Full Circles

Hi beautiful souls,

As I sat down to write to all of you, I noticed a tiny spider journeying across my windowsill. The great weavers of the animal kingdom, spiders symbolize creativity, harmony, and receptivity. It seems this sweet spider had a message for me to help me understand so many of the full circle moments that I’ve been experiencing lately.

I used to think of expansion as being linear, like climbing a mountain. We grow, and yes, sometimes we stumble, but ultimately we climb the mountains of our lives to reach the summit. Sometimes the path takes us up, sometimes down, sometimes even and steady for stretches that allow us to catch our breath. But ultimately, each step is a blaze forward on the path. What we traversed strengthens us, enriches us, helps us to better know the mountain (and ourselves). On this journey, we leave what was behind and keep reaching toward new terrain.

Yet these last couple weeks have me reflecting on all I thought was “complete,” and the serendipitous ways the past has re-emerged into the present. I’ve had the privilege of reconnecting with community, friends, and clients with whom I thought chapters were closed, lessons learned, karma complete. I’ve found myself in circumstances oh-so-similar to ones I’ve been in before, yet this time with fresher eyes and a wiser heart. These full-circle moments have me thinking about the cyclical nature of life. How we revisit the same places, people and circumstances again and again. Sometimes to see how far we’ve come, sometimes to see how close we always have been.
 

No beginning, no end

This is the work I’ve learned through healing too. In my own healing and with my clients, rarely is the process linear and a quick-fix. Many of us hold core wounds we revisit again and again, peeling through layer after layer. If we think one healing session or therapy visit or medicine ceremony is going to get rid of it, we’re in for a big disappointment. This work takes a deep commitment, a willingness to see the whole again and again. The healing is less about ridding ourselves of what we no longer want, but rather embracing it to learn from it,and working through it as a way to come home to our truest selves. But it's not all shadow. In the healing journeys, there is also much light. That too is cyclical. It’s not that we see a plethora of new gifts, more, more, more. Oftentimes we find what was always in us grows bigger and brighter the deeper we go. We come to see how our greatest lights permeate all circumstances and experiences.

It seems this sweet little spider had a message for me. Perhaps expansion isn’t about continuing to take steps upward, leaving behind the old and reaching toward the new. Perhaps expansion is about weaving an interconnected tapestry, tracing around and through as the web grows larger. Rather than the beginnings fading out of sight, they remain deeply embedded as a piece of the whole. Each person, each place, each circumstance becomes an integral piece of the whole of our journey. Always there, never left behind.
 

Let's practice!

Next week I'm off for another full circle experience, a revisit back to Italy exactly ten years after I first visited. Last time I was ticking off all the tourist ‘must-do’s during my first trip to Europe, and this time I’ll be there to celebrate love at a friend’s wedding, and revel in some much needed restoration in the Umbrian countryside. I can’t wait to see what mirrors this trip may have in store, for each journey always seems to hold much.

If you've been feeling the tug to come in again for a healing or a class, consider this your full-circle call! You can catch me for healings the first week of June and from the 18th onward, and for yoga + meditation practice at Good Space in Parkdale and the newly opened Quiet Company studio in King West. Save the date for the next Art of Intuition workshop, a two-part series July 17 & 24 at Health Hut, taking you deep into your light and all the wisdom that lies within you. Lastly, more scoop on my corporate offerings are below. This area has been yet another full-circle expansion for me, allowing me to weave together my history of experience, and share all the practices and tools that helped me stay mindful + zen in my own corporate days :) 

May June bring you many serendipities and much synchronicity, allowing you tointegrate all the beautiful pieces of you into a wide web of magic.

With love,
ayah