Stuff for which there’s no simile or analogy

Tags

Acupuncture, analogy, deconstruction, fairy floss, Healing, Kinesiology, quivery, shimmery shakiness, simile, stillness, Stuff To Be Dealt With, Super-Duper Unstuck, Uddiyana bandha

Sometimes healing is not like anything else. There’s no simile, no analogy, no poetic prose or otherwise words or actions to express those shifts occurring, wherever it is they occur.

Do they happen in the body somewhere? Do they really? I wonder about such things on occasion because it feels like this puny bag of skin, blood and bones is too minor to hold all of that. Perhaps like a radio, we receive the signal but don’t originate it? Perhaps…

I’m really trying to tell you something right now, but the words aren’t there. I could make something up that in some way, might offer the palest of reflections but it wouldn’t really be it – the what’s going on – if you know what I mean.

What I can tell you is this. Seems (according to my body anyway) I’m in a hurry to resolve a whole BUNCH of stuff. Lots. And preferably all of it right now, thank you very much. So much so that I’m making both conscious and sub/unconscious decisions that lead me right up to the very edge of the pit of Stuff To Be Dealt With.

Lots of stuff. Heck, ALL my stuff!

Okay, here’s one: it tastes a bit like fairy floss: sweet; gone almost before you register the flavour; mythical and more-ish. Can you ever really describe what it tastes like or how it feels in your mouth as it melts into nowhere?

This week I’ve lined up a bumper crop of activities. A five mornings in a row workshop on the cultivation of uddiyana bandha, kinesiology and acupuncture. All working on the Stuff (not that I knew it until a couple of hours ago, when I chuckle-snorted my way into acknowledgement).

And so while I might look all calm and chilled to the untrained eye, what’s really going on is this: quivery, shimmery shakiness; re-routing; deconstruction of wastelands; gentle encouragement; deep diving; much stillness; and connecting all the friggin’ dots.

What all of that adds up to is Healing. And getting Super-Duper Unstuck. Well, a bit more anyway!

Preparing the way for that bright, shiny new Future I’ve been talking about lately. The one where I have a plan.

Can’t stay long here, not even to edit so please excuse any roughness to this post. It’s 9.30pm and I’ve gotta get my ass into bed so I can cheerfully arise at 5am. For yoga, bliss and love.

~Svasti xoxo (coming to you with big hugs and kisses from some outpost galaxy where stuff just fucking unfolds entirely magically and literally)

P.S. ENORMOUS ups to Kerry, the magical kinesiology chick!

Yoga Tattuesday & Ordinary Joy #reverb10

Tags

#reverb10, Anxiety, back seat driver, big gaping hole, Depression, disassociation, Enlightenment, fairy floss, fork in the road, Meditation, morbid alternative, ordinary joy, Self-destruction, sense of enjoyment, spaciousness, vacuum, Yoga, Yoga Tattuesday

Before I get into the next #reverb10 post, I just wanted to mention that Birdie over at Yogi, Interrupted has written a feature post on my tattoo as part of her Yoga Tattuesday series.

Go check it out and say hello to Birdie! 😀

Ordinary Joy. Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?
~ December 27 prompt

Actually, this year has had a bunch of them. Mostly as I previously described: those moments when I’ve realised that depression is no longer running the show.

Where I’ve been surprised by my own darkness-free sense of enjoyment. Free of anxiety, even. Those moments are almost unbelievable and they appear a little bit mysteriously. Think of fairy floss magically wrapping itself around a stick: there’s other forces at work, but to the naked eye things suddenly appear to change.

Like… hey, I think I’m feeling pretty happy right now. For no particular reason… Fuck, but that can be mind-blowing when you’re used to a more morbid alternative!

Don’t get me wrong, depression still sticks its nose out every so often looking for a soft place to land and dig in. That’s its nature. Once it’s had a taste of you, it always wants more. Although it should be noted that the “it” I’m referring to is none other than our own minds. Depression is not an imposition from the outside, but one way that our brain functions or rather, dysfunctions.

Over time the onset of depression’s symptoms get easier to recognise and as long as I’m still doing yoga, riding my bike and connecting with nature then it can’t easily get a foothold.

Not that it doesn’t try.

Most interestingly, while examining my mind recently I noticed that depression shares the same root experience as meditation. A sense of spaciousness. A big gaping hole. A vacuum.

However if you’re not prepared for that kind of spaciousness, it can be very scary. It can even look a little bit like death. No matter who you are or how much work you’ve done on yourself it can be quite shocking.

I know this from my own experience – I’ve been shocked several times now, via both depression and meditation.

