This blog post complies of my thematic research for the world first Massoga Massage Yoga Blindfolded Immersion that took place on September 30 2018 in Melbourne Australia.

Inspired by my friend, student and Massoga therapist, Steph Agnew, who is blind, my concept was to take participants on a journey of appreciation of the senses. During the session throughout which students were blindfolded, Steph at various points spoke about her journey, her diagnosis, her low point struggling to accept her lot to where she is now, on the verge of getting married. As facilitator I was drawn to speak about our relationship with dark and light, and the idea of the dark night of the soul.

BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR is a leading American theologian and former Episcopal priest. Her latest book is ‘Learning to Walk in the Dark”.

Accepting darkness in all its forms can be a spiritual practice.

Facing the unknown and challenging situations in our lives, including profound sadness, we can transform.

Breaking through our fears and finding our strengths we need to embrace the deepest shadows of our lives.

So many of us fear the dark and live a “solar spirituality”: We are told to always head towards the light, visualise the light, and flee from darkness of any kind. Emotional, physical, spiritual. The imperative on always staying positive, anytime a negative thought arises change it right away so you don’t feel the darkness. By default do we think the darkness is in proportion to how far away we are from the light, the light of our spiritual centre?

Yet darkness is half of our lives, whether it’s day/night, awake or asleep, yin or yang, content or discontent, surface or hidden. Where does the attribution of light being good and dark being bad come from anyway? Light can be just as blinding as the darkness. Black is bad, white is good, spirit is good, body is bad, heaven is good, earth is bad, sacred it good, secular is bad - all this division and duality is not true to human life and experience.

Instead of running away from darkness, especially the emotional kind, can we embrace it? The time spent trying to avoid and not deal could be time spent sitting in it, the uncomfortableness, the zone of unknowing.

Just like right now, in our bodies, in this sadness, peacefulness, or whatever it is you’re feeling. Give yourself permission to head towards, not away, from what is showing up.

The places we least want to go are where the richest treasures are hidden.

When we are in a place where we don’t know what to do or how to be, our impulse is to just get out of there. As a result we feel often the feel we’ve failed. In these moments can we Just Stop. Take three breaths, put your hands on your heart, or belly or over your eyes and know that you are in the right place at the right time. “Let it be” you could say in your mind.

When something comes up that causes fear or anxiety to rise, take those three breaths, and then apply some critical thinking: Where does this anxiety come from? Can we see it as an invitation to pay attention, and with hold any value judgement of good or bad towards ourselves.

R.A.I.N. -Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. This is from Tara Brach. From this acronym we created four accompanying essential oil blends that we applied through the Massoga Blindfolded immersion.

If we live in a way that we are only responding out of fear, we never grow. We have to practice courage. In anything we do we are either moving in the direction of love or in the direction of fear. Think of dark times that you lived through, that you endured, where you came out of it stronger, wiser, knowing more about yourself. There is always something to learn, to take away.

What if I could trust my feelings? Instead of asking to be delivered from them? What if I could follow my fears all the way to the edge of the abyss. Take a breath and keep going.

Dark Night of the Soul.

A time of spiritual crisis, comes from the 16th century monk, St John of the Cross, who was imprisoned and spoke of how his illusions of god were stripped away, a time of purification, a burning away of everything unnecessary. Gerald G May says the dark sides of spiritual life are vital ingredients for a healthy, authentic, deep spirituality. He argues the shadow sides of true spirituality have been neglected in today’s culture. Superficial and naive upbeat spirituality does not heal and enrich the soul. Only the honest, sometimes difficult encounters with what Christian spirituality has called and described in helpful detail as 'the dark night of the soul' can lead to true spiritual wholeness.

May emphasises that the dark night is not necessarily a time of suffering and near despair, but a time of deep transition, a search for new orientation when things are clouded and full of mystery. The dark gives depth, dimension and fullness to the spiritual life.

"Imagine a black sun at your core, a dark luminosity that is less innocent and more interesting than naïve sunshine. This is one of the gifts a dark night has to offer you." Thomas Moore

"Perhaps the dark night comes upon you from inside or outside to wake you up, to stir you and steer you toward a new life. Your dark night may be a period of apparent lifelessness that precedes a new birth of meaning. Maybe your dark night is a gestation, a coming into being of a level of existence you have never dreamed of. Maybe your dark night is one big ironical challenge, just the opposite of what it appears to be — not a dying, but a birthing."

Automatic ordinary behaviours we take for granted take on new life thru this sensory deprivation. And instead of thinking of it as deprivation why not reframe it positively call it sensory enhancement? because that’s what it is. Look at the same subject in a different light. Suddenly, instead of thinking the world has got smaller without sight, perhaps the world is reborn into a whole new way of communing with the human experience. We shift from the victim mentality that life is happening to us, to the outlook that life is happening for us.

All experiences, the light ones, the dark, are all here for us to embrace humanity.

The following poem was recited by Steph at the end of the session.

Invictus by William Earnest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.