Escaping the Quicksand

Last week, out of the complete blue I was STRUGGLING in my yoga practice. The entire time I kept thinking ‘How do I escape this quicksand before the tide comes in’?

Nothing bad happened to me and there is no explanation for it other than just being in a funk. It all started when I went to class on Monday night. I had one irritated thought about how it felt SO HOT and each posture was being held FOREVER. This led me to the next negative thought about how I’m not making progress in my postures and can’t even fully flex my foot in standing head to knee, which led me to the next self-destructive thought about how everyone in the universe has babies now but me and I’m about to turn 30. Then came the tears that luckily disguise as sweat and I missed the next posture (I don’t like missing postures and had only once before: enter a flood of self inflecting wounds of negative thinking).

It amazed me how this one irritation could ignite a ripple effect and suck out my soul. How this one irritation could dig and fester and find my sacred insecurities and expose them to me when I was shattered the most.

This is a great time to introduce my interpretation of the most well know battle in the universe: the battle between good (positive) and evil (negative). In my own words: the battle between the happy makers and the soul suckers, respectively. You know them well. The happy makers are the kind of people who love each other and care for each other and treat each other kindly. The soul suckers are the kind of people who hate everyone and only think of themselves and do everything in their power to spread their gloom and doom all over the place.

Now that you are reintroduced to their personalities, this is how the soul suckers attack: they find the fear, self doubt, and humiliation that negatively infect the happy makers and they use it to weaken their spirit in hopes of recruiting and converting more happy makers into soul suckers. And it works; they have a very powerful religion. But, the happy makers have an even more effective strategy: they poison their arrows with love and display what it feels like to be happy and enjoy life (like Korben Dallas and Leeloo).

This is a powerful weapon, Love. The tricky part is you have to believe in it to experience it. A lot of soul suckers don’t believe in love, it’s not part of their faith. Ok, Neo and Agent Smith lovers (and chemists) you can argue that for every soul sucker (negative charge) there is a happy maker (positive charge) so they strive to balance each other out and everything is driven towards a neutral equilibrium. I support that, but without judgment all I want to do in my life is maintain all that I can to ensure that I walk on the path of the happy maker.

Back to my yoga story:

At this point of my negativity (get it chemists), I realized that I had pushed myself into a state of pure survival and things started to change. I was panicking mentally more than anything else and I decided to let go of the negativity and let my body do what it needed to do to survive, even if it meant leaving the room (I haven’t yet done that either). This is how it went for the rest of the class. I did not leave the room but I skipped a few more postures. Overall I ended the class very happy that I had overcome a meltdown. I feel like I better understand how my body, maybe the human body, or more generally any biological body handles stress. Once infected and overtaken by the negative effects of stress, perhaps the body enters a survival mode: it just does what it needs to do to survive… to stay in the room…to escape from the quicksand. I feel now more than ever that I can fully trust my body, to do what it needs to do. No matter how long it takes, it will find a way. The babies will come.

The next class on Wednesday afternoon was not much better for me though. I had no negative thoughts or irritations but I continued to struggle physically. I missed at least 3 sets of postures, but I didn’t care. Body: “Just do what you need to do and what you can do, do it 100%”. My legs were still stuck in the mud; my arms constricted around me as I was being swallowed into the earth. My body was not doing anything at all. How do I escape from this quicksand?

It wasn’t until Friday’s class that I finally wiggled my way free. I was hoping for some epiphany or great lesson to forever remember so I could get myself out faster next time, but it wasn’t like that. I had no control of it. I just had to wait until it passed.  Finally, I felt strong and free of mud and I got a little scared. No survival book will ever say: when suck in quicksand just wait it out, it’s something you can’t control. But maybe in my survival book I can make a note: avoid quicksand all together by avoiding the pathways of the soul suckers = negative thinking.

Sounds so good

Moving right along with the Bikram TT event: the mood was ridiculous excitement.

When I finally left work I unexpectedly hit hard core traffic and felt the initial fluster, followed by my self-given mantra: ‘Clearly this is an exercise, clearly I am not self-actualized.’

It’s all part of the experience, nothing will phase me, bring it on Bikram!

With nothing else to do, I rolled down the windows and began searching for a song on the radio. A great song. Something to match my mood, pump me up, or just give me some good time happy. Out of the 12 preset selections on my radio every single one of them sounded good. Led Zeppelin, Miranda Lambert, I even got a Bob Dylan. No songs that I would put on my top 10 list, but man they all sounded so good.

When I arrived (exactly at 4:30 pm by the way, no stress) I met my wonderful friend who happens to be the inspiration behind my yoga passion. It was her idea, from the beginning, and I am forever indebted. The best part was that I could clearly tell that she was just as excited as I was.

As soon as we started our Pranayama breathing I realized that this was my first class outside of my studio and the details were very different. Rather the sounds were very different. The tent had an imperious heater hum that pretty much drowned out all other sounds. I missed the ‘music’ of my studio that I know I look forward to. The sound of glass crashing as it falls through the recycling shoot just across the street. The raining pitter patter of sweat as it romantically drips off everyone’s elbows as we stand in tree pose. The bass I can barely hear coming through the floor from the hip-hop studio below when I press my ear to the ground; my toes touch and feet fall open. Sound becomes such a clandestinely invasive part of meditation because you are brought to the primitive place where nothing else exists outside of the senses.

I began to notice the ‘music’ of Bikram’s tent. “What the f*#% are you doing??? You are not doing anything!!!” That actually really pumps me up, kinda like Disturbed. Those are the heavy metal parts; you’ve got to be in the mood for heavy metal and when I'm in the mood, I love it! And then during tree stand in place of my raindrops he sang, chanted, loud. I have no idea what but it calmed my soul, my favorite chorus ever. There were little songs too, where the diction alone made music: “Boss”, “Sweetheart”, “Miss Blue Bikini”. Just the way he said it; the way it sounded made me want to come back for more just so I could listen to his soundtrack.

Raise my glass to yoga!

One of the spokes of my wagon wheel that I will spend a lot of time thickening is yoga, specifically Bikram. I’ve been practicing for just about 9 months now. By no means do I consider myself an expert, but I do believe in it. There are so many things to say; so many benefits. But that’s the topic of many future blogs that future Martina is going to write. Present moment Martina is going to write about this very second:

San Diego is currently hosting Bikram Yoga Teacher Training. Many fine & fantastically flexible attendants join from all over the world to be trained in the specific teachings of Bikram so that they can in turn fulfill their yoga karma and spread the magic. This has given us San Diego residents an opportunity of a lifetime: to take a class instructed by Bikram as part of the teacher training agenda. Sure we can easily drive up to LA and take a class in his studio but this is HUGE. Hundreds of people all eager to learn, all packed together in a tent during this fine city’s first intense 2010 heat wave. Imagine the talent! Imagine the energy!

So here I sit, 2 hours before I start to make my way over there and I feel like I just stepped up onto the podium of the woman’s event final: 100 yard free-style, no fly-style.  But this is no sprint. This is…a compilation of everything. My entire day has been psychoanalyzed: 1 glass of water every other hour, make pee almost exactly 20 minutes thereafter, handful of almonds for breakfast, no coffee today, caprease sandwich for lunch and now I’m about to panic because I ate all the fries.

It’s making me wonder: is all this excitement a result of my ‘fight-or-flight’ surge of adrenaline & norepinephrine because I’m about to really get my ass kicked or is it just a natural response to the surge of serotonin & endorphin I’m experiencing because I’m doing something I love. Maybe it’s a mass pack of every hormone my body knows how to make; all I really want to say is what a colorful cocktail!