Have we limited tenderness to the quality of meat or something expressed between lovers, or parents and their children? It seems to me that tenderness is much bigger than this and that it starts with how we treat ourselves in a million small ways throughout the day.
With a little awareness and focus we can soon become masters of tenderness, enriching our lives (and those we share it with) in remarkable ways.
Have you experienced a tender moment?
A tender touch?
A tender thought?
Have you beheld a tender act?
Just asking these questions returns me to the tenderness I have felt – it seems to be something that is alive in me and when I reconnect with it, it melts me, and whatever I’m doing, I can’t help but be tender with.
Tenderness flows from within me and through me. Tenderness can be felt in my voice, my touch, my thoughts, my ears and my eyes. It may sound funny, but even my taste becomes tender when I allow it.
There are things that I notice when I allow myself be tender:
- My body lets go. I notice how I’ve been holding my shoulders tight or my forearms hard… the tension drops away.
- When I take my time, with no rush or force, suddenly I have a sense of having plenty of time.
- I feel with my whole body, and thinking from here leads the way.
- Tenderness is definite and delicate all at once, with purpose, not wishy-washy at all.
- I have focus with no indecisiveness (or indecision) in what to do, everything is clear and simple.
- The choice to allow tenderness feels powerful, deliberate and not half-hearted.
- I am more playful, not rough or imposing, but light, open and full.
- I am super-present – in the moment, not before or beyond it, or even thinking of anything else.
- I enjoy the fullness of love, accepting the joy and letting it out and in.
These exquisite elements of tenderness are medicine to the body and being, available whenever the choice is made and applicable well beyond special moments with a select few. Tender washing up, tender typing, tender brushing hair – it melts away the hardness I can bring to get through the day and creates a deep sense of wellbeing that makes such a difference to everything.
Tenderness is like the warmth of the sun – it is there for everyone, has no off button, no dimmer and does not reserve itself for a select few.
It is there for us all equally, naturally, easily whenever we choose to let its remarkable ways unfold as we go about our day to day lives, all the richer with it.
Inspired by the work of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
By Adrienne Hutchins, Brisbane, Australia
903 Comments
Adrienne, I love where you share, that with a little awareness and focus we can soon become masters of tenderness, enriching our lives in remarkable ways. Why would we choose to be anything less than tender in every moment, when we know what a beauty-full blessing it is to us and those around us.
This is very true, every word.
Wow this is applicable to my being right now…I love the magic of sharing, thank you so much.
Thank you Adrienne, I melted when I read your blog.
I could feel my body letting go as I read, the profoundness and the tenderness from this blog, wow. Simple and lovely, it feels like one I will be back to often, I can feel the layers to be unfolded there with this, and a real joy for that possibility – thank you Adrienne.
Thank you Adrienne. It is beautiful to learn that tenderness is in the beauty of giving ourselves permission to be who we are.
Hi Adrienne, it is really beautiful to read a blog about tenderness that has been written in tenderness. What a gift to everyone who reads it – thank you.
I hadn’t considered the power of that Janet and yet the blog clearly had the effect it did because it was written from that feeling in her body. This is a lesson for all of us when we share what we share. If we are not living what we speak or write in our body then it does not come with the same inspiration, it comes with a knowledge that still leaves a potential to choose or not choose but there is more theory and less inspiration.
Tenderness is like a pebble dropped into still water – its effects ripple out far and wide: from one simple moment of tenderness there is an unending effect….. thank you for sharing the tenderness you feel and the awareness of its amazing way.
So true Adrienne I have loved re-reading your article and feeling the ripple effect of your article on myself and others.
So true Adrienne, I love the way you describe tenderness as “a pebble dropped into still water – it’s effects can be felt far and wide”, very beautiful.
Wow, that is an amazing description Adrienne. I can really feel the truth and the beauty in that. How tenderness can be so profound and so touching.
Thank you for your inspiring blog, today I woke up feeling very tender and delicate. This blog was just perfect timing for me to stop and connect to this feeling and appreciate how powerful it is to feel tender.
Thank you Amita, even reading all these comments makes me smile as I feel how tender and delicate I am – beautiful confirmation.
I have to say this blog, the fact it is written in and with such tenderness, the word tenderness and all the comments that follow about tenderness, cannot but help me feel the the natural tenderness I am.
You express so beautifully Adrienne. Everything you say about tenderness is true. I am inspired to deepen the tenderness and connection with myself through your writing.
