through different stages of the pregnancy-- hearing the heartbeat for the first time,feeling you kick, watching you grow inside your mother right up to the day of your birth when your Mom went into labor and your father likely drove her to the hospital and stayed by her side waiting for the moment when you entered the world and took your first breath.
6. Visualize the look on their faces when they first laid eyes on you, their excitement at naming you and the day they brought you home from the hospital and lovingly cared for you and protected you from harm. Take a moment to tap into your earliest memories of their faces smiling at you and the words and tone of voices that communicated their sheer love for you and their desire to teach you all you needed to know to become the person you are today.
As you celebrate this Father's Day, whether your parents are with you or not, embrace the pure and loving instinct that brought you into the world. And in spite of any mistakes or imperfections that emerged along the way, stay with this fact of nature-- that for most of us, the origins of our existence came from the most basic of human instincts to love and to create. Such is Life.
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