Meandering into the New Year

As I thought about this week's blog, I decided it would be useful to revisit some writing from last year to see where I was and how similar/different this year is from last year as I enter into another early winter season. For the most part, I'm still feeling vata overload. Kapha is a distant energy. I can see it on the horizon and catch glimmers of it in my body, but for the most part, it is the dry, vibrating energy that has me in its grips.  

Here, though, is a paragraph from my experiences last year, December 19 of 2012 to be precise:

At one point in Juliet's Saturday class, I was in malasana and I thought, this is it.  This is the shit that I resist, despise, and from which I always disconnect.  I felt it deeply in my hips as I struggled to find a comfortable moment in the position.  But then I tried to relax and started to focus on my core and pressing my big toe into the earth.  I then felt something moving--that dark energy moving around and making space for something else.  My butt settled down closer to earth and I felt lighter in my heart.  I could feel that the sludge did not have to take over.  The feeling was again momentary, but what I realized this time was that I can plug into that darker heavier energy and find places to move and shift.  I can play with this energy instead of fearing and dreading it.  I realized the real work of my body in the juncture and the season: to play with kapha.

That dark energy, the sludge, as I called it, has not been settling into me too heavily. The feeling this inspires within me, though, does remind me of what I felt in cycling class on Monday.  When class started, everything was heavy.  It was hard to push the pedals. It was hard to get my rpm's up to a decent rate.  It all felt tremendously difficult. The easiest of motions felt like I was trudging through mud.  And I focused on that feeling.  I stayed with it and as I stayed with it I could feel a loosening.  After a few rounds of work, I was able to, metaphorically, pedal out of the mud and smoothly move my body through the motions of the class. 

I bring this up, because I realized as I read that entry that the act of sitting with does not take as much work as it used to.  I can access it more quickly these days.  The daily practice. The routine of my morning  It all seems to have helped me face the immediate moments of fear that the sludge can induce.  It is freeing.  It gives me tremendous energy as I enter into this cold and dry early winter that has hit us in Fargo.  Sub-zero weather has been the consistent temperatures for the past month.  The snow is crunchy and dry.  The wind isn't bad, but the air is incredibly dry. Vata is definitely lingering in a serious way in my environment and in my body.  Stiff joints.  Shoulder achey.  I can feel the ache from the back of my skull to the left side of my hip.  I get to head to a massage today, which I hope will inspire juiciness. Help me find juiciness. I love that word: juicy. 
And it is something I am craving deeply in my body.  Deeply.  Because I am feeling so dry--the anti-thesis of juicy. 

Body Patterns and Shifts: A Tangent

One thing that emerged from my Thai massage session was that my body was feeling some aches due to holding my body in a more puffed up fashion.  Why is this interesting?  Probably because I have been spending an enormous amount of time working on shifting away from my typical victim narrative.  It is a story that comes with a particular stance-- a stance making me as small as possible.  That means hunching, crossing my legs, and holding in my shoulders. Anything that I can do to not take up much space--especially in moments of stress and tension. Anything I can do to hide, become invisible. Not be accountable to anything.  Not even myself.

My body seems to be moving into expansion and visibility. At least that is how I'd like to interpret my body right now.  It is feeling the aches from holding my chest out, lifting my shoulders--not hunching them.  It is part of a new narrative taking shape. Just as this type of ache in my body is new, so are all the feelings that come with being awake and accountable--especially to myself. It was not a sensation I felt with much force. I find it intriguing how unconsciously my body posture started to change as some of my new story started to settle in.  It helps me to think about how the way we see ourselves in the world has a direct impact on how I'm physically in the world.

There was also a serendipitous moment in this experience of my bodily changes. I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which there is a girl who becomes invisible. She is so socially marginalized and unseen that she becomes physically invisible.  I couldn't help thinking about that girl as me. How that story was mine.  How I had worked hard to try to make my body something invisible and unassuming and now here I am working hard to break free. Here I am trying to hold my space. Here I am finding space and holding space for me. 