Amazing how an article clearly written from tenderness about tenderness can allow me to feel my own tenderness. So beautiful! Thank you!
It got me right from the start – bringing tenderness in with the first words and I can feel such a change from reading the article and simply letting go. Its awesome – thank you Adrienne
I absolutely love this blog. Reading it has made me more tender and for this I can’t thank you enough. Everyone wins with tenderness, there’s no down side.
So true, I feel deeply ‘safe’ when met in tenderness by other people.
Well said Kevin, Everyone wins with tenderness. 🙂
Too true 🙂
Exactly Kevin just reading this helped me let go of the tension in my shoulders.
It’s amazing isn’t it how one person writing a blog in tenderness can be felt by so many, reminding them of their own tenderness. Absolutely everyone wins!
Sandra, that’s it, it as simple as that, it just takes one person to make a change, with one person connected to their tenderness has allowed many of us to do the same. How any people will be touched….
So true Kevin for when we honour our tenderness we feel it from its every angle holding us with its grace – how can there ever be a downside to that.
Today I feel very tender. What’s made the difference? More acceptance of who I am inside. The beauty of this is that I then have an opportunity to share this with others and they get to be treated in a loving, tender and considerate way too. Everyone benefits from the tenderness inside being shared. This is certainly – better out than in.
Mmm – absolutely sharing tenderness with another I find builds more tenderness within me, and on and on it goes. Such a beautiful and yummy feeling.
This has been a beautiful confirmation this morning as I start my day and a welcome reminder to support me through it. With tender thanks!
The tenderness I feel reading your blog is so inspiring. Any hardness in my body is being melted away by your words.
Thank you Adrienne.
I love how you expressed “I have focus with no indecisiveness (or indecision) in what to do, everything is clear and simple.”
Thank you Adrienne
Just reading your words re-connects me to the tenderness that I am and my whole body melts, I am tender, I feel tender, my body, my thoughts, my breath, my movements, my smell and taste all become tender – you are so true in what you share Adrienne in the fact that allowing ourselves to connect to this natural tenderness within us all, our whole way of being absolutely changes and can be felt by all.
I’m appreciating true tenderness more and more and just how powerful it is – not wishy-washy at all as you say! Thank you Adrienne.
I agree Fiona, there is no ‘wishy washy’ with tenderness – something I used to have felt may be the case. I have found there to be the opposite, a huge strength and power coming with tenderness. It is quite remarkable and not at all the ‘sissy’ version I thought it was when I was growing up. I found when I would express my tenderness growing up, especially at school, I would get picked on by other boys, it was as if it wasn’t being manly enough, and so I hid my tender side away. Now I am slowly letting it out more and more and seeing the strength of it.
A beautiful and inspiring blog Adrienne. Thank you for a welcome reminder of the power of allowing tenderness to flow from within.
In reading this article I feel a warmth and tenderness! Thank you for the reminder of its power and beauty. mmm… 🙂
This is beautiful blog. I feel truly blessed to be reminded that tenderness is something we can enjoy in our lives.
I agree, I love how Adrienne writes ‘With a little awareness and focus we can soon become masters of tenderness, enriching our lives (and those we share it with) in remarkable ways.’ Just as we focus on it, it brings us back to our own tenderness inside. Tenderness has a quality that melts us.
Adrienne, this is exquisite, and was just what my body wanted me to read tonight. I could feel my body letting go, and saying, ‘thank goodness that she is reading this, we so want what Adrienne is writing about!’ When I read about tender hair brushing my body just said ‘ yes – yes please’.
That is so true Catherine – our body knows tenderness and has been waiting for us to connect to it for such a long time. It’s like a re-union with a long lost friend, an ‘aah’ moment. Brushing my hair at bedtime is such a tender moment and part of my bedtime routine – and as you say my body just says ‘ yes – yes please’.
And we spend so long searching for this from others without considering the importance of being that with ourselves first. I feel silly that I didn’t consider the impact of the depth of this understanding before now! But at least I can now re-imprint my movements to build a foundation so tenderness becomes my ‘normal’. Big smilie face!
Beautiful, inspiring comments confirming how we all know tenderness by heart.
Very simply put, I completely agree. I keep coming back to this article and get more each time from feeling the tenderness in the writing to the amazing comments. A real testament to the presentations by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon who have bought truth to what Tenderness really is and then how this can be felt and lived.
