my body, me.
I'm participating in a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to elicit reflections on 2010, and hopes for 2011. You can find out more about it here. I am challenging myself to respond to each prompt in 15 minutes or less.
Today's challenge: This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?
Wow.
1995. It was a yoga studio on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C. Intimidated, I went anyway. A beginner's class, only an hour. I had an experience there that I'm not sure I can explain. It was a knowing that my head had taken over my body sometime in the past 15 years, that I was so disconnected from my body that at one point, even in the most simple pose, I couldn't tell where my legs were.
I walked out into a bright day, stood on the sidewalk and physically felt the best I had ever felt in my life. Expansive, stretched, alive in my body. It was spectacular.
I never went back.
2010. A friend died in mid-sentence, another died after two years of agony, a friend's life changed irrevocably in one instant. It was a year of loss. I told my friend Kurt. He sent back a one-line response: "Do you do yoga?" It was a perfect response, one that made immediate sense to me. Yes, I needed to get out of my head and into my body. I called a local yoga teacher the next day and booked a private session, just to get started.
I went.
She walked toward me, the most perfectly formed tiny human being I think I've ever encountered. Suddenly, I felt like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade float, huge and floating untethered above her. She knew I was there to mourn and to deepen my physical experience of loss, and she embraced that as she taught me simple poses. I could feel muscles stretching in my shoulders, my legs.
We talked about loss, and letting go. We talked about drama. "I used to get caught up in drama," she said, "and now when there is drama, I just say 'wow.'" It is a form of detachment, that wow. "Give me an example," I asked. "My dog killed a squirrel and left it at the bottom of my stairs," she answered. "I used to get all worked up about it, but now I just look at the squirrel and say 'wow.'"
This simple wisdom has changed my life.
Delta Airlines cancels my flight? A quiet wow.
The man in front of me in the express lane at the Piggly Wiggly has 35 items? A silent wow.
Wow, with no attachment to outcome. Just wow. Detached from drama. A quiet, simple wow.
That single hour with her so stretched my mind. And my body.
Expansive, stretched, alive in my body. It was spectacular.
I haven't been back.
Not yet.
