First the Breaking, then Kintsukuroi

I’ve been struggling all week with how to articulate what has been going on for me during this juncture.  It has been a long, protracted set of experiences that have been building and receding since juncture started.  We are close to transitioning out of early winter and into the throes of late winter.  This past week or so has been challenging, but not in the typical way I find myself challenged. This is why I am struggling to find language for what I’ve been going through.  I think if I break it down into a few smaller pieces, I might have a chance to convey some of what has been going on.

Digging out the Shells

As I look back at my meditations building up to the juncture, I can’t help but pause at the one in which I was digging out shells from the dirt that filled my hip and pelvis region.  It was imagery that was irrepressible in the meditation. I kept digging up those shells.  Little ones at first.  But the shells grew in size, eventually becoming larger than my body.  The release of these shells compromised the dirt to such a degree that I fell through.  I fell into a deeper darker place. It was not heavy and wet, though.  It was dry dirt that crumbled all around me.  There was an odd lightness to it.  It was unlike anything I’ve felt. It was a weird combination of both the holding heavy energy of kapha and the arid light energy of vata. 

I see now how much that moment was my entry into juncture.  I was taken into a new space that was beyond any habit energy I have come to identify in myself and beyond any clear marker of doshic categorization.  I had (literally, meditatively) fallen into juncture and I felt as though I had landed on a whole new plane of existence.  I felt like an alien in my own body.  

Thinking about those shells as various obstacles I have internalized over many years, their movement unsettled everything inside of me.  It is no wonder that my catch phrase for the past 10 days has been, “everything just feels off.” And it has.  My rhythm for class, for work, for my relationships, has felt out of sync.  For much of this juncture, I have been trying to get back in sync, but what I realized yesterday is that I am not supposed to get back in sync with those old patterns. I realized that it’s time to fully embrace a whole new set of life rhythms and patterns. 

First the Breaking, then Kintsukuroi

My love of the word kintsukuroi cannot be overstated and it has been fused into me as I’ve been engaging in my winter journey this year.  The understanding that something becomes more beautiful for having been broken is both poetic and freeing.  It is in the cracks that the creative juices flow and the uniqueness of our self emerge.   But before that uniqueness can ever be revealed, we must not just break; we must acknowledge and pay homage to what has chipped away, shattered, cracked. 

If I take the imagery of falling deeper into my inner world, I watch myself falling deeply into the sacred pelvic area of my body and cracking it.  Breaking it. 

And this happened smack dab in the center of juncture.  Last weekend I broke.  There is no other way to say this.  I fell and I broke.

Clinging to Kapha, Clearing out Vata

What did that look like in my world?  It looked like me crying uncontrollably for what was ultimately a minor spat between me and my significant other. It took the whole week to make sense of what had happened.  I still can’t tell you why I was crying so deeply.  It was a crying I haven’t experienced in years.  It was deep.  It came from such a depth within my body that there was nothing I could do but try to soothe myself and just let it happen. 

What I started to understand was that I was desperately trying to cling to a part of myself that was no longer sustainable. It was like something deep inside of me was in a tug-o-war.  I was trying to hold onto the small fragments of a narrative that insisted that I am a victim. That things happen to me. That I am alone with no recourse, no way out.  It is a terrible story, but it is a story that is comforting in the worst of times.  As I tried to tell that story to myself to soothe my tears, the tears came out faster and more furiously.   I was scared.  I was scared I might lose my significant other with this transition in my story and I was scared that I was losing a significant part of myself.

The imagery of my cracked pelvis is the best metaphor I have for telling the story of what was happening to me.   First the breaking, then kintsukuroi.  The energy of kapha was trying to hold tight.  Terrified of change, it wanted to go back to that old story, but I couldn’t.  Kapha knew that, too, but denial is a powerful thing.  Yet those broken bits and pieces of my pelvis kept moving and shifting, demanding a way out.  I had to make room; it all couldn’t fit anymore.  And when I think of the odd heaviness inside of me all that week, I can see now that I was struggling to get something out, but I was terrified to let it go.  The clinging and holding was powerful, but it was existing simultaneously with the deep desire driving that underlying layer of my pelvis. It is a layer that wanted air, it wanted to push up and through and show its beautiful, stronger, more resilient self that has been working hard to clean the shards and insert that beautiful gold glue that holds me together in a powerful way.  But that power is terrifying to me.  I don’t entirely understand it.  I’m not entirely comfortable with it.  But it is here and I need to start learning it. 

Earlier this week, there was a clear release that physically transpired.  My body just let go, but it wasn’t like the sun suddenly appeared down on me with birds singing peacefully in my ear.  In fact, at first, I had no idea what was going on. I felt like shit.  My body felt like it was revolting and after some of that revolt released, it felt tired and stripped.  I felt more off than ever. Slowly, though, over the remainder of the week, I started to feel my way out of that.  And it is as I sit here, writing this down, that I understand better what was happening over the past 10 days or more.

I can’t explain all that was released. I don’t think that is the point.  My sense is that some of it was very old shit that just finally found its way out.  What became clear to me, though, was that I needed to fully release it and that meant not examining.  Not analyzing.  Just releasing.  Expanding.

"Expansion": Paige Bradley