Absolutely David, I completely agree, the tenderness this article is written in is amazing and deeply felt, and yes a real testament to the truth brought by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
I agree with you David. It is thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that I have reconnected to the immense tenderness that I feel inside me. I am forever grateful to them.
Thank you Adrienne for the reminder about the beauty and power of tenderness, I can really feel the truth in what you have written.
Thank you for this lovely reminder of the choice we have in every moment to choose tenderness so that the hardness melts away. Awesome.
Tenderness is strange. It is completely unfamiliar and at the same time completely normal – a very nice way to be.
A beautiful article on the profoundness of tenderness, thank you Adrienne.
It’s interesting that as a woman I still choose to struggle with this. Deep in my heart I can feel the exquisite beauty and Love that I AM, but when it comes to daily activities there is still a push and a drive. When I notice this I will think of this blog and remember the tenderness I AM. 🙂
I still feel a push and a drive in my daily activities too. That feeling of needing to get things done takes me into overdrive. When I remember to pay attention to the quality I am in and remind myself to be tender my day is so much more lovely, and everything still gets done!
I agree Rebecca ‘I still push and drive in my daily activities. That feeling of needing to get things done takes me into that drive’. It is a horrible feeling, I can feel the hardness in my body, I can get breathless and feel overwhelmed, whereas if I change the quality of how I’m doing things and choose do things tenderly it feels divine, playful and my body feels relaxed and gentle.
Wow, exactly what I needed to read this morning, amazingly well put and will be my awareness for the day. There is nothing more divine than feeling the lovely warmth of tenderness. Thank you for sharing.
Tenderness is something I have been developing with myself and I have been deeply inspired by this article and the comments. I have been appreciating that I am tender and allowing myself to feel this as sometimes my body seems so far away from it, clunky and heavy.
I can totally relate Sally. A work in progress.
I can so relate to what you have said here Sally.
A lovely reminder Adrienne for me to be aware of all the moments of tenderness that are there for me to express.
I am always touched by the way in which students prepare/change the configuration of a room at Universal Medicine events. Everyone just comes together to move tables and chairs so tenderly (and quietly), a far cry from how hotel conference rooms are laid out.
And then, I get to sit on those chairs, lie on that massage table, feel that tenderness…
I wonder how many opportunities are there in a day to express tenderness with the physical objects I touch and the difference that can make for the next person who comes along?
“These exquisite elements of tenderness are medicine to the body and being, available whenever the choice is made.” Wow thank you so much for this beauty-full reminder, perfect timing.
Wow I loved this deeper investigation into tenderness. I’m learning that tenderness can be so lovely it actually melts myself, as well as melting people around me too. Really beautiful blog – thank you.
That tenderness has the capacity to melt everyone around us demonstrates the power and strength of it, tenderness is no weakling!
Love it ‘tendernesss in no weakling’ sounds ironic but it’s true!
I can feel myself melting as I read this!
‘Tenderness is like the warmth of the sun’. I like this, I can feel myself opening like a flower to allow the sun to warm through my whole body to feel the tenderness within.
Thank you for sharing Adrienne, bringing Tenderness changes the way we live, breathe and work. Just connecting with it now my whole body opens up and experiences it. It is a whole body expression, one as you said, we all carry within us, most just choose not to show it in case, as many have experienced in the past, we may get ridiculed for it. Whilst I used to see it as weak I can now feel the strength in it. The gift of tenderness is a true blessing for all.
That’s a great point James – about the strength in tenderness. I appreciate this now much more than I used to! And this blog is a great reminder for me of this.
Yes, awesome point James. To be tender is to have the strength to truly feel yourself and allow others in, so much power there and no ‘weakness’ to be found.
I love this point. There really is great strength in tenderness. I am feeling how amazingly powerful tenderness is when I choose to move, be, express in this quality, it can be deeply felt my others, I feel how it often creates a stop moment when people feel it. It is deeply healing.
Absolutely Beautiful Adrienne. I know it can seem weak to be tender, but I am discovering there’s an amazing power in this, not over anyone but just the power in taking notice of and honouring what we are feeling. This I am coming to accept is also tenderness.
Shevon, I too used to see tenderness as being weak, but as I have started to understand the true meaning of tenderness, I have also become to understand the power it holds as I feel and connect to my body and honour that feeling.
