More like water, less like ice
I went to yoga this morning still in a thanksgiving daze. I thought it was just the fog of returning to a schedule after a holiday weekend and my first day working with a new child jitters. But as I unrolled my mat and we started flowing I quickly realized it wasn't just something I could shake off.
I felt like I was moving my body in this armor of cement. Concrete was packed around my bones. Every movement I tried to make felt tight and forced, and even holding the easiest of poses for a few minutes wasn't available for me.
I'd only experienced this kind of resistance once before, a few weeks ago when I went to my first Buti class after injuring my ankle. Before that my yoga practice often was full of ease and while sometimes I would cry or rage I would often work through it on the mat and by the end of the class have achieved some kind of release.
But these last few times I've hit resistance on the mat it hasn't budged. I could have worked poses and breathed into tight spaces for hours with little movement in my body.
Something was stuck. Physically, emotionally, energetically. And it wasn't moving.
My first instinct in moments like this one is to get frustrated. Yoga is the one place where I don't feel the limitations of my illnesses pressing down on my body and when I'm unable to move the way I want to I'm quick to get angry. Its the one thing you're not supposed to do in yoga class - each day is a different practice and the goal isn't to practice for where you were yesterday or where you want to be but practice for how your body is today - but I did it anyway.
And then I did something I just recently started doing. I told myself to stay on my mat until the end. Because I knew I wanted to run from this pain in my mind and heart and body when it wouldn't get out of the way and I knew that was the worst thing I could do in that moment. So I promised myself I would stay until that final moment, even if it meant I spent most of the class in child's pose.
And I did. I didn't go as deep as I normally do into the movements, my body felt like I had just taken a bath in cement when I tried to engage in deep core spiraling and even touching my toes wasn't happening for me today. And during savasana I counted the seconds until the teacher freed us and I was able to leave. But I did it. I stayed and I breathed and I used this uncomfortable practice as an invitation to look at all of those things composing my concrete armor: all the things I wanted to run from.
That rejection from someone close to me, the hurtful things someone had said, the details that weren't working themselves out as quickly as I wanted them to, the huge life shifts that (while good) brought along with them memories of the past and scary possibilities.
When I was doing coaching a few months ago we (my coach and I) came to a realization. When trauma comes, in any form or magnitude, I want to become ice. Emotions get frozen inside of me, my body locks up, I enter survival mode. The realization of this survival technique became vital in working with and understanding past traumas but as I laid on my mat today I realized I'm still doing it.
Things got messy and hard and I felt separated from my body and experienced trauma and my first reaction was to become hard like ice.
The magic, my coach had told me then, is that I am a shape shifter. The pain doesn't have to remain in its icy form. Water exists in other forms too: liquid or gas. Instead of remaining ice, I can let the pain turn into water.
Still pain, still just as valid and just as strong, but it can flow through me instead of locking up inside of me.
Here's the truth: I am hurt right now. I am confused and I don't understand a lot of things and my life is changing (In ways both good and bad) and however that change looks it doesn't deny the fact that its scary and its shaking things up. I'm dealing with broken relationships, dreams becoming a reality, dreams that won't come true in the way i expected them to, a career change, physical pain, friends going through hard situations. I'm becoming more of my true self, and sometimes that means losing some things and sometimes that's moving towards new things that are scary and I don't totally understand this process. And all of it makes me want to become hard like ice because its "easier" that way and if I can put aside emotions and let myself become rigid and protected by my concrete armor it will be easier to deal with.
But I know that doesn't work anymore. I know a better way. And my physical being resists the concrete armor, the ice.
I'm trying to let myself become like water. Let these feelings flow through me. There is a way I can feel these things and not let them dictate my life. I can be my whole self in a way that isn't picking up war torn pieces. I can feel this without letting it destroy me. The difference between now and then was that these changes are bringing me closer to my true self, not farther away. I know how to be with myself now in the hard spaces. I know who I am, no matter what other people say about me or project onto me. I can be like water on the mountain top, flowing through all of this but still so grounded and rooted in truth and love and who I know I am.
