When Vulnerability Becomes Too Much of a Good Thing
A few days ago, I was updating a friend on how things were going in the yoga teacher’s training curriculum I’m currently enrolled in— how during our third weekend of a ten weekend course, things had gotten intense, weird even, when we dove into the world of Kundalini yoga and Dynamic Meditation.
The intensity, and weirdness, only escalated in an afternoon session, when the majority of the class — men and women, young and old, gay and straight — found ourselves crying, wailing, sobbing or teary-eyed throughout an hour of strenuous yogic training where we were pushed to the brink physically, mentally and spiritually.
In this moment of total defeat, fatigue and vulnerability, we were asked to come together in a circle, so each of us could, one-by-one, step into the middle of the circle and share one thing about ourselves that most others don’t know. This led to a wide-range of deeply saddening and tragic shares — people who had inflicted self-harm or experienced sexual abuse, rape, depression, crippling anxieties, loss, heartbreak, self-doubt, the list goes on.
I told my friend I’d participated as fully as I could. I’d teared up upon hearing others’ stories and even shared a piece of my past usually reserved for my closest friends and family. But I was taken aback by the whole experience — the exercise, the…
