I walked out of a sound healing class yesterday—because I am in need of healing for chronic pain as well as the usual highways of my overly busy mind and if it is suggested to me that a sweet couple with singing bowls and chanting might help, I am all over it—to this sky. My Facebook memories told me I took exactly the same photo last year on this day, which means I must have gone to yoga then, too. Synchronicity is always interesting to me. This year’s picture is better. Rockvegas, #nofilter.
Let it go
I went to a yin yoga class today in an attempt to stretch out the muscles supporting my back, which decided to seize up last Saturday, leaving me partially immobile for most of this week. Yin focuses on holding stretches for several minutes at a time, which is great for people like me who are wrecking our spines and hips by sitting in front of a computer typing or on a phone scrolling (it’s all hurting us, or at least me) many more hours of the day than is a sane idea.
The whole class was great but I’m here to share with you that if you don’t have a lot of time, you can do one thing and probably feel better. It was the first pose we did and it’s called the dangle. (I’m used to it being called “forward fold” in hatha and vinyasa flow, but this is yin so I dangled.) I was very nervous at the beginning of this class, because my back has hurt in the way that things hurt so badly and so maddeningly that it’s all I want to talk about. Like when it’s humid and everyone walks around repeating “it’s so HUMID” like it’s new and terrible information. Also usually no one cares, but that’s another story.
The teacher told us to dangle, so I creaked myself into a bent over position, hanging over my legs to touch my feet, really hoping I could reverse the motion when the time came. She wanted us hanging loose, so loose I hung. As I did this I could feel every broken, compressed centimeter of my calves and quads and hips, how they’re all jammed up. No WONDER I can’t move parts of my back, because this problem starts at my toes and works all the way up.
The instruction while we were dangling was to leave stuff on the floor. Seriously. Yoga teachers are usually quite polite and into consent and so they’re always inviting us to do things. “I invite you to breathe.” “I invite you to exhale.” “I invite you to set an intention for your practice today.” Today it was “I invite you to leave whatever isn’t serving you there on the floor.”
Now, I invite you into my typical thought process during chill yoga poses, up to and including final relaxation:
I am out of peanut butter
the lyrics to “Shout to the Top” by Style Council
Am I dangling right?
How much gas do I have? When will I need to get gas?
I’m already preemptively too tired to stop for peanut butter damn
Wnere can I find the first three episodes of The Good Place streaming for free because they’re $1.99 on demand and they took them off of Hulu.
Recurring snippet of lifelong (since college) earworm of “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” by Melissa Manchester.
Do I have a life plan? I can’t pick a yoga intention so I always end up with tnree so how do I pick a life plan?
She touched my mat.
There are doughnuts in this strip mall
And so on.
So today when she invited us to leave stuff on the floor I did a similarly disjointed, yet massive and sudden, inventory of my life. The books in the back of my car hit the mat. Several emails, a few text messages, a couple trash voicemails, gone. My refusal to cancel my Hello Fresh order on weeks I’m going out of town—bye. 45’s tweets. Please floor, take them.
And it kind of worked. It could be because the instructor’s voice was calm and mildly commanding, with a tone that suggested that this was real. That there was some practical magic in the dangle. You could dump that garbage from your brain and/or 3D life onto the wooden floor between your blocks and it was done and gone.
Its something you can totally try at home.
Orange Truck
Occasionally I have experiences that cause me to reevaluate who I am and what I stand for and care about. Yesterday I came across this orange Ford150 truck in my neighborhood and it spoke to my soul. Like, I wanted it. Auto theft isn't on my life list so I didn't steal it, but I felt like it should be mine all the same. I settled for taking a picture of it, for aspirational vision board purposes.
Don’t Doubt
I lost a friend last year—a story that I don't usually tell out loud in big spaces. Maybe someday that will change, which would only be useful if it helps anyone feel less alone, but that day is not today.
This song—"Don't Doubt"—has been on my mind, though. I only know about Blind Pilot inadvertently because of her and because of this other song specifically, and I'm pretty sure I keep their music close to me for that reason alone. Their songs break my heart in a familiar pattern that is obviously tied now to her death, but it's a bonus that they're sweet and sad and that the harmony and the instrumentation are gentle and perfect. Tonight I was driving around in the early evening too-dark dark realizing that I'd made it past the worst first wave of the daylight savings to standard time transition, and when Blind Pilot came up on Spotify I let myself feel it and then I thought it would be a good thing to share. One thing I can (very) tentatively say I've learned through this experience is that I can sometimes feel the channel really open up between me and that person, spirit, whatever form she takes now. And I can also take what I've learned and experienced from having her remarkable energy touch my life and turn the best parts of it outwards, too. That includes sharing what loss really feels like if you really feel it.
And now I'll just shut up and invite you to check it out if you're into a sound that seems built for fall turning into winter.
Thin wind ringing in the silver tines-
Yeah, it took you by the throat but it wasn't the killing kind.
And now you don't tell it like you used to.
Every day left in the dark is going to come back to you.
Every hope left in your heart is waiting on what you'll do with doubt.
What the hell, I'll throw Just One in here, too. I really can't believe we do either.
Born in with a reason,
blown out like a ghost.
We came with our best lines-
told them like jokes.
If I could have known then we were dying to get gone…
I can't believe we get just one.