Shifting Slowly

Living off your mat is not the same as when you practice on your mat. You don’t do an hour of yoga and a 20 min meditation session and suddenly are floating through the rest of your day all Zen. This is not reality in anyway.

For me, I began my yoga journey because of a friend that brought me to a studio after not being able to pick myself up off the floor for quite some time. My reaction to her asking me to go was not good. I never understood how moving and directing your body in different and odd positions while listening to cues in a language I’d never get, was going to help in anyway.

My first class I sat criss cross on my mat, surrounded by several unknown faces, and felt very out of my element. The instructor began with a quote. I wish I could remember it. I only remember my heart beating fast because I was on the verge of tears. She asked us to close our eyes and the tears just began to fall. I know she saw me as she put her hand on my shoulder and asked us to take a few minutes to go in.

In? Where was I going in to? The LAST thing I wanted was to go into anything. I was already in a deep, dark hole I couldn’t manage to get out of or even understood how I had fallen into and now she wanted me to go in to something?

I just sat and allowed myself to cry. I got through class somehow but quickly wanted to get up and get busy so my head could stop thinking. Busy made me not think. I thanked the teacher and my friend, got into my car and drove home with the radio blasting. Already making plans on how to remain busy for the rest of the day.

My friend texted me that evening, asking if I’d liked it and if I thought of going back. “It was great! But not for me. I need to move quicker. Maybe I’ll get back into running.”

“Or maybe you need to slow down?” she responded

The thought of slowing down caused a lump in my throat and a sinking feeling in my chest. Slowing down would allow the thoughts to creep up. For the fears to come swarming in. For the dark to overshadow me. For my body to go stiff. For the world to completely collapse around me. I had a daughter to take care of. I had plans I needed to get to. A job to show up for. I had no time to slow down.

That day I printed out a running plan; couch to 5k. My ass was going to get that serotonin going and I was going to get back to the old me.

Day 1, I show up to the track at 7am, ready to tear up the pavement. 2 loops around at a fast pace and my heart was beating at a rate that seemed almost like an attack. My breath was so rapid I couldn’t hear the cues from my phone on whether I was supposed to begin jogging or walking for a minute. Ripping the headphones out, I chose to just walk the rest of the way to my car, giving up and giving in to this terrible, terrible new life I accepted I’d now need to live.

Something obviously happened along the way to get me into this hole and I was too scared to figure out what it was. However, I was also too scared to not figure it out. A catch 22. A real dillema. Face it or not, the big boogy monster was still there. It wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t outrun it, outwit it, out drink it, out busy it.

All my life up to that point I had run. Whether it was in a race or an errand or from things I didn’t want to face. Racing and busy were my forte. I loved running for people too. I ran favors for people all the time. It made me feel good to be of service. To feel needed. My stuff could wait. I was a night owl, I could get to me then.

The truth was though, by the time night came, I was too tired to do a thing for me. All I could do and not have to think was watch television. I convinced myself that tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow I’d get to me.

So many tomorrows later and at 37 I had a nervous breakdown. My tomorrows turned into the longest nightmare of my life. Every fear, every thing I ran from, started running towards me and grabbing at me and punching me in the gut, in the face, kicking me, scratching me, slapping me.

One minute I was loving life or so I thought I was. I was living a very surfaced life up until then. Doing what I thought was expected of me. No one put these expectations on me. However, no one told me I was allowed to think for myself either. I always assumed my duties included whatever role I was currently playing in my life; Christian, daughter, sister, wife, daughter, employee, friend. I always took these roles on as meaning I had to lead them. I had to take the lead on them and I didn’t need help. I wasn’t taught to ask for help. Asking for help meant weakness. It meant that I couldn’t do it. It meant that I was insufficient. I wasn’t enough.

This is not something that was taught to me. I believe it was the way I saw others in my life and the roles they played. I had very strong people around me. Or rather, I had tough adults around me. Adults that were shoved into roles they hadn’t realized the choices they made would take them there. And these adults were tough. Tough in words, tough in teaching, tough in reprimanding, tough in love. I admired their toughness. I wanted to be tough. To hold strong. To stay undefeated at whatever life threw at me. I didn’t know that strong and tough meant different things. I thought they were interchangeable.

So tough I became. Tough at how I conquered tasks. Tough at how I spoke. Tough at love, at life, at affection. I became so tough I had no damn clue that I was allowed to even let love into me. That loving myself was an option. My thoughts were that being of service to others was loving myself. I loved myself so much by loving those around me more by putting them first. Loving yourself was ego driven. You weren’t supposed to be ego driven.

All these teachings and not one person told me I could love myself. That being strong and tough were different. That being tough didn’t mean love had no place in you.

When I look up the word ‘tough’; very difficult to do or deal with. physically and emotionally strong. Able to do hard work, to deal with harsh conditions. I was all these things; difficult to deal with in my relationships. Shutting people out if I felt offended. Not giving them chances to explain. Not affectionate or able to receive affection comfortably. Physically strong because I literally would run, run, run all day, forgetting to eat, drink or at times even use the bathroom. Emotionally strong only in that I held my emotions in or exploded. The good and bad ones. If I was angry with you, I couldn’t communicate calmly. If I was sad about something, I pushed it down. If conversations got emotional I immediately felt like crying. If I felt like I wasn’t being listened to, I quickly got defensive. My emotions were two extremes; screaming to get my point across or crying and not being able to say a word.

Years of this brought me to where I was at 37. In a dark place. If felt like I was being stabbed from the inside. The thoughts came on uncontrollably. My emotions and feelings were all over the place; laughing, angry, crying, tired, wide awake, energetic, loss of appetite, famished, confused, enlightened. I could not stay with one feeling long enough to look it in the face, to lean into it enough to maybe make some sense of why I was feeling it.

Until that yoga class. That yoga class had me crying long enough and had me have to stay still long enough to face things. Things my brain was so apt to quickly want to shut down as a scary thing and usually you run from scary but that my heart latched on to. The space I was in in that studio, those surrounding me, the energy that surrrounded me, had me feel safe enough to stay still enough to let the thoughts in without pushing them out. The way she spoke during throughout class, kept me calm. I was able to process thoughts I hadn’t wanted to in years.

That yoga class was the 1st of 4 years of practice. It was that yoga class and others that followed that I was able to process thoughts and open myself up enough to delve into years of my own mental abuse. To fix me. Fix my way of thinking. For years I had lived in “go” mode.

Getting on the mat has me slow down enough to reacess myself. It’s also allowed me to see life off the mat in a very different way. Off the mat I still get angry and busy, however, the biggest difference is now I am AWARE of these emotions. I don’t let them lead me, I lead them. I immediately become aware of what state I’m in and lead myself to where I want instead of letting the emotion lead me to where it wants. I am in control of me now. I am no longer too busy for me, no longer too angry to spit out words I don’t mean. My voice is stabile enough to say what I need to say without fear of hurting someone. That’s why I used to cry during hard conversations; I was so afraid that what I needed to say didn’t matter enough and so crying covered up my words. Giving me the ability to shut down and nodding and giving the other person power to believe what they were saying was true and my tears confirmed that.

The mat is sacred to me and what I learn on it day after day, teaches me how to continually stay true to me, even when it’s tough, even when strong sounds safer than leaning in. Even when scary things show up, I am able to talk myself out of my brain and into my heart. Leading my thoughts to their true destination.