Dakini Grace Blog

I was a very shy child.  Very shy.  My mother says she had never in her life met someone so shy.

I didn’t like being handed around to other people as a baby and when I started at ballet school I used to hang off the teacher’s leg for a long, long time before I was willing to join the class.

As I grew older, I heard such stories and interpreted them to mean there was something wrong with me.  I thought I was hearing this; that it’s better to be gregarious and talkative and open and friendly than it is to be shy.

I realise now that there’s no right or wrong about this, there’s simply difference.

Most people who know me as an adult wouldn’t necessarily call me shy.  It’s not a label I apply to myself, and still, the fragrance of shyness is often present in my life.

Not in the stereotypical way of being afraid of conversation or of speaking in front of large groups of people.

Of course shyness can look like that, but in my experience, shyness goes much deeper.

• Shyness can look like introversion, or like creating a job where you get to spend 80% of your time on your own.

• It can look like not enjoying speaking on the telephone and/or teaching yourself tricks to overcome nervousness when convening meetings.

• It can look like preferring to meet with friends on a 1 to 1 basis rather than attending large parties.

• Sometimes it looks like spending time with children rather than adults – shying away from the judgments and demands of adult conversation.

It can also look like this:

• the capacity to be with oneself
• vulnerability
• softness and gentleness
• tenderness and grace
• intuition, understanding and a capacity for great empathy
• acute awareness of exposure and, for those that are really willing to sit in that, it looks like a capacity to be exposed and to allow others the same.

Certainly shyness can be used to hide behind all of these things and at the same time, it can be used as an avenue to embody all of these things.

So to every person who has had the experience of shyness; to every person who has been described as ‘painfully shy’ by others; to every person who experiences the occasional torture of shyness, who experiences the world as too brash, too much, too aggressive, I say this – dive deeply into your shyness.

Not as a label but as an experience, as an emotion.

And forget what others say about it.  Forget the stereotypical description of shyness.

Dive deeply and find out for yourself.  Sit in exposure and allow it to free you. 

Shyness serves a great purpose and when you are willing to neither hide behind it, nor cover it up, but rather stand in the midst of it and just allow it to be, you will find there an exquisite beauty.  One which serves the world in its gentle appreciation of all that is.

You will also find that in shyness there is strength, there is power and there is a strong, clear, articulate voice which observes, notices and experiences the world in a very unique way.

You may even find that the world is a far better place for having heard from such a voice.

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Photo credit:  Zitona