Our Yoga Retreat coming up soon, 20/3 – 22/3/26: and a central part of our yoga practice will be to tackle the art of Forgiveness. This is a retreat about your resonance, your energy, your coherence and the health of your biofield – that subtle energy field that surrounds and permeates all living organisms, acting as an information and energy matrix that links mind, body, and spirit. A healthy biofield reflects overall well-being, and any anomalies or disturbances in your biofield potentially reflect an underlying illness.
An unforgiven memory is a burden, a dark spot in your biofield. The energy of non-forgiveness is low-frequency, dense energy that can manifest as a blockage or distortion in your electrical field. In Buddhism, non-forgiveness is often referred to as poison, trapping a person in a cycle of bitterness, anger, and resentment, consuming mental energy through rumination (replaying the offense), and leading to significant mental and physical ill health.
But the reality is that the act of forgiveness is hard, and for most of us sometimes impossible. The idea of releasing the incident and liberating yourself is fabulous in theory and our rational minds totally grasp this truth: forgiveness sets you free. So, we work at it (it can take years), think we are over the horrible traumatic incident and then bang, something triggers us, and all the horror of that terrible time comes back. We realise we haven’t actually forgiven anything, it’s still there, like an unwanted demon, lurking in the shadows. This is the reality for me and so many of my yoga students. Our rational minds and our loving hearts really resonated with practices like the Metta Prayer and Tonglen, but deep down we knew we had not quite untangled ourselves completely from that trauma.
And then I did a Tantric Shamanic Workshop where we were working with a fundamental Tantric teaching that the universe is interconnected and full of active, spiritual beings rather than just material things. A worldview, where we are all part of a vast community of spiritual entities and we interact with them through rituals, prayer, meditation and breath. It was during a meditation when I realised forgiveness was all about the victim reclaiming something that had been stolen from them through the traumatic incident. And the process of forgiveness was forgiving ourselves for letting this happen, for not seeing it coming, for been helpless and unaware or for actually perpetuating this horrible incident. What was stolen? Was it your dignity, your honour, your financial security, your trust or your innocence perhaps? And even if you were a co-conspirator of the trauma can you forgive yourself the shame, regret, embarrassment, remorse? All these energies are tangible, they have an electrical charge. So, in this process, we forgive ourselves for being human. We call back what was lost and reclaim our wholeness, the whole of our electrical being.
It’s an exciting workshop, very courageous and hugely empowering. Hope you can join us! Love and namaste Margot