Acro-yoga as a model to the coaching and counseling process -- Part 2 the Base

In the introduction to the acro-yoga analogy, I introduced the three roles.  We'll take a deeper look at the "Base" this time.

From the various pictures, it is clear the base holds everything up.  This role isn't glamorous.  It doesn't get the spotlight.  However, it is a vital role.  It is a role that literally holds up the flyer.  The flyer's poise and confidence comes from the base.  Beyond strength, stamina and flexibility, it is trust that enables this pose.  You can be supremely good as the base and excel in all of the needed skills but if the flyer doesn't trust you, there won't be a pose.  It isn't worth risk.

What is trust then?  Our experience would equate it to something being reliable.  I trust the bridge I am using.  I trust the brakes in my car.  I trust the teacher in my class to grade fairly.  There are many other examples but these show that we trust because something has in some way shown itself to be reliable.  We might have initially needed to take it in faith but now after a repeated similar experience we trust also.

That is how it worked early in marriage.  In the beginning, there wasn't a long history.  There was a faith that this would work based on things outside of the relationship.  That could be the knowledge that both of you hold similar faith beliefs.  Or it could be that you have known each other for a long time and also know each other's family.  What that didn't tell you was how the person would act once he 'leaved and cleaved'.  It was faith that led you believe to this point.  As time passed, that faith turned into trust or fatigue based on reliability.

That reliability comes in many forms both of great consequence and small.  This is everything from the daily aspects of running a house.  Think about the chores.  Taking out the trash when you say you will.  Getting the kids from school.  Actively participating the execution of a functioning household.   Being passive (see the prior post) and forcing the weight of the relationship and household to reside on the shoulders of one person isn't building trust.

There are larger items as well.  Consider the birth of children or another significant health event for the wife.  Post birth, she is sore and recovery is measured in months.  Is that the time when you rise up and take on a higher level of responsibility?  Or is that the time you sulk because your day to day is disrupted because she isn't capable of performing?  That also isn't building trust (and likely creating more issues than just the destruction of trust).

Trust is the regular, daily, interactions that demonstrate that you are a man where your "Yes is yes and your no is no".  And ... let's not forget that your yes and no are from a heart that loves first.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that you can have all those things but without love it is noise.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal

You can speak with the most authoritative speech and the highest of intelligence but if it comes without love it will be noise - a resounding gong.

Here's a quote from Jean Vanier that speaks to the action of love:

       “To be in communion means to be with someone and to discover that we actually belong together. Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain. To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust”
― Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community

Trust is knowing that the person has you, is for you and is there.  Always.  If that is broken it will take time to rebuild.  You are asking the same person that was burned by that broken trust to be vulnerable again.  That isn't easy.  What makes this time different from the last one?  Why would someone put themselves in that position again?   Genesis 3:16 says that 'she will desire'.  The Hebrew word for desire that is used here is used by 'sin' to desire Cain in Gen 4:7 and by the lover to the beloved, in a sexual way, in Song of Songs chapter 7.  Based on those usages that word has a neutral connotation.  The context has to indicate meaning.  In this case, the way God talks to each of them would indicate what is going on in them.  Eve is getting a warning and Adam is getting a message of toil for all his days.  So she wants to try again because she desires him and what it means to live complete.  There are exceptions but generally this is the pattern.

If trust is broken it is worth the work to rebuild.  That is a slow path but consider what is on display as your 'yoga' progresses.  It is the presentation of the flyer to world.

And the flyer is where we'll go next time.

The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 1 Co 13.