I really
like control.
As in…really
like it.
When the
world starts to slide, my impulse is to batten down the hatches. I make lists, design
spreadsheets, and straight jacket anything that feels shaky. With steely-eyed
determination, I impose order on chaos and bring entropy to its knees!
Naturally,
this doesn’t always turn out very well.
The biggest
shake up of my life occurred when my world came crashing down in 2006. I left a
blooming life in New York City to get married and move to Vancouver, Canada. I’d
never been to Vancouver before, but my boyfriend was Canadian and wanted to
return home for our future together. My leap of faith felt romantic, exciting
and inspiring. What joy to leap into the unknown!
However, my
leap ended with a plunge into an abyss.
Just before
we arrived in Canada, my husband – an alcoholic who had been dry for more than
a decade – experienced a shattering loss when his mother died and started
drinking on our honeymoon.
My life suddenly
got very wobbly.
Before the
move, I had identified myself as a empowered and successful woman. I had a
rising career in my community, a happy home, and was proud to be a New Yorker.
In the space of a few months, I had moved to a new country, changed jobs, and was
witnessing the unravelling of my marriage. As my husband continued to drink, I
became frozen in uncertainty. I lacked the tools and resources to support his
grief, and became shut down in the spotlight of his anger. He mistook my
silence for apathy, and our spiral of miscommunication drove the marriage to
its breaking point.
All the
identifications to which I had been anchored (New Yorker, “strong” woman, good
person, committed partner) fell apart. The external labels that had given me my
sense of self dissolved. And at the same time, my weaknesses were crowbarred
open and exposed. It was like pulling up the floorboards of my own internal
basement; a lot of dark, slimy corners were suddenly exposed to light. Who was
this enabling, wimpy, silent, contracted shell of a woman? Where had the
devoted partner and strong feminist gone? I was a crab out of my shell:
vulnerable, raw, weak, and exposed.
That year was
also one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
When my
life fell apart, I simply couldn’t pretend that I had it all together any
longer. Nothing in the outer world was steady. No amount of list making could
bandage up the reality that I was standing in ruins.
When my
outer world fell apart, the inner world started to become visible.
“Chaos should be regarded as very good news.”
– Pema Chodron
When something
comes along to rock our lives and challenge our sense of self, we get scared and
angry. We often stuff our feelings with Netflix, potato chips, or – as Brene
Brown so insightfully notes in her Ted talk – “a few beers and a banana nut
muffin.” When my world fell apart, I buried myself in work and started going to
raves to avoid feeling the void. Being a workaholic felt productive and
validating. Dance parties and drugs were a quick fix where I could feel
exciting, loved, and connected.
But eventually,
I was caught out. I couldn’t stay high forever. I’m one of the lucky ones that
isn’t prone to addiction and – at some point – I had to stop running from my own
emptiness. When I finally sat down in my shakiness, I realized that I hadn’t
disappeared. Even though I was no longer a wife or a New Yorker, there was
something else within me that was still safe and whole. But I could only feel
this steadiness – my own Presence – when my control strategies fell apart.
My yoga
practice became a doorway through which I began to heal. On the yoga mat, I
could unclench my fists from manhandling my life, and practice staying present
moment to moment. No matter how shaky I felt, yoga invited me to be in my body –
and stay there one breath at a time. On the mat, I didn’t have to be strong,
happy, optimistic, perfect, or even courageous. I only had to be. My yoga
practice didn’t care if I had my outer life together; it only asked that I be
present and feel.
Yoga philosophy
has recognized our tendency to misidentify ourselves with the outer world for
thousands of years. In the opening of the seminal yoga text, The Yoga Sutra,
Patanjali explicitly lays out his definition for yoga. Here’s a rough
paraphrase: “Yoga is the quieting of the fluctuations of your mind. When you do
this, you can experience your Presence. Otherwise, you think you’re all the
stuff in your head!”
Before I
moved to Vancouver, my sense of self was intrinsically tied to how I was thinking
about myself. Was I smart? Pretty? Hard-working? A failure? Accomplished? My
sense of “Rachel” was defined by my achievements and shortcomings. When those
identifications fell apart, something else had the opportunity to be seen.
When we
quiet our minds, our true self – our Presence – becomes visible. But usually
we’re so caught up in protecting these identities that we can’t experience our
own depths. When our identifications get shaken, a space cracks open where we
can question our stories. You have probably experienced this during a career
change, relationship shift, or a conflict. The shakiness gives us the
opportunity to rediscover who we are.
“Only the extent the we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”
– Pema Chodron
So here’s
the good news: our lives don’t have to be completely annihilated in
order to reconnect to Presence. Thank goodness! By engaging in some consciously
self-imposed wobbling, we can practice reconnecting to our Presence every day. Yoga
is a great place to start.
When we
wobble physically on our mats, our instinct is to cover it up. The ego takes
over, and we want to hide from seeming imperfect. For example, if we feel
wobbly in tree pose, we may grab the wall or rigidly brace ourselves. If we
fall, we look around to see if anyone caught us out.
Perfect.
In that
moment, we can notice our attachment to getting it right or looking good. Here’s
another time when we are defining our worth by something external! When our
minds create stories and the ego gets flustered (“I’m a loser,” “My balance
sucks!”), we can recognize that we are still intrinsically okay. In my yoga
classes, I invite my students to embrace their wobbles and reframe their
experience: “If you fall out of the pose,” I say, “the first thing I want you
to think is, ‘I’m sexy!’ Falling is sexy. Being shaky is sexy. Because it means
that you’re willing to go someplace that is uncertain. And that’s a so much
more wonderful than being afraid to move out of your comfort zone!” The mini
wobbles that we experience on our mat can help create space to reconnect to a
deeper identification with who we really are.
When we
meditate in our yoga practice (whether it’s a formal meditation, or a
mindfulness practice), we have the perfect opportunity to witness our minds in
action. As the thoughts arise, we can begin to notice that they are not
reality. When we see how much flotsam and jetsam is coming and going all the
time across our consciousness, we can begin to not take what the mind tells us
quite so seriously. Instead, we can begin to settle into the space that lies
between the fluctuations of our thoughts.
When we can practice questioning the mind on the mat, we have more space to question our stories off the mat. When our egos are threatened, there is greater grace and deeper resources to recognize that we – and those around us – are still intrinsically worthy. When life falls apart (new job, new relationship, broken heart or loss of a loved one), it gets easier to pick up the pieces. Or we may even realize that we can leave the pieces where they lay, because we don’t need them to experience who we truly are.
Embrace your wobbles. Shake your own tree. And in the midst of that shakiness, discover the unshaking ground that lies within you.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi
PS: If you like this blog, you may enjoy checking out some of my books. XO
