Are you Missing this Opportunity for Joy?

This spring and summer, I have been doing a lot of learning about cycles and rhythms in nature. I’ve been delving into how darkness flows into light, life shifts into death, and how winter springs into summer (I’m pretty proud of how I worded that last example).

I have gained an increasingly deep appreciation for the stiller, quieter, darker times, seasons, and qualities.

It has actually been part of my personal learning for the last decade or so, showing up in various sneaky, symbolic ways over the years. But I’m finally starting to put all the pieces together and have a deeper understanding of the importance of the ebb and flow of life’s tides.

My first lesson here happened at naturopathic medical school. Up until this point my social life was very strategic, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I’ve always been able to hang out with any group of people. I have a way of relating to all sorts. Throw out a social label, and I’ve hung out with them.

In university I had many groups of friends. Every weekend I’d have 2-3 different packs with which to play. Each group rarely saw me more than once per month. I got to be the effervescent woman who was always up and always positive. People loved my energy. They found my enthusiasm for life inspiring.

I was the life of the party.

When I moved to Toronto for naturopathic college I lived in the school residence, with several other out of towners. I went to class, studied, ate, lived, and partied with the same people, day in and day out. For the first time in my life, with the exception of my family, I was with the same group of people 100% of the time.

I no longer had a minimal time exposure strategy. I couldn’t get away from these folks. It became impossible to maintain my “constant” high-on-life, energy-overloaded, bubbly persona.

I was forced to meet a darker, quieter, more low key side of myself and I was not impressed.

“Down Tonia” I called her. I judged her, I disliked her, intensely. What value could she possibly have to offer? There is enough doom and gloom in the world. I didn’t need to contribute to it.

I missed Up Tonia.

She was just so darn likeable. She really could make a contribution with her, “Glass half full” this and her, “There’s always hope,” that.

What I believed at the time was energetic and extroverted traits were more valuable than pensive or quiescent ones. In fact I believed that society believed this as well.

And to some extent this is still true. Our culture attaches more value to “positive” emotions and states such as happiness, optimism, action, ambition, motivation, warmth and achievement. I loved Up Tonia. She had all these things going on.

In contrast stillness, subtlety, contraction, descendance and passivity are qualities that are generally perceived as lesser according to our culture. I know now that without them we wouldn’t have the movement, outwardness, expansion, drive or activity.

My current fascination, possibly even obsession, with opposites, constant change and integration started when Down Tonia slapped Up Tonia in the face and said, “Girl! You need to slow down and figure things out. There are some gifts down here in Quietland that you are missing out on. You keep ignoring me then I’m gonna be forced to make you stop.”

Which of course is what happened.

I burned out. Bad.

My main takeaway from that experience?

How we relate to ourselves and the world at different times in these cycles is not meant to be the same.

We can’t be up and happy all the time. It’s not the natural way of being. In nature, aka my greatest teacher, things aren’t always shiny and warm. With some rare exceptions on this planet, summer eases into fall, and day trickles into night.

I love the ebb and flow of the days, the months, the seasons, the years, of life in general, cycling away from and then back towards.

Over the years I’ve come to adore both (and all the other) Tonia’s, which feels better, more honest. I no longer see them as separate but just different points along a special spectrum, individual to me. They overlap, they mesh together, and they couldn’t exist without each other.

I couldn’t hold space to witness my patient’s pain with out my quiet essence. I couldn’t draw on my innate wisdom and sensitivity to allow healing to unfold with out my subtle energy body. These are truly precious gifts to me, and life would not be as rich with out them. When I sit present in these “darker” spaces there is a scrumptious joy that reveals herself.

Tweet that!

I love these qualities in myself as much as I love my lightness, my ability to laugh, hope and dance.

Here’s to the joy in your darkness, your jivin’ Health and thrivin’ Life,

Dr. Tonia

P.S. Leave a comment below, telling me what part of yourself could use a little more love or attention.