Plugged Into the Life Force

In Elysabeth Williamson's forthcoming book, Becoming Fully Human: How Learning To Feel Saved My Life, she recounts her journey of coming to terms with a difficult childhood and accepting her emotional nature. She shares how she came to understand herself better and how to "undo those patterns of challenging emotional states" in order to find peace. These were patterns laid down in childhood, when she developed "a lot of universal feelings of not worthy, not safe." Her journey has been a healing one, one that also has taught her that "whatever is happening, that's what's teaching us and that's what we're learning. We can either receive that graciously and gratefully, or resist and struggle and fight." 

Journey Into Yoga

For Williamson, a yoga teacher, there is no distinction between her personal and professional life journeys. "In my life, there really hasn't been a separation between the two," she explains in a recent episode of Leading With Genuine Care. 

Williamson has been teaching yoga for 35 years and pioneered a system of partner-based yoga outlined in her first book, Pleasures and Principles of Partner Yoga. She came to yoga after a few years of touring with a rock band. The experience of being in a rock band was "definitely a fantasy," she recalls, but underneath it all she had a desire to save the world and "music is a very unifying force." 

Still, at the age of 28, she returned to an early interest in yoga, wanting to make it a bigger part of her life.  At that time, yoga teacher training was harder to find than it is today, and so much of her training was self-taught. 

From the start, Williamson has sought to create community within her classes, having her students form a circle so they weren't separate from her or each other. Gradually, she started forming her own approach to yoga, diverging from the trend that made yoga athletic and competitive. Instead, she focuses on connection and has developed a body of work where students do movements in partnership with each other. 

Her main motivating question is, "How can we experience ourselves through postures?" She teaches an inclusive style of yoga, seeking to provide anyone with an experience of yoga, or union, its root principle. 

Yoga as Universal 

Williamson explains that children often instinctively move into the same poses yoga students learn. She believes yoga postures resulted from people's instinctive response to the world around them: "I sense that humans looked at the natural world and wanted to absorb the energy of the animals, the trees, or the mountains." 

Similarly, she sees yoga as encompassing both the masculine and feminine. The principles of yoga are "really universal qualities of humanity," she explains. These qualities include compassion, love, trust, and balance. Yoga is "like plugging into life force."

Williamson strives to create a space where people can relax, so she sees that one of the primary jobs of a yoga teacher is to create a safe space. Students in her classes are called upon to be authentic and vulnerable, so it's important that teachers set clear boundaries: "Our job is to be very clear about what we're doing and what we're not doing." 

This is even more important in a partner yoga class. While many students come with a partner, it can often be more powerful to do yoga with someone you don't know and make a connection with them. "We keep hearing about the importance of connection," Williamson says, "yet where are the tools?" This is why she continues to teach this practice, because she sees how powerful it can be. 

Exploring Death 

Williamson also facilitates classes and retreats on the topic of death and dying. There has been increased interest in people coming together to explore the topic of death. Surprisingly, people find joy in having a space to explore death and dying. "Like human connection, death is something that touches everyone," she says. 

She starts with a circle where people share their thoughts and feelings. She also incorporates some partner yoga. In one exercise, she has one person guide another into savasana, "corpse pose," where a person lies still on the floor. The person is then guided with questions that challenge them to think about how they would want to experience death. She also includes transformational questions and deep listening in these classes. She's not trying to teach any particular beliefs, but to encourage people to "unwind" their beliefs. She notes that she's asked attendees who are atheists why they come. They've answered that it helps to give their lives meaning. "If exploring death gives our life energy and liberates us to being more fully alive," she says, "it's a worthy exploration." 

Williamson observes that death is a "great connector" and that simply having a conversation about it is powerful. She acknowledges the feelings of fear and panic that often accompany discussions and thoughts about death. "It's a very primal fear of annihilation. . . Whatever level of willingness we have to turn and face that, rather than deny it, that's the doorway to liberation." 

Ultimately, she explains, the purpose of these sessions is "softening the fear and denial around death." Many wisdom traditions incorporate meditations on death because they are profound practices and "a great opportunity for awakening." 

Williamson has experienced this for herself when faced with her brother's suicide and her mother's death. She trained in hospice work and attended to her mother when she was dying. Her mother was mentally ill and addicted to drugs for much of her life. She hoped to "help her mother die consciously." But what she learned is that "we tend to die the way we live." The key to a peaceful death is to live a life that feels meaningful. 

Practicing Forgiveness 

One issue that comes up in her teachings around death is forgiveness. The power of forgiveness is to release oneself from the victim role. Williamson shares that her mother's death taught her that how she'd been treated wasn't personal, that it had nothing to do with her own worth. "It was layers upon layers of letting go. And then there came a minute when I just saw . . . it was like a veil being lifted . . . It had nothing to do with me. I was the one making myself a victim." This insight helped her to move to forgiveness and freedom.

"Ultimately, I do believe it's all self-forgiveness," Williamson explains. "We're telling the story, and a lot of the stories can feel very real." We don't want to "hang out" in these feelings; through forgiveness of others and ourselves, we can come to a deeper level of acceptance and compassion. Self-forgiveness is an important step in coming to peace with death. "At the end of our life, we're at a moment when we ask, can I die in peace, knowing I loved as best I can, let go and forgave?" 

The conversation with Elysabeth Williamson continues on the Leading with Genuine Care podcast, where we talk more about yoga, relationships as a spiritual practice, death and dying, and more.  Connect with me on Twitter and LinkedIn and keep up with my company imageOne. Check out my newest book or some of my other work here.