Post by Helena Roth on her upcoming series, “Doing Gentle With an Edge: An Exploration!”, starting on February 12th.
Bonus: Attendees will receive a copy of Helena’s book (e/audio) as part of the ticket price!
When do you Gentle? And when do you Edge?
In an ongoing conversation with a friend, we’ve started to use these words as verbs. He read Doing Gentle With an Edge in the summer, and since then we’ve been returning to the topic over and over. To gentle. To edge.
The key to knowing when and how to gentle and/or to edge lie in one of my favorite words: Discernment.
Twenty years ago, I would not have had a clue what doing gentle might look like. I had an inner dialogue in a style more akin to inner dictators (a mix of Hitler, Mao, and Stalin), something I honestly didn’t pick up on until I had an insight during a therapy session.
My therapist asked why I was so hard on myself, and I remember the feeling that came over me. How my jaw dropped. How I asked, incredulously, don’t I have to be? When she smiled at me, gently, and said no… my life changed.
But that does not mean I always find it easy to do gentle towards myself. I am (still) much more prone to edge, which (in my world) centers around giving and receiving tankespjärn.
With a growing and increasing awareness of myself, I am getting better at discerning when one or the other serves me (you, we, all of us) more, and I’ve found ways of doing gentle that mostly work for me. But there are other ways — your ways — that you know and use that might serve me and others.
No wonder I am hoping to see You in one, some, or all of the salons on the topic of Doing Gentle With an Edge during 2023!