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

Meditation and Welcoming the Juncture

Over the past 10 days, I have been doing longer and longer meditations with the goal of working my way to an hour. I wanted to keep a brief log of my meditation experiences—my struggles and successes.

20 Minutes—I was a bit nervous going into this meditation. I have been pretty much sticking with the 10-minute daily meditations and I was worrying about how I would do with 20-minutes.  But as I sat, I was able to slow down my mind and settle into the practice.  I spent a lot of time focusing on the tightness of my heart and neck.  Constriction was at times overwhelming, but I kept sitting with it and feeling. Just feeling what was going on in my body.  And it wasn’t a bad feeling, but it was all over the place.  My mind was jumping from thing to thing to thing and I had to keep returning to my breath. I also kept returning to the imagery of letting my thoughts go like bubbles floating up into the sky.  Just letting them go.  It was very helpful to get me out of the tendency to hold on to my thoughts for too long.  Once I did that, the time moved quickly and the meditation finished much faster than I thought it would.

30 Minutes—I was happy to sit in meditation this time.  I knew it was a bit longer, but I was excited for the challenge.  My mind was yet again very busy and didn’t want to settle too quickly.  I tried to stay with my breath and use the bubble imagery with my thoughts.  This time, though, the bubbles were heavy. They were more like bowling balls that kept dropping to the ground, creating craters and holes in the earth around me.  I could feel heaviness in my body as the meditation continued, as though something was pulling me down and it became harder and harder to sit up straight.  I kept returning to letting go of my thoughts and they continued to be bowling balls falling and falling to the earth.   I sat with the heaviness, though, and didn’t try explain it away or fix it.  I usually just want to fix those feelings that I find challenging, but I do realize I need to let them be what they are and I kept thinking that maybe whatever was going on was not ready to be fully released.  Before I could fully work through that heaviness the meditation ended.  It was encouraging to find the space to just sit in the discomfort and I hope I can work through that heaviness as the meditations get longer.

40 Minutes—This was a smoother meditation.  I finished the meditation thinking, “I did it! I sat here for 40 minutes and I didn’t break down and look at my timer.”  I entered the meditation smoothly and felt pretty good throughout.  Toward the end, I had to keep resisting the desire to look at the timer and know how much was left.  It was a challenge, but the feeling of making it through was incredible and energized me as I thought about working toward my 60-minute meditation goal.  I moved through my body and could feel my body sinking into the deeper spaces that I just can’t reach when I do my shorter 10-minute daily meditation.  Oddly enough, I didn’t have any nervousness going into the meditation and actually looked forward to having that space. It was a tough couple of days as I worked through my preparations for school and my mind wanted a break. To let go of everything.  I was craving it.

50 Minutes—This was a tough meditation.  The best metaphor for how I entered the meditation is that of an untamed horse being restrained.  The flailing.  The kicking.  The incessant neighing.  The shaking and hurling. Doing everything and anything I could do to try to get off of my mat.  My mind was spinning through a lot of deep darkness.  It was a dark day.  A dark weekend, actually.  I sat through it, though.  I sat.  I could feel the tightness in my heart.  I sat.  I could see myself digging through the darkness and finding large shells that represented two of my largest fears:  what people think of me and not being perfect.  I dug out those fear-shells and they pushed me down deeper and deeper until I fell through into what looked like a dessert.  Dry, arid, bright.  The darkness seemed to disappear.  I sat.  But then I could feel myself grow more and more antsy.  I wanted to get up. I wanted to know how much more time I had left.   But I asked myself why I needed to know this.  What came to me was that I wanted a context against which to understand myself. I didn’t want to stand alone without something to measure myself against.  Standing in the wide-open space of the desert was a perfect metaphor for letting go of those fears. It was the perfect metaphor for seeing myself as I am and that freaked me out.  But I sat.   As my heart area tightened, I decided to lay down and open my chest over my bolster.  I laid there, opening my chest and waiting. I just wanted to the meditation to be done.  And when I didn’t think I could lay there longer I reached for my alarm and it went off before I could check how much time was left.