Thank you Adrienne for your gift of tenderness, and Adrienne – to hold ourselves in tenderness when feeling hurt – a double gift.
Yes, and what a gift! To think that we consider tenderness as a ‘quality of meat or something expressed between lovers, or parents and their children’ just reveals how far we have come from living our own tenderness. As you say, we all have it inside us equally to express to everyone.
This is such a great reminder for us all that we have this tenderness inside us all of the time and all have equal access to it all of the time. So often in life, we have situations that we respond to with hardness, because we don’t want to feel the hurt we do feel, so we harden our body to ‘manage’. Yet that hardness is not managing anything, it hurts us more than the original hurt. Whereas being tender allows us to feel what there is to feel and hold ourselves in tenderness as we do so. It’s quite remarkable that we are able to live this way naturally.
What you have said here Ariana is pure gold! I love what you say here “….so we harden our body to ‘manage’. Yet that hardness is not managing anything, it hurts us more than the original hurt. Whereas being tender allows us to feel what there is to feel”
Whenever we make the choice to feel our natural tenderness we stop harming ourselves and start healing, it is true tenderness is medicine to the body and something we all have if we so choose. Thank you for this powerful yet tender reminder.
Samantha I can relate to that – ‘we harden our body to manage’. I feel I have done that so much and am now becoming more aware of if I go into that hardness.
I totally concur in what you share Amita and Samantha – I used to do it on a regular basis, push on and harden my body to get what ever it is needed done, with out checking in with myself if I had hardened. When I get to that point of realisation that exposes this hardness, only then do I realise that tenderness is my natural way of being.
The people I know who are not afraid to express their tenderness have an inner strength, and that is powerful.
Great observation Ariana. Reading this article brings out the tenderness in me as I read the words and then press each key in reply and acceptance of the tenderness that is within me and waiting to be felt whenever I choose.
Agreed, I too am finding myself typing even more gently than when I first turned my laptop on. It’s amazing how simple it is to return to the tenderness within me, and in doing so easily shows me how un-tender I have been up until now.
Wow what a lovely way to live Ariana, “being tender allows us to feel what there is to feel and hold ourselves in tenderness as we do so.”
I love your discussion on this Ladies. I long to feel the tenderness within myself. I know that it is there but this old knee jerk reaction of reacting to situations with hardness kicks in defence. What your comments are a reminder of is that it is possible to allow tenderness to blossom if we are open to it and acknowledge that it is there inside of us. One thing I find helpful is that when I notice I’m having unkind or critical thoughts, I remind myself to be gentle and tender with my thoughts – not change them, but with that little reminder, seems to calm down the destructive trail I could go down.
Hi Shevon, I love how beautiful it feels – “allow tenderness to blossom” – immediately I felt I can allow that in my body also. Thank you.
I can really feel in me what you are saying here Ariana, that hardening up in situations does not protect me but actually hurts me. If I go into my tenderness I can feel everything and in that feel I can handle the situation with ease.
Thank Adrienne, a great reminder. How easily I forget to bring tenderness into everything I do. I know it is there, like I know the sun is there, but I choose to forget its presence as I go about my day to day living… until I am reminded by a bumped elbow or a pain in my wrist.
I love your analogy with the sun, tenderness is there for everyone, whatever we do – all we have to do is to make that choice to bring it into our lives.
Hi Alison – I love what you say about the body reminding us to come back to gentleness when we’ve strayed from the tenderness we naturally are. Thank you.
I love this article. I keep reading it during my day if I’ve become hard, and I am reminded of my tenderness. Thanks once again Adrienne.
Alison, I am like you, I too forget to bring tenderness into everything I do. I know it’s there as it’s beautiful when I connect to it and I feel so amazing, but it’s bringing it into everything I do and making it a normal part of my rhythm. So yes it’s great to bring the focus onto it.
I agree Amita and Alison, how amazing is our body guiding us throughout our day, dropping in loving reminders to connect to tenderness in all that we do.
Yes, I like this way of thinking about tenderness too, as something that is there, waiting for us to choose it. Somehow put that way it seems less likely that I will judge myself harshly when I am not tender, and say to myself, ‘ YOU are not tender’. Instead I can just say, ‘tenderness is there always, I can choose it right now’.
Alison, reading your comment is a timely reminder for me to check in with myself more frequently throughout the day, as I often forget that I could be choosing a more gentle way in all that I do.
