Tag Archives: Yoga

You Got Some Candy In There?*: Finding What You’ve Stored Away

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You can buy this cutie postcard on the NationalWildlife page on Zazzle.

You can buy this cutie postcard on the NationalWildlife page on Zazzle.

This is a repost of something I wrote several years ago. I’ve had some of this on my mind lately, so it seemed like a good time to repost it. I don’t get this as much with hips now, but now and then…

I’ve believed in the mind/body connection for a long time. It makes emotional sense to me – when I feel better physically, my mood is better and when I feel better emotionally, my body feels better. It makes philosophical sense to me – the human body/mind is a system; each part of the system affects and is affected by every other part. It makes logical sense to me – the studies on the relationship between feelings of stress, production of Cortisol, and the immune system are pretty astounding.

So, when I heard my yoga teachers connecting the two, I wasn’t particularly resistant. “If you believe you cannot do a pose, you will not be able to.” Ok, yep, gotcha. “Think of yourself in the pose and you can more easily get there.” Okie dokie. “Stop letting your mind get in your way.” RIGHT!

But, when the various instructors I have had mentioned that some yoga poses, by creating an opening in an area of the body where emotions have been stored, can release a wave of emotional reaction, I just wasn’t getting it. It wasn’t so much that I disagreed; I just didn’t feel it, so it wasn’t really making sense to me. The only emotions I felt in yoga were happiness related to being there and doing the poses or frustration that I couldn’t. That was pretty much it.

Then I started yin yoga. The first class of yin that I went to, I pretty much spent the entire hour in a state of annoyance, so I wasn’t really considering how individual poses made me feel. Over the next few sessions, as I found my way into more physical release in the poses, I was able to appreciate the differences in my state of mind.

After a few sessions, I began to notice that some poses made me feel a sense of panic. At first it seemed that this was because they involved folding over, and I thought maybe I just wasn’t getting quite as much air – thus the panic feeling. But, as the repertoire of poses increased along with my awareness of them, it became clear that it wasn’t the amount of folding, it was the extent and type of hip opening that was occurring.

Poses that really open my hips in a way that causes a stretch along the IT band area just make me feel panicked. There is no logical reason for it. I don’t fear that I’m actually going to hurt myself in Shoelace pose. But, as soon as I move into it, I start to feel like I’m out of control. There have been classes where I really was not sure that I could prevent myself from springing out of the pose and leaving the room due to the sense of panic and loss of control that arises. What the heck?

Here is my armchair yogi interpretation of this. I’m a person who likes to be orderly. I don’t need everything to have a perfect logic fit (i.e. I’m ok with knowing that I love physics puzzles and also abstract painting, even though that may seem oppositional). But, I like to have control of what is going on around me.

I’m getting better at dealing with uncertainty, and I would say that I have made some big strides in this over the last few years. My friend Erica, who has seen me go from someone who could not stand camping because my kids might get dirty to someone who barely insists they bathe during several days of camping, would probably agree. But, there are a lot of years in my past of trying to tightly control myself and my life.

Apparently, every time I felt a sense of panic or lack of control, I just “stuffed” it all into my hips. Yep, they are packed full of panic – weird, huh? So, now when I stretch and open them in that way, it seeps out and causes me to feel a little like I’m being deprived of all oxygen.

I would guess that not everyone is stuffing their lack of control into their hips. Perhaps you have been putting your sadness in your abdominal muscles (yeah, unpack that idea!). Maybe you have been putting your anger in your shoulders. Maybe your hips have something else in them – fear or even joy. The next time you feel an emotion arising unexpectedly that seems to be unconnected to what is going on at that moment, take some time to observe whats going on with your body. What are you releasing? Have you got some candy in there?

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This post title refers to a joke between some of my “mom friends” and I. Back when our children were toddlers, and in the phase where they just wouldn’t stop following mommy around for 2 minutes, we used to laugh about the things they would yell through the bathroom door when we were inside . One of those included, “hey! You got some candy in there?”

What Will You Let Go Of?