And perhaps depression is just one fork in the road, a really well-trodden path because the alternative is… what? Self-destruction?

Unless you’ve had any meditation experience, then there aren’t really too many other roads to take. You can’t see them and even if you could, they wouldn’t make much sense. Because there’s just too much noise going on there in the ol’ mind.

Problem is, once you’ve become acquainted with that sense of empty space, it never really goes away. In fact, it can be a little bit like the worst back seat driver imaginable. Always commenting and shadowing your actions, seemingly not being helpful at all. Butting in when you wish they’d just SHUT THE HELL UP! Ever present and waiting, causing unnecessary stress.

Until we learn to relax and humour it: the back seat driver; depression. Take your pick. Life isn’t going to end because of them, not unless we allow it to.

This is why I say that yoga and meditation had as much to do with my recovery as all the therapy I’ve ever had.

The physical practice of yoga – all that movement and controlled breathing – was just what I needed to get out of my head, because depression lives in the mind and then invades the body.

To build up my sensitivity in order to dispel disassociation. To sense and feel in ways that weren’t too scary.

The practice of meditation helps us understand the mind’s vagaries and also provides discipline. And it is this discipline that we need in order to free ourselves of the endless terrors the mind will cook up if we let it.

Endless hours of this kind of work: vigilant observation of the mind; moving my sorry ass around instead of sinking further into the couch; feeling, even when it was painful to do so; facing the truth about my experiences, as much as they hurt.

And my reward is this: these little moments of ordinary joy.

Of rejoicing in a glorious sunny day while waiting for the train.

Of skipping gleefully down some street and noticing the beauty of a tangled mess of tree roots.

Of talking to animals I come across, just to say hello.

A cute random dog I befriended on the street

Of that incredible high I get post-yoga class, body and mind engaged and experiencing life fully as an integrated mind-body awareness. Less a singular person and more a living organism, just a part of the whole.

Of all of those things and more. Ordinary moments of joy, indeed.

~Svasti

Uselessness

Tags

anti-heroine, bird eggs, blood kin, fairy floss, Family, helpless, Surrender, Truth, useless

Sometimes we say stuff, just to try and fill the gaps with a kind of explanation, even if it doesn’t make much sense. Not when you examine it properly.

What are we running from anyway? Are the words just a way to put some distance between things that cause us pain? Are they better than silence?

I’m a little confused and constantly surprised with all the strangeness, although I don’t really get why… I mean, if there’s one thing that’s predictable…

Can’t help but think of tiny baby bird eggs and how easily the shells are crushed. Which in a way is good… makes it easy for those tiny new birdlings to peck their way out when its time… but also means they’re quite fragile right up til…

Sand with crumbled sea shells, crunchy underfoot. So flimsy and yet remains in one piece, somehow. A piece of a larger whole. Thankfully. Well, at least for the time being.

The ache is heavy, dragging, spreading, stretching. Taking up space in my chest cavity leaving way less room for my lungs. Making it harder to breathe deeply.

Can’t blurt out what I really want to say, it’ll upset people. That’s not what I want. But what happened to being able to be really honest?

Perhaps it’s against the rules (no matter what they say) in this strange world where planning for the future is given higher priority than seeing the world straight up as it is, right now.

It is easier, sure, to just… not. Apparently.

But then I think – wow, it must look all-so different as you survey your version of this story.

I don’t belong here. But I can’t really get too far away – your story needs its anti-heroine, doesn’t it?

So you paint me shades of your discontent. A vagabond, in need of a proper frame of reference. According to you.

Tricky, tricky, fairy-floss-like melt-in-your-mouth confusion and not quite there-ness, and then, oh, just then you’ll say what I wish you’d said a while back.

But seems those words never come out when they would’ve been useful. It’s easier to look like you might be helpful, without having to potently act in that capacity, ever.

Alone, alone, alone. Always alone. Sitting around that table but there’s no warmth in your embrace. It’s a kind of a game.

And it’s silent. Can’t say those words. Just have to learn to say nothing. But then, that makes me like the rest of you, not what I want at all.

I’ve no idea what you think of this mess. Help is only help when it’s given freely, not when you make me beg.

Loving people in my life, it seems, is often a game of peeling the onion. Remove another layer, I just have to keep on shifting my viewpoint, because I’m never quite in the right position and that gets painful after a while.

Always, I try to forget what’s been, just to trust again afresh. But you never have anything new for me, just the same old same old…

I don’t belong here.

Where are the others like me? Those who don’t run from, but towards wounded people?

Certainly, I won’t find the answers here amongst blood kin.

Never have. Never will.

~Svasti