Thank you Adrienne. What struck me in this beautiful reflection about tenderness, is that it is a choice as are many qualities I can bring to my life. And even more striking is that these choices are with us as you say, all the time, every moment. We have ‘on tap’, 24/7 support for ourselves once we begin to take responsibility for our own well being. The effects of choosing tenderness for myself as you have described are enriching beyond anything I could look for another to provide.
Hi Bernadette… yes, and reading your comment makes me wonder how hard I have to make it to resist this 24/7 tenderness that is available whenever I choose to tap into it.
Gorgeous! To be able to feel that level of love and show it to the world. That is living a whole new way in the world.
Great point, we have to pull in a resistance to not be tender!
24/7 tenderness – what a great way to see the support we can naturally give ourselves if we choose it… thank you.
Beautifully written Bernadette, ‘The effects of choosing tenderness for myself as you have described are enriching beyond anything I could look for another to provide.’
Absolutely Rebecca, no-one can give us our own gorgeous tenderness, it is naturally our own to choose and live just like everyone else’s and truly worth choosing.
Yes Rebecca, this sentence stood out for me too. It is so true as there is nothing outside of me that can truly fulfil me other than I choosing tenderness for myself.
Well said Bernadette, we are actually fighting our own tenderness 24/7 when we are not allowing it out as it is our natural state of being. It is crazy and exhausting how essentially we are fighting ourselves when we do not express who and what we naturally are.
This is so true James, i agree. I catch myself sometimes forgetting that i can choose tenderness in everything i do, instead of allowing the hardness and doing to take over. So this blog is a beautiful reminder. I am starting to see tenderness as an expression, not only in certain areas like working with clients (for example when i give an Esoteric Massage) or the way i am with my partner, but for every expression – speaking, singing, touching, and doing or holding myself in stillness. And like you say James it is natural to be tender.
Lovely to read Janina and another reminder to allow myself to express with my tenderness in everything I am doing not just when I touch things with my hands or more tenderly with my finger tips.
A beautiful comment Bernadette to a beautiful article. Thank you.
This is a great reminder Bernadette, that tenderness is a choice that I can bring into my life, not something I have to go out searching for but a natural quality that is within me that I can connect to anytime, how beautiful that we have this available 24/7.
So true Bernadette, every moment we have a choice to go into hardness and protection or our naturally tender ways….I know what I will be choosing …… to surrender to who I naturally am…..a tender and delicate woman.
Beautiful Bernadette. Bernadette’s comment brings home to me simplicity. It is that simple and to keep it simple. I have a choice in every moment 24/7 to bring my qualities such as tenderness in every thing I do and to focus on this rather than on the doing. Thank you for the reminder.
While reading through your article Adrienne, I could feel my body letting go. I’m even feeling that tenderness in the way I am typing right now… and it feels lovely. Thank you for your timely reminder.
Hi Rod, yes… we all know it deeply and it is something we let ourselves go into, drop into, surrender to, only to find there is more tenderness to let ourselves go into, drop into, surrender into… it’s up to us how far into tenderness we let ourselves go and be.
So beautiful Adrienne. Thank you both, I am feeling now to type with tenderness. brings sweetness to my fingertips 🙂 Beautiful.
What a lovely thought, sweetness to the finger tips – the fingertips feel amazing and exquisite when we treat them with the love they deserve- it impacts the entire body.
Hi Adrienne and Rod, I love reading and re-reading your blog with its amazing comments every single time. And just like you describe Rod an instant letting go off hardness and giving myself permission to be tender with everything. And it keeps deepening. I find new levels of tenderness and new areas to experience tenderness the more I let go and drop into my body and surrender. Thank you.
Yes, your sharing Adrienne is a wash of warmth and tenderness that is irresistible.
What a glorious day ahead when my whole body has surrendered to the tenderness I am.
I was getting a little tight about time just now when I found your beautiful piece Adrienne. Add Rod’s comments and I reached out to my partner who was typing next to me (not on a Selectric) and immediately felt the easing back into my body, back into connection. Tenderness is infectious it seems.
Love this important point Alan – the infectiousness of tenderness… It allows us to feel more as well as offering an opportunity for others to also feel more.
Adrienne. Your blog keeps drawing me back to reading it over and over again. Just for me to remember that I am tender person, and letting me drop back into that tenderness, when I feel anything but, at times.
