Love with Curiosity

Love with curiosity unblemished by judgement or the desire to control is a love that can grow and last.

Conditional love is actually commerce- I will give or feel affection if /when you do this or provide that.  Authentic love is a clear stream that doesn't condem the rocks and twigs in its path- it just continues to flow.

Love that is waiting for a person to change or bloom is nearly disrepeactful. "I am here ready to love you, when you grow up, get a job, stop doing this, start doing that, express yourself to me more clearly, know what I want , learn what I need" etc. Loving someone's (potentially) future self is using up their present with your desired future.

Love that is authentic; curious about the changing nature of a person, giving them (and yourself) room to grow is a rare and beautiful thing. The now YOU loving the now THEM with respect and honor. 

This is as true with another as it is between you and yourself. Love your present self with curiousity, the invitation to grow without demand or trajectory.

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But the desire for knowledge has another form, belonging to an entirely different set of emotions. The mystic, the lover, and the poet are also seekers after knowledge… In all forms of love we wish to have knowledge of what is loved, not for purposes of power but for the ecstasy of contemplation… Wherever there is ecstasy or joy or delight derived from an object there is the desire to know that object — to know it not in the manipulative fashion that consists of turning it into something else, but to know it in the fashion of the beatific vision, because in itself and for itself it sheds happiness upon the lover. This may indeed be made the touchstone of any love that is valuable.

​ - Bertrand Russell​

Kyczy Hawk
Upcoming book November 2017: "Yogic Tools For Recovery: A Guide to Worksing the Twelve Steps" by CRP. 

Focus And Intimacy

Some of you may know that I deactivated my FB account. As I told a dear friend of mine- it was all about ME not THEM. No one had hurt me. I am able to scroll by the unpleasant, the challenging, and the ludicrous. I just couldn't take it anymore.

I had fired myself a while ago and I found it a relief but then I jumped back in. And I was glad- right after the March I found out that we could lift one another and that was good. In reviewing posts I can move toward the healthy and the healing. I can avoid the traps of gossip, negativity and even let go of comparison as people share about the "Side A" of life- imagining that that were the whole story- forgetting about the unlovely "Side B'.

But even that wasn't it. It was the idea that a scroll and a "like" might mean true intimacy, friendship or even genuine support. I have felt like a fraud when someone has come up to me with all the joy and openhearted acceptance of a long time friend- someone I don't recognize- and discover we have been friends on FB for five years. I am disconsolate. I am a fraud.

I yearn for true friendship- one that takes effort, one that requires the reservation of a block of time to talk, to share a meal or a call. I feel isolated even when I run through the feeds activities from others, I am alone in front of my screen truly WASTING away, wasting time that I could spend in the company of a human.

I am afraid that the distraction of FB and other social media (Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and all of them) keep me isolated and "the part that is heartbroken at the loneliness and isolation of the life we are living—the part that requires medication and constant distraction just to endure it." may indeed be rekindled. 

I don't want to risk emotional relapse by being so lonely it hurts and so isolated I look to shopping, scrolling / trolling, mindless eating and so on to fill the hole. 

I need my spirit back.

There's a tension between the part of us that wants to move along at speed, infatuated with our ever-proliferating array of screens and gadgets, and the part of us that deeply hates them, too. There's the part that doesn't want to be bothered with other people's lives and is therefore comfortable with the false proximity that social media affords. But there's also the part that is heartbroken at the loneliness and isolation of the life we are living—the part that requires medication and constant distraction just to endure it.

- Clark Strand, "A Gleeful Foreboding"

Kyczy Hawk RYT E-500

Author of “Yoga and the Twelve Step Path” , “Life in Bite-Sized Morsels” and “From Burnout to Balance” she continues to submit articles to recovery and yoga oriented publications. She is currently completing her next book for Central Recovery Press:”Yogic Tools for Recovery: A Guide for Working the Twelve Steps”.

Kyczy has been teaching recovery focused yoga classes since 2008.  Taking the foundation of a traditional yoga training she received from the Lotus Yoga Teacher Association (of the Himalayan Yoga Institute), she has combined the wisdom and inspiration from other teachers along the way creating S.O.A.R.™ a program to help prepare yoga teachers to bring the practice to people in recovery.  

You can join Kyczy and a host of other people in recovery every Sunday morning at 8am PT (11 am ET) on In The Rooms for the Yoga Recovery meeting.

Kyczy is very proud of her family; husband, kids, and grandkids, all who amaze her in unique and wonderful ways. More about her work can be found at www.yogarecovery.com.