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LettingGo by Mr Littlehand

Many parts of life are a process of letting go (or, at least they are to get through them in a healthy way). Having children means letting go of the self you were before children, and letting go of your privacy and “me time.” Raising children means gradually letting go of what you expected/planned they would be like so that you can see and enjoy who they are. Looking for a new job means letting go of the understanding of self as being part of the company you are leaving, and the idea that they can’t function without you. And there are so many more examples.

Sometimes, this process of letting go, or aparigraha, involves things that you expect to let go of. For example, all parents understand that they need to let go of their children some when the children start school. But, sometimes, it turns out that what you thought was not about letting go really is, or the letting go is really about something different.

Recently, I’ve been experiencing two “letting gos” that I didn’t realize were happening until they were (there are actually four, but I am going to only discuss two here).

After an odd conversation with a medical practitioner who didn’t really know me, I decided to grow my hair. This is a big deal because I’ve been bald for 15 years. I don’t really know if my hair will grow (due to autoimmune disease, which is why I shaved it in the first place), but I’m giving it a try. I went into this not realizing how much letting go it would require. The understanding of myself as a bald woman has apparently become very deeply ingrained over the last decade and a half. It’s a big part of my identity and has come to symbolize, for me, things beyond hairstyle: buddhism, rejection of gender standards, individuality, etc. As I watch my hair grow (very very slowly), I’m struggling with how to let go of this part of who I have been for a long time. It’s interesting to me, because I expected it when I cut my hair, but didn’t realize it would happen when I started growing it.

In a second experience of unexpected letting go, I’ve had an ongoing increase in body struggles over the last year. This has resulted in a range of things including, but not limited to, decreased strength and range of motion, reduction of fresh fruits/veg in my diet, and increased fatigue and tremors. The combination has had an interesting impact (and I probably mean awful) on my understandings of self as yogi. A few years ago, when I completed yoga teacher training, I felt so strong. I had a 5-6 day a week practice and it was kickin’. Headstands, handstands, arm balances, I was developing new abilities all the time. My diet was very sound, with about 80% raw food. I was meditating regularly. There have been a lot of changes in all of that. I’m finding it challenging to adjust my understanding of self as a yoga practitioner with a very different practice – very challenging. I didn’t expect this to happen, yet is has.

Despite the struggles that I’m having right now on my physical yoga practice, I know that yoga is a good way to practice letting go, and finding out what you need to let go of. The act of taking a pose and scanning the body and mind to see where the resistance is to moving into the pose is helpful and instructive, and good practice for the letting go we have to do in so many other arenas.

So, I keep practicing, because that’s what it is, right?

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It’s like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That’s a triumph.
~ Ray Bradbury, Farewell Summer

Relaxing In, Not Pulling Away

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cold outside

Photo by J. Haynes

The last few weeks have given me several reasons to think about how much more difficult most challenges in life become when we struggle with them in an attempt to get away, rather than relaxing into them and figuring out how to live with the situation.

For example, it’s been cold in NJ. It’s been quite cold for NJ. I know that, when I go out in the cold, my first impulse is to clinch all of my muscles, especially the muscles in my face and shoulders. But, if I can get myself to stop that, to relax my muscles and notice the sensation of cold rather than just reacting to it, it seems less awful.

In another example, I spent a few days in the hospital in January, while my family was on vacation in Orlando. The first night/morning, I was in enough pain that I didn’t really have room to ponder or fret. Then, as the docs started to get that under control, I found myself getting increasingly more sad and anxious at being away from my family, without my own doctors, in a place I wasn’t familiar with. I think that stress actually began making the pain worse. Once I talked myself down from there and worked on (not 100% successfully) accepting the situation, my body was able to calm and that definitely helped.

I could give you more examples from my life, but the point I want to make here is how much yoga helps to build this ability. In a yoga asana, meditation, or pranayama practice, a very important aspect is to find the ease in the midst of the effort. It’s not the same thing to clench a muscle as it is to use a muscle. Breath retention isn’t as distressing if you can calm the mind and ease into it. Holding a pose for several minutes in a yin class becomes much more pleasing when you can stop fighting against the stretch. In this way, among others, a yoga practice is an excellent practice for the rest of life.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
~ Simone Weil