I agree Mike. It is a healing session, with words that are as powerful as hands. I have returned to University and have had a difficult weekend letting a seeming insurmountable amount of work make me go into “concrete mode”. This morning I have dedicated myself to my tenderness, and came back to this blog for a dive into Adrienne’s and my own beauty.
Yes her words ‘are as powerful as hands’ this is such a great way to sum it up, and it explains why I feel amazing after reading blogs like this one. It’s deeply insporng to read this and then consider a way forward simply by how tender we can be with ourselves, and therefore all others.
My hands are my instant tenderness gauge. If I have scratches, marks, anything on my hands or fingers I am instantly shown that it is time to let go and accept even more tender loving care into my life.
So true Vicky….I know what you mean. As this happens to me too. I remember at one stage I kept getting these paper cuts on my fingers and so I started to be more tender with myself and accept more tenderness into my life and the paper cuts stopped. So yes it is definitely a reminder for me.
Thank you Vicky – I have been aware that scratches and marks on my hands indicate a lack of presence but as your comment so beautifully suggests it is time to ‘let go and accept even more tender loving care into my life’. It is so much more healing when we can have this awareness rather than feel guilty and being hard on ourselves.
Vicky I caught my finger yesterday carrying too much out to the rubbish collectors because I had gone into drive to get ‘things’ done. I knew immediately why I had caught my finger, in fact the moment I picked up too many packages I knew I would hurt myself but I didn’t listen to my self or stop. When I go into drive I’m like a bull in a china shop as my mother would always tell me. Then I need a stop moment to bring me back to me.
So true Adrienne..like Rod, as I read your blog I could feel my self letting go and re-connecting with my tenderness and the more I surrendered the more tender I feel…I will take this into the rest of my day with my thoughts ,my actions and me just being. Thanks for your inspirational blog.
Yes, Adrienne, that is the beauty of it. I can always go deeper in surrendering to tenderness if I just choose to let go again and again.
Yes Rod and Adrienne, I could feel the letting go also, the greater feeling in my body and the awareness that I can be more tender again. Delicious reminder Adrienne, that it’s there for us always and that it offers an ever deepening quality.
I agree Rod, I started to read about tenderness and immediately could feel how I harden my whole body when I approach it, one reason being I do not find computer work easy. This shows how we need to be even more tender with ourselves and everyone and everything around us when we find them difficult. Developing the tenderness in everyday little things we do enjoy can help to build a foundation for when the bigger challenges come along. A beautiful article Adrienne, I love the way you describe all the elements of tenderness.
Joan, how beautifully you put that. To be even more tender with things we find difficult. For me , a whole new way of looking at lifes challenges. Thank you
I agree Catherine. Beautifully expressed Joan, to bring tenderness to situations and activities that are a challenge, how healing and freeing is this.
Yes me too Catherine. We can be used to going hard, becoming tense and going head to head in challenging situations but what Adrienne is reminding us is that heart to heart is the way.
Beautifully said Shevon. We don’t have to engage with the head in a challenging situation – even with another person is coming from their head. We can remember to drop into our bodies and come from the heart.
Rather than worry about a potentially challenging encounter, as I usually would, coming from the heart I can feel the power in tenderness. As I write I am feeling how this can take away any anxiety no matter how challenging the situation. That’s amazing. It shows me there is no need to stiffen up and go hard.
Yes Catherine, what, a lovely reminder – to be more tender in challenging situations, sometimes easier than others, so I can continue to practice this on a daily basis. thank you Joan.
Aah Catherine and Joan thank you for the reminder to be even more tender with us in things we find difficult.
We are so often faced with the hardness with which we ‘do’ life, and think that this is the only way to be, reading blogs like this helps me to remember that there IS another way. Hardness does not have to rule, I’m learning that I can live another way.
That is lovely Ariana – reading the blogs is such a support and helps me in letting go of the hardness. Hardness has been such a big part of my life up until now – always avoiding connecting to the ‘tender’ part of me, which just needed a little encouragement to come out from under the wraps and to claim back all that I am.
Me too Susan, Hardness has been a big part of my life too, I felt I had to be tough to get through life . Discarding the Rhino skin is a work in progress for me as it means giving myself permission to be gentle with me, it’s good to write this because I hadn’t given being gentle much thought until now. Commenting on these blogs is amazing because I have just given myself a little project – being gentle with myself 🙂
Yes Joan, I can so relate to hardening when I have judged something that I find not easy to do as you say for you ,it is computer work. When I notice that I am doing that and my body is going hard, I say to myself, the more you judge this thing, the more I am going to be tender with myself. It brings me back to me and my tenderness immediately and is a very empowering and truly loving moment.