So as I think about last year and how the sludge hit me so early. I am amazed at how I move through these rotating seasons, but they are far from redundant.  This year is drawing out something different. Something else.  It isn't just a replay of last year's early winter for me.  I am a new body facing this season in a new way.  It is a thrilling feeling.  I never thought I'd find a thrill in the winter season. I never thought I'd feel a lightness, a curiosity toward this time of year. 

Another practice I indulged in on Christmas Day was not leaving the house.  I stayed in pajamas and stayed home all day.  And I didn't feel guilty or gross.  It was a challenge, but there was something lovely about reminding myself that December 25 would be a day of leisure, not guilt.  That work and the world is always there and I can take a day to hibernate. It wasn't totally conscious.  There was television. There was food. But there was also reading and loving and all kinds of wonderful that can be found in the great indoors.  It felt as though I had finally shed some of the past in which being inside meant being depressed.  I felt as though some of that old story was rendered completely irrelevant and that it now time to turn to something deeper. 

Liminal Spaces at the End of Juncture

This past week has been an exploration in incompleteness, grayness, and all the words that convey an in process transition.  Sitting in the incomplete spaces of a semester not quite ready to end, I worked hard to find grounding and solace.  By incomplete I mean there were

frayed

lingering threads still holding me to the fall semester: finals, grading, committee meetings. My routine started to fray as classes ended and the threads holding me somewhat stable unraveled as I started to look toward the start of winter break.  Losing my routine last week seemed to align with the instability of seasonal shifts and added another layer to a complex month of juncture work.  The end of autumn came, though, and we are now in early winter.  I am also ostensibly done with the semester.  The threads totally severed, as I now work to weave new threads into my daily life.  Early winter is a challenge.  Doshically (is that a word?), it reflects my constitution.  The tension between vata and kapha is in full swing.  Vibration and earth colliding.  How do I find balance between these seemingly oppositional forces? How do I use them well to support each other, rather than exacerbate them?  That is my challenge over the next month or so before winter deepens and kapha takes a deeper hold of the earth--and me.  

The past week was a series of challenges and I am always surprised how valuable intentionality can be as I head into moments that push and pull at me in uncomfortable ways.  I have to admit, it was a week of vata gone crazy.  I was vibrating and floating above the earth more often than I could find the ground beneath me.  What helped me? Remembering that it was just a moment.  It was a moment. A moment.  It was not forever. And ever. And ever.  Rather than closing my eyes or trying to burrow away from the the source of the discomfort, I held on. I remembered that I needed to keep grounding myself as best as I could. I held on to my morning routines as best as I could.  Yes, I slept badly. I tossed and turned.  My mind churned over and over like a record on the turntable.  But in the morning, I dragged myself to my morning pages. I held my mala.  I repeatedly called to akhilanda.  It did not always go well.  Many times, I couldn't get through all my pages.  Other times, I felt mindless in my calls to the goddess who is  never not broken, but also never not whole.  But I did my best.  I remembered.  I remembered intention.  Intention is everything for me right now. 

http://shrinkrap.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Never-not-broken-750x260.jpg

Liminal is defined as "occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold."   Juncture is defined as "a point of time; especially one made critical by a concurrence of circumstances."  Shifting ground.  Boundaries changing.  A new threshold.  The concurrence of events that lead to shifting ground.  To boundary changes. To the discovery of a new threshold.  These events can lead to uncertain territory. They can produce fear of the unknown. 

Yet, I'm drawn to the liminal spaces even as they terrify me. I seem to be creeping up on them more and more and not with my eyes closed.  I can see myself in the moment and find patience in my fear.  It certainly doesn't mean that the fear disappears.  It is very real, visceral. I can feel my body clench and muscles tighten.  But I'm starting to understand that I am prepared. That I can move through these new spaces and that as I hit these junctures, they have much to teach me, even as I lay awake at night unable to calm my mind. I can feel something happening even as I still experience the terror of being something new, something different from what I was or what I imagined I should be.  Never not broken.  Never not whole.  

Yet awake to it all.  

