Online with Jeannie Zandi

"The beautiful organic cycle rules our lives on earth, rules our psyches... arising and unfolding, curling and drying, falling and sinking, and rising again. It’s not only a rising, not only a triumphing--it’s also a falling, a sinking, a surrendering, a giving over, an opening, a yielding.  It is a sonnet, it is a symphony, it is a prayer of praise. It is the way that light dances here on earth."

~Jeannie Zandi

Jeannie invites participants to drop attention into felt experience and let the body soften. She talks about Yin as sinking, softening, yielding--a return to the ground of being. Yin opens the door to the gap, to rest, to refueling, to nourishing, to sinking down and tanking up on the energies of ground, and to absorb light as our flesh softens open. She shares that yin is feared in our culture, which obscures its beauty and value and that these teachings of yin 

have far reaching implications for us personally, relationally,  collectively, and spiritually.

Exchanges

Exchange 1: Participant observes that the fear of yin in others inhibits her engagement with them. She finds few people want to be with deep and dark. She longs for reciprocation in expressing her love and celebrating these things. Jeannie acknowledges the longing to have our tribe and family meet us in these things. She encourages participant to allow the grief that can include the young often unmet need to be met, loved and beheld in our truth. They discuss movements away from being, the support of one's own embodiment, the need to address undigested trauma and conditioning, and the need to develop appropriate boundaries. Jeannie also shares that we need to tenderly hold our sensitivity and find the right environments, in nature or with a safe other, for it to be and for us to grow sturdy there.

Exchange 2: Participant asks about softening into exhaustion, expressing grief at having to function on top of the desire to soften and rest. Jeannie encourages participant to stay with the softening, discusses the fear of going down, and the value of spaces where this softening is welcomed. She acknowledges participant for the value to humanity of the forced yin initiation she is undergoing.

Exchange 3: Participant wants to experience the softness of saying hi and being with Jeannie. Jeannie encourages softening into the support of ground, and into feeling their own sovereignty and growing roots. They discuss how resting in the ground of being is quenching to the heart. Jeannie shares that the beginning of maturity is accepting being here human -- to come out of perfectionism into fallibility and humanness. Jeannie shares that hurt is part of the experience of being on earth, not a sign that something is wrong, and that hurt can be felt outside of any perpetrator/victim dynamic. 

Exchange 4: Participant shares anger toward immature Yang, as she settles into softness. She deeply values the feminine, children, and nature, and finds their pain heartbreaking. She also shares that she wants justice. Jeannie points out that hate is simply too much pain to feel and reveals a perspective of “no bad guy,” and the heartbreak of reckoning with the nature of live on earth. Unity, integrated yin and yang, is true power, is love. Jeannie shares that as confused as the world is, the Holy is in fine shape. As we plug into reality, we can walk in heaven, here but not of here. Something benevolent and lovely coexists with the struggles of earth and can become more and more accessible.