Returns
So I think it would be fair to say that this spring was a tough one. Use whatever metaphoric imagery you like, it was long and full of bumps in the road. Doors were slamming and no windows were opening. Mountains kept popping up left and right. I ended up on a very stuffy mountain range of problems. And of course in the cosmic scheme of things, my problems were relatively small. Was I starving? No. Was I homeless? No. Did I have no shoes? No. Was I even walking to school uphill both ways? No. But while I appreciate the fact that my life could “function,” I was “less” in a lot of ways. Vision-less, hopeless, sleepless, restless. And some of these still persist today, but certainly not to the acute degree or the breadth that they did just several months ago.
I attribute the change to a couple things but most centrally…yoga. It wasn’t so long ago (2 months, actually) that I regularly started taking yoga classes (not half-heartedly doing DVDs in my dining room…which I refer to as my ‘yoga studio’). Somehow, the interaction with a teacher and other students began to work away at some of the anxieties that had built to the point of all of my ‘lesses.’ And in a way that doing yoga “at the gym” as a “workout” could never touch. A return to the breath–the present moment–was and is the most holistically therapeutic thing I’ve ever done. So much so, that I feel it has spurred “returns” in other places that, frankly, I thought were long gone.
“What the hell are you talking about Katie?” you must be thinking. I understand that…the notion that enduring the burning, searing pain in my hamstrings created by a forward bend or working through the panic that arises right in my throat when I maneuver my way into a handstand or headstand could actually manifest itself in very real ways outside of the yoga studio (in this case, not my dining room) seems bizarre and crunchy-granola new agey (this is my own system of classification, just for the record). But here’s how I’m seeing this work out: old friends I haven’t spoken to in years have popped back up in moments that I really needed them. (What freaks me out is that if I think real hard about it, it almost seems like I’ve “summoned” them to me…I know, I know…I’m in a panic about it myself.) School which was an absolute albatross in February has returned as a true interest. My financial situation–always tenuous at best–that was positively dire three months ago has positively worked itself out…and not just as a “hey I got a job at Best Buy” type of scenario but as a “hey I’m a fucking sociologist…now pay me to teach it” kind of way. (Again, if I look hard, the Universe has clearly…CLEARLY…steered me back into the classroom in a very definitive way…and has arrange a payment system that is better than I’ve ever encountered before.) I’ve been granted closure in the situations that were tearing me apart emotionally. I’ve been granted insight into the most difficult challenges. I’ve actually found in a new way what compassion means…especially in approaching myself and others with compassion. And it’s because of those fiery forward bends and the heinous twists that make me feel like a real failure on the yoga mat.
It so interesting to really begin to understand what yoga teaches. Everyone thinks about the “flexy-bendies”–you know, those people (usually women) who can lick their shins and turn themselves practically inside out and afterwards talk about how being a human pretzel gets them to a new level of enlightenment. I have a new respect for them…yoga’s made them that. But focusing on the physical stretching is just too one-dimensional; yoga has to also stretch your mind and your heart too. Otherwise, we should call it calisthenics and be done with it. No, yoga builds spiritual muscle-memory; it teaches you to endure, to dare, and to deal with emotions as they come and in a way that allows you to learn control and mastery of them. Yogis talk about it in terms of detachment. I just call it sanity.
But I’m glad I’m plugged into it. It seems whenever I really focus on it, the Universe responds to me and returns me to exactly where I need to be. And gives me things like this as a sign that I’m doing okay.