I love what you say here Julie, when you notice that you are going into hardness…. you say to yourself, “the more you judge this thing, the more I am going to be tender with myself.” What an awesome, loving thing to do for yourself. I will remember that one.
Joan, I love your line ‘Developing the tenderness in everyday little things we do’ that feels like love in action. This is a beautiful blog and really made me stop and feel where I was holding tension in my body and let it go.
Beautiful Joan to bring tenderness to the things we find diffucult, today I will bring it to my study and some difficult interactions with my ex-partner.
It’s so powerful and simple to integrate tenderness into daily life. No one loses or is harmed by tenderness, it touches people so simply, yet it is not widely appreciated for how encompassing it’s power actually is. We have so much to come back to and reclaim with tenderness.
Yes I do also enjoy how Adrienne has described so many elements of being tender so simply. I also appreciate your reminder about approaching things that seem tricky with as much tenderness as possible.
Thank you Felicity – how lovely to feel to approach things which are seemingly tricky with tenderness. It feels as though if we are open and sensitive to the possibility of an unfolding rather than bracing ourselves – as I know I often do – we are opening the way forward to resolving the situation in a way that is beautiful and spherical.
Hi Rod, I agree – I too can feel my body dropping into a more tender state and letting go reading the blog. So thank you Adrienne for the Tender moment and reminding me of my tenderness.
I loved reading this blog and could feel how I just sunk deeper into my body and feeling my natural tenderness. It feels like a lovely warmth spreading through my arms and feeling the gentleness of my chest moving up and down with every breath.
I agree James, I also felt my body let go and embrace tenderness without any problem. This is a great reminder of how tender we all naturally are.
I agree Rod, re-reading this blog I could again feel the joy and also the tenderness in my body which then got me to ask a question of myself…..why does it take me reading a blog to connect to my tenderness? My answer to myself is that it doesn’t have to, I can connect to my tenderness anytime I choose to, so thank you Adrienne for reminding me that there is always a choice.
I agree Rod, i have read the blog already several times and every time i could feel my body let go. This blog is a beauty full reminder to choose tenderness in everything I do and what effect this has for my body: “Tender washing up, tender typing, tender brushing hair – it melts away the hardness I can bring to get through the day and creates a deep sense of wellbeing that makes such a difference to everything”
Yes, I also agree with you Rod that I as I read the article so I too immediately felt my self dropping into tenderness. The list of things you notice when you are tender, Adrienne, is a great reminder of and support to connect to tenderness.
I agree Rod, I’m all melted.
I agree Rod this blog has magical properties……. Thank you Adrienne.
Re-reading your blog Adrienne – and again I feel deeply connected to the tenderness in your words and expression.
I agree Rod, anytime I come to this page, I just melt and feel the tenderness here and inside me too.
So true Rod, and thank you Adrienne. Same happened to me the moment I read your words. I could let go my “troubles” (which are many) and feel my body. My wrinkles and my forehead relaxed. It seemed to me as if I would stop thinking. I didn´t, but I could focus my thoughts on my body parts and feel where and how I was.
I completely agree Rod, I can feel how easy and open the blog is. Gently reminding me in everything we do there is a choice of how we do it; that I can bring a gentle tender touch to anything I do.
Rod and Adrienne, that was my experience, I could feel how I had been holding on and I could let go and allow more space. So thank you Adrienne for this insightful piece – you reminded me of how easy it can be to choose tenderness and how it does indeed change everything.
Yes Rod I too felt a beautiful warm tenderness effortlessly flood my body while reading Adrienne’s blog. What a lovely reminder of just how easy it is to allow our true tenderness to shine.
What a most beautiful blog. As I read, my whole body began to surrender and I felt a beautiful tenderness within my body. It is amazing how a blog like this can support us to connect with ourselves which is so timely this morning as I had quite a challenging day yesterday. Thank you Adrienne for writing such an inspiring blog.
l agree Rod, Adrienne’s tender blog emanates tenderness, it’s truly incredible to behold the energy so clearly. Throughout all the descriptions l too felt myself melt more and more as l read it.
lt wasn’t untill l read your comment that l realised l’d actually lost it again and had gone back to hardness. lncredible!