Kapha Snorkeling throughout Vata Panic

I'm catching up a bit with the blog.  I was away for Thanksgiving in Florida and I knew that I would not be able to post while I was down there.  I've spent some time thinking about this post and what I wanted to focus on and the theme that kept coming through my experiences and my writing pages was  the intersection of vata and kapha.  Panic and stuck-ness. The freakout in my mind as I work through those simultaneous and oppositional experiences.  Sounds a lot like the challenges of my dosha type and my winter work.

Kapha Snorkeling

Feet in Fort Lauderdale

When I was in Florida, Matt and I went snorkeling. Mind you, I have never snorkeled before. I assumed we'd be walking out into calm water and sticking our heads down in the water to see beautiful fish and coral.  Well, that wasn't exactly what happened.

Biscayne Bay, Miami

It was a rather windy day in Key Largo and we got on a boat that took us about 10 miles out into the ocean. The coral reef was a ways out in the middle of… well, water.  Water all around.  And the wind was strong.  There was a strong current and white caps were breaking all around us.  I looked around and realized that I was going to have to swim in that rough water.  Not exactly the image of calmness I had imagined.

I kept telling myself that this would be a great experience.  Submerging myself into the water of kapha--such a dominant force in my life-- might be a way to learn how to move through those dense and liquid spaces that feel so treacherous in the moment.  The power that liquidity holds overwhelms me. I often get lost in it during the winter season, or at least I get lost in the fear of it taking over.  As I watched those waves, I saw how easily they could take me down, down, down into depths I never knew existed.  Although the water was not that deep near the coral reef-- maybe about 5 or 6 feet, we were not to touch the ground.  The coral would be damaged by our touch, so we need to stay horizontal in the water.  I was scared.  But I went in the water with my snorkel in my mouth,  my life jacket on, and a water noodle tucked under my arms.  I'm sure I was a sight.  I was a bit scared, but I swam.  I kept kicking my legs and moving through the waves. It was exhausting.  I was trying to get enough air through the snorkel as I swam and found myself out of breath quite quickly. It's hard to realize in the moment how much work it takes to swim against the current.  I was scared, though, so I just kept swimming to stay up.  I was not enjoying the experience.  I was doing to do it.  But Matt came over and told me to look down, put my head in the water.  I was so scared that up until that point, all I was doing was keeping my head up and swimming.  But then I looked down.  And I saw beautiful fish--yellows, golds, reds.  I saw spiny tree-like coral. I saw a big flowering coral.  It was amazing.  And I then relaxed. I could really see.  I swam more and moved further and further from the boat toward the coral reef.  I looked down and saw more coral and colorful fish.  The panic was still present, but I was able to mediate my fear by letting to go and seeing, really seeing, that I was in this amazing place for this amazing moment.  Admittedly, soon after that Matt came by in a panic because he had swallowed some water. My worry returned for his safety, so we headed back to the boat. But that moment mattered,  even though it was a brief. It helped me see how much the vata panic is not the remedy to the dark heavy fear that kapha can instill within me.  Instead, I need to use the stubbornness of kapha and the focus of pitta, to help me let go.

The Story of Vata Panic
Frenetic.  Vata is here and she is vibrating uncontrollably. She is here and inside of me, vibrating, making it impossible to feel comfortable.  Making it impossible to feel calm.  I'm trying to sit with her, be with her.  I'm trying, but the mind keeps moving and moving, making it hard to settle down. Making it hard to be with.  I'm trying to remember kapha snorkeling. I'm trying to remember that moment. That brief moment in which I looked into the water and saw the beauty beneath me.  The moment I saw the beauty of presence. I'm trying very hard to remember, but vata keeps vibrating uncontrollably.  She is here and demanding that I move with her. Moving, moving, moving.  I'm trying to be with her, but not join in her frenetic dance. I'm trying to just be with her.  To be a witness to her.  I'm trying to remember what it felt like to look down in the water and see the beauty and feel the calm within.  The calm despite my inability to control the water, control the wind, control how I moved in the water.  I'm trying to find space in the panic. Space to stop and observe.  Space to understand that this is just a moment.  A set of moments.

Silhouettes