By embracing your mother wound as your yoga, you transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart.

By Phillip Moffitt

If you choose to follow the path of meditation, you are likely to encounter what are sometimes referred to as your "karmic knots"—those physical and emotional traumas you have accumulated throughout your lifetime. For instance, when you sit in meditation for a lengthy period, physical tensions in your body caused by stress or old injuries may manifest as a stabbing pain between the shoulder blades, an aching neck, or throbbing legs. Similarly, all your unfinished psychological issues will appear either as physical pain or other body sensations, intense emotions, voices, or as disturbing images that arise seemingly from nowhere. There is no way to avoid these experiences, nor should you. By allowing these sensations and emotions full expression while mindfully paying attention to them, you become free of them. The release of these knots can be described as an unwinding that allows the difficult experience to complete itself. There is no rushing this process, nor knowing when it will be over.

There is one category of karmic knot that may be especially hard for you to deal with, as it is for many people. This is the emotional—some would say psychological—trauma that may have occurred within your family of origin. It may involve your mother, father, or both. This trauma may have been caused by a parent who was absent or overbearing, who committed inappropriate actions or failed to take positive action, or who took too little or too much interest in you. Or it may have been the interactions between your parents that was traumatizing to you. In meditation it is all grist for the mill of mindfulness.

A trauma involving the mother or father is sometimes referred to as a "wound" because it damages the body-mind, needs proper healing, and often leaves a scar or weakness in your body or emotional makeup. No wound is more charged for both men and women than the mother wound. Your relationship with your mother or whoever provided your "mothering" is the primary relationship in your development, and it inevitably conditions much of your life. It is easy to assume that if you had some difficulty in this relationship you have outgrown it, but do not be too sure. In my experience as a Dharma teacher, I have been surprised to discover how often yogis of both genders and all ages report being overwhelmed by unresolved feelings about their mothers. If you don't acknowledge and make peace with these feelings, then she is forced to stay caught forever in your mind and heart as a negative "mother image," preventing the possibility of an authentic relationship.

Many times I have listened to yogis—men as well as women—tell heart-rending stories of disinterest, inappropriate entanglement, or devastating disapproval from their mothers of such magnitude that they are still distorting the yogis' lives. "What am I to do?" they ask, "How do I stop getting caught?" The good news is that any trauma, including the mother wound, can become part of your mindfulness practice, but the bad news is you cannot avoid the suffering this mindfulness will encounter.

Just as each posture in hatha yoga is a physical form to help your body find flexibility, so it is with how you begin to treat strong emotions around your mother. I mean this quite literally. In hatha yoga, you learn to hold a particular pose in a relaxed manner; after that, it is the form of the pose that stretches you. As with the yoga of the mother wound, it is just the same; it becomes your emotional yoga. Each time you encounter the tension, you identify it as being a particular form that has appeared in the mind: It may be a memory, a current frustration, or a sense that you lack the ability to achieve something at present because of how the past has molded you. You stay mindful of the shape of the experience, noticing the pain and any resistance that arises. Meet these feelings with compassion, equanimity, and loving-kindness—it does not matter if the thoughts and feelings are dark and unseemly. This is the yoga of softening the heart, surrendering to what's true in the moment. Despite the discomfort it may be causing, you can be with whatever is arising in your mind. It is only a thought that is emotionally loaded, which in time will pass.

When you practice mindfulness of thoughts and emotions, you are practicing what the Buddha taught as the "third foundation of mindfulness." Mindfulness practice is nonjudgmental; therefore, you need not feel guilt or shame over any emotions or thoughts that arise. By repeatedly staying with difficult feelings and body sensations, your perspective of the past shifts. You become far less reactive and more flexible in your emotional responses. It is not that your history is rewritten, but rather that the self experiencing that history is transformed.

When a trauma first presents itself, your feelings may not be at all clear. However, all emotions are felt in the body, so if you stay with your body sensations, they can bring you into direct contact with feelings and help you identify them. Remember in doing this practice that you are not claiming that your memories or feelings are the absolute factual and unbiased truth about the past. Rather it is your actual experience of the moment that is the object of your mindfulness, not your old stories or your interpretation of how your childhood was supposed to be.

When a trauma first presents itself, your feelings may not be at all clear. However, all emotions are felt in the body, so if you stay with your body sensations, they can bring you into direct contact with feelings and help you identify them. Remember in doing this practice that you are not claiming that your memories or feelings are the absolute factual and unbiased truth about the past. Rather it is your actual experience of the moment that is the object of your mindfulness, not your old stories or your interpretation of how your childhood was supposed to be.

Yoga of the Mother Wound
The dharma teaches us that while you are on the cushion all thoughts and feelings can be received and worked with mindfully. There is a series of techniques and reflections you can use to practice what I call the "yoga of the mother wound" to transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart. "Transform" does not mean to fix or make go away whatever trauma and scars you may be carrying from childhood; instead, you slowly develop a new relationship with your difficulty, such that it is no longer a controlling factor in your life. What may seem like an intractable wound may even become a point of inspiration and deep understanding for you.

In one sense it is radical to think that what has injured you is an opportunity that contains the seeds of your liberation. But not so in another, for two of the valuable ingredients you need for a strong practice are focused attention and intense energy. Any highly charged, unresolved issue from your past can offer you both of these ingredients.

So, how do you make a deeply emotional wound your yoga? You begin by staying alert to those times you find yourself clinging, constricted from aversion, or caught in wanting in some manner connected to difficulties with your mother. You remind yourself to treat this difficult memory or emotion as your yoga practice. Your intention is to become more flexible in your emotions, to let loose of anger and defensiveness, and to stop suppressing your feelings.