Sweat is dripping down my face. I gaze forwards.
“Half lift up.”
“Forward fold.”
“Right leg into runners lunge”
“Hands down to the ground”
“Left leg goes back to meet the right.”
“Hold your plank.”
“Now flow.”
We’re on the 7th round of a Vinyasa flow in my Thursday night Hot Fusion yoga class. I’m starting to feel weak. And angry. My mind is racing.
“What the hell is wrong with me tonight? Why can’t I even make it through a 90 minute class of yoga? Maybe it means something else is wrong. What could it be. Is it my relationship? Are we not meant to be together? Should I leave New Zealand? Is this no longer the place for me? What’s wrong? Something is wrong. Omg.”
I think about freedom.
I think about all my responsibilities and commitments. About how they bind me, and yet, also ground me. I fly away too easily.
We come the floor. Some more core strengthening poses. On the floor I feel less panicky. Emotional. But here on the floor, I can hide.
Finally, we stretch into Savasana.
I check in with my body. “Hey.” I say gently within myself. “What’s going on? What’s all this emotional upheaval about?”
My intuition, she answers:
“Nothing is wrong. What you’re feeling is some shifts in energy. It has nothing to do with you personally. There are big changes happening in and around you. You’re going through that weird uncomfortable phase where things don’t make sense and you’re feeling things that your logical mind can’t understand. You know this. You’ve been here before. You don’t have to panic. You know what you have to do. Sit with the emotions. Allow them to wash over you. Life is transforming. With you, through you, around you.”
My mind calms down. It’s not happy, it wants answers, but it also knows that when my intuition has spoken, there nothing but truth.
After yoga I walk back home, up the hill to the top, where I live. I shower and hang my sweaty yoga gear up. And walk into kitchen.
I’m hungry. So I pull a jar of my favourite watercress soup out of the fridge and reheat it in a small pan. I unwrap the dark rye we bought to and cut a thick slice and out it in the toaster. The half-full jar goes back in the fridge, and the butter comes out. I pour the soup into a bowl and wait for the toaster to pop. Then thin slices of butter are smeared onto the warm bread and I head upstairs to sit and eat at my desk.
I have words. They want to come out.
So here I am, with you.
I find myself in this space often. When I am feeling things that my logical mind can’t understand. And so it tries to find reasons and explanations in my direct environment that it can blame. It looks for external changes that can take place, to move out of the discomfort of strong emotions that don’t make sense to linear thinking.
If I feel sad, for example, my mind might blame it on my past; something that really hurt me. Or on a recent event. Or something that might happen in the future. See: the mind can’t be in the present moment.
That sadness I feel may not have a reason that I know in that moment. Often it’s me processing something. Often it’s about me letting go of something. Mostly it’s a response to big changes happening in my world. I am sensitive. I feel everything.
But my mind tries to make it about me. About something that it can control.
And I know that the best response, is to do nothing. To observe. To feel. To smile. To allow. By embodying what is happening without having to explain it, I “become” part of the changes happening within me. The anxiety eases. Peace sets back in. And life flows on.
Maybe this has happens to you too, sometimes.
Don’t expect to “know” or “understand’ everything. Instead “be” the change.
Original image source unknown.