I felt like I was moving my body in this armor of cement. Concrete was packed around my bones. Every movement I tried to make felt tight and forced, and even holding the easiest of poses for a few minutes wasn't available for me.
I'd only experienced this kind of resistance once before, a few weeks ago when I went to my first Buti class after injuring my ankle. Before that my yoga practice often was full of ease and while sometimes I would cry or rage I would often work through it on the mat and by the end of the class have achieved some kind of release.
But these last few times I've hit resistance on the mat it hasn't budged. I could have worked poses and breathed into tight spaces for hours with little movement in my body.
Something was stuck. Physically, emotionally, energetically. And it wasn't moving.
My first instinct in moments like this one is to get frustrated. Yoga is the one place where I don't feel the limitations of my illnesses pressing down on my body and when I'm unable to move the way I want to I'm quick to get angry. Its the one thing you're not supposed to do in yoga class - each day is a different practice and the goal isn't to practice for where you were yesterday or where you want to be but practice for how your body is today - but I did it anyway.
And then I did something I just recently started doing. I told myself to stay on my mat until the end. Because I knew I wanted to run from this pain in my mind and heart and body when it wouldn't get out of the way and I knew that was the worst thing I could do in that moment. So I promised myself I would stay until that final moment, even if it meant I spent most of the class in child's pose.
And I did. I didn't go as deep as I normally do into the movements, my body felt like I had just taken a bath in cement when I tried to engage in deep core spiraling and even touching my toes wasn't happening for me today. And during savasana I counted the seconds until the teacher freed us and I was able to leave. But I did it. I stayed and I breathed and I used this uncomfortable practice as an invitation to look at all of those things composing my concrete armor: all the things I wanted to run from.
That rejection from someone close to me, the hurtful things someone had said, the details that weren't working themselves out as quickly as I wanted them to, the huge life shifts that (while good) brought along with them memories of the past and scary possibilities.
When I was doing coaching a few months ago we (my coach and I) came to a realization. When trauma comes, in any form or magnitude, I want to become ice. Emotions get frozen inside of me, my body locks up, I enter survival mode. The realization of this survival technique became vital in working with and understanding past traumas but as I laid on my mat today I realized I'm still doing it.
Things got messy and hard and I felt separated from my body and experienced trauma and my first reaction was to become hard like ice.
The magic, my coach had told me then, is that I am a shape shifter. The pain doesn't have to remain in its icy form. Water exists in other forms too: liquid or gas. Instead of remaining ice, I can let the pain turn into water.
Still pain, still just as valid and just as strong, but it can flow through me instead of locking up inside of me.
Here's the truth: I am hurt right now. I am confused and I don't understand a lot of things and my life is changing (In ways both good and bad) and however that change looks it doesn't deny the fact that its scary and its shaking things up. I'm dealing with broken relationships, dreams becoming a reality, dreams that won't come true in the way i expected them to, a career change, physical pain, friends going through hard situations. I'm becoming more of my true self, and sometimes that means losing some things and sometimes that's moving towards new things that are scary and I don't totally understand this process. And all of it makes me want to become hard like ice because its "easier" that way and if I can put aside emotions and let myself become rigid and protected by my concrete armor it will be easier to deal with.
But I know that doesn't work anymore. I know a better way. And my physical being resists the concrete armor, the ice.
I'm trying to let myself become like water. Let these feelings flow through me. There is a way I can feel these things and not let them dictate my life. I can be my whole self in a way that isn't picking up war torn pieces. I can feel this without letting it destroy me. The difference between now and then was that these changes are bringing me closer to my true self, not farther away. I know how to be with myself now in the hard spaces. I know who I am, no matter what other people say about me or project onto me. I can be like water on the mountain top, flowing through all of this but still so grounded and rooted in truth and love and who I know I am.
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