60 Minutes—This was a strange meditation.  I was not agitated or anxious or ready to jump out of my skin. In fact, it was the opposite. I was there and hiding in my skin. As I thought about the meditation last night, I found that the word, lost best describes what I was experiencing. I didn’t know where I was going or why and I was struggling to care.  I wasn’t bouncing around from thing to thing to thing like I have been in previous meditations.  Instead, I was floating from thing to thing to thing.  Lost and floating.  Unfocused.  It took a tremendous amount of energy to keep my mind on my breath, my body, and my meditation.  My mind wanted to just go away.  There were numerous gaps over the 60 minutes.  Gaps in which I cannot tell you what I was thinking or why.  Most of my time in meditation was spent staying present and staying awake.  About half way through I peeked at the time.  I didn’t have any qualms about looking at the timer, unlike my previous meditations.  I was disheartened when I saw much time was left.  I found my footing, though, in that moment. It sort of woke me up to my meditation and I found a way to move through my chakra track and work on feeling each part of my spine as I moved my attention up my body.  The second half of the meditation was much more focused, but still a struggle.  But I did it. I made it through a 60-minute meditation.

Reflection—As I look over the direction of these meditations, the dramatic shift in my final meditation keeps running through my mind.  I can’t help but think this is a marker for the transition I’m about to embark upon.  The shift from early winter to late/deep winter begins tomorrow and I sense that a deepening is taking place and has been over the past week.  My goal is to remain curious about what I experience in this juncture and do what I can to not get stuck in any one feeling for too long.  I want to be curious, but also remind myself that these feelings are momentary. They do not define me. They are not all of me. And more than likely, if I let them move through me, they will move out.  I want to be curious, sometimes linger, but not dwell.   

My Kapha Day

I had been trudging along with a high level of vibration and motion throughout the early winter. Vata has been on overdrive throughout most of the early winter—much to my surprise and in some ways, relief, in all honesty.  It’s not that I enjoy the vata energy more than kapha, but I have to admit I appreciate being in motion and doing more than the feeling of getting stuck in a rut.   

But I hit the weekend and suddenly everything went into slow motion.  Things that I thought would be pretty simple and straightforward started to feel fuzzy and distant.  I honestly did not want to do anything.  Nothing for work. Nothing creative. Nothing active.  I just wanted to be.  I just wanted to not think.

Early winter, with all that vata energy and motion, was not without its hiccups.  I was struggling to get to sleep. I had frequent headaches. I was struggling to find routine and grounding.  I was in full-force twitching mode.  I’ve been creaky and dry.  My lack of sleep and, at times, random energy, clearly caught up with me on Saturday. I call it my kapha day.  I ended up staying in or near my bed most of the day.  I wasn’t necessarily sleeping. I spent time watching movies and reading and relaxing and snuggling and just…hibernating from the world.  It was the exact opposite of what I had planned for the weekend. It went against my calendar, to-do list, and my need to prepare for classes.  But I was tired and had no energy for anything.  So I gave into rest. The odd thing is that I didn’t feel guilty about it.  I often fester in guilt when I stay home all day and just piddle around.  I allowed myself that day.  It was an odd feeling.  To let myself just be. 

What that day ultimately felt like, though, was me vibrating and running onto a thick muddy road.  It wasn’t hard or painful. It was like I was moving too much and to fast and I was suddenly slowed down by something beyond my control.  I didn’t trip. I didn’t fall. I didn’t slam into anything. It was more like everything started taking more time and energy and more coaxing to get through.  But it afforded me more time to move carefully and intentionally. It afforded me time to experience a deepening of the world. Not exactly sinking, it was more liberating than that. It is hard to describe what I have been experiencing over the past several days. It is more like I am moving down and into something different, something new.  I have been trying to remain curious about it rather than shifting into panic mode.  It has been liberating.  Holding onto the curiosity has changed my relationship to kapha.  I’m starting to see how I can relax into kapha.  Not fear it quite as much.  When I give it the time to work through me, it feels less like being swallowed by the world than moving into new spaces of myself. 

Kintsukuroi

Kintsukuroi. I decided to linger on this word for my blog this week.   But this week has passed and I have not provided an entry.  I have, though, been thinking about this word a lot.

I'm going to leave this entry as it is as I work to kintsukuroi my own self.

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.