Namaste, Yo

I woke up this morning with my heart in a vise. I had nowhere to be for a change, and could have stood the extra hours of sleep, but realized in three minutes that this was just not happening. I felt the way I feel when my swirling thoughts have overtaken my tiredness, and my brain won't let me relax back into resting mode. It's scary, because I don't have this feeling very often anymore, and I didn't like it at all.

They aren't depressed feelings, exactly. It's anxiety, which I really, really don't appreciate at all. Now, I know that depression sucks, and that it lives next door to anxiety, and they swap recipes, and watch American Idol together, and giggle over the wreck they plan to make of my somewhat commonplace human life. I've had some times in my life where I couldn't handle my stressors very well, and I was so miserable from a cocktail of habitual negativity and external bothers that I wasn't sure I could pull myself out of it. But I did, and through a mix of healing opportunities I've reached a place in my adult life where I know how (mostly. Please, I have my moments) to identify "sad" as "sad" and "happy" as "happy". Both are possible, and absolutely inevitable, with millions of shades of "okay" and "exuberant" and "irritated" and "content" in between. I just had to find a balance and get to a place where "miserable" and "thrilled" weren't the only options and that vacillating between the two with astounding velocity wasn't the wisest way to roll. I am fully aware of the absolute work that it takes to get to this point for people who battle at times with their chemical composition, myself included, and it's a daily job for which no one should feel any shame. I really admire people who are willing to admit this, particularly in the public eye. It's not easy.

That said, there's something about being simply down that I can take easier any day than the edgy jangle of anxiety. When I feel down anymore, there's a weight to those feelings that I can seem to work with better. I can cry it out, maybe, or write it down. I can actually sit still and deal. Anxiety, on the other hand, sets me to spinning. It's more nameless, unidentifiable "stuff" that swirls me around and takes me to bad places in my brain. I feel like I want to DO something, but I can't light on anything, and so instead I babble on needlessly or compound the problem with caffeine or go buy eight cds I don't need.

Now, today of course is the monthly Evil Demon Day. It's one of twelve days during the year where I'm in the hormonal dustbin, and although I know full well what's going on,I still feel compelled to rage, rage against something. This day has, I believe (and this is no exaggeration, when I look back over the trajectory of This American Life) altered the path of relationships, jobs, major purchases, life choices, etc. It takes my generally good-natured if a bit overzealous personality and turns it into that of a hydra on crack and many, many double-shot espressos. It's quite awful. There are often tears, occasionally misplaced, ill-gotten anger, and apparently, this month, a special bonus package of a sleep-wrecking wave of anxiety that shot me out of bed at an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning, searching for raw meat and a spirited debate on some really neutral topic like immigration reform or ecoterrorism.

Now, when I'm smart, I STEP BACK, identify what's happening, and let the good twin take over before anyone gets hurt. The options add up to, "Do I punch myself in the face and hope I'm knocked out until tomorrow, when most of the storm has passed?" or "Do I stay awake and upright and try to make the most of an iffy situation?"

Today I opted for the latter, and yoga seemed like a good option. I've been meaning to go back to it, especially since my piano teacher's been working diligently to help me actually "LET GO OF THE KEYS, LAURIE. THAT'S RIGHT. ONE-two-three. LET GO-two-three." I figured it was time to work on some relaxation, if even my poor fingers were stressed and considering I've been holding myself in a stance for two - maybe 35 - years that suggested a ground assault was due at any moment. (I remembered today that I carry most of my stress in my jaw. Hello, chronic headaches.)

Anyway, yoga was the best possible thing I could have done. It was awesome. I don't know HOW in the hell I talked myself into going, because when I'm feeling anxious, I'm more likely to hop on an underwater roller coaster than sit still. And unlike a kickboxing or step class that would have pumped me full of adrenaline and bad J-Lo remixes with tempos sped up to kingdom come, I got to hear things like "melt towards your heart center" and "roll back and forth like a happy baby". (Happy baby pose = excellent, by the way. I think I'm going to do it on the floor of my office if I want to send the message that it's time to chill out. ; ) These types of sayings distract you from the knowledge that plank pose and sun salutations will whip your ass into shape faster than tae-bo, I'm not kidding.

"With active yoga feet," Mary Jane said, "find the harmony in the grounding, and hopefully the rest of your body will follow suit." Hopefully is right. The rest of my body, at that point, was resisting the fact that I hadn't done a tree pose in years, so falling down was the only thing that was really on its mind. She said to picture "the trees we live among," and all I could picture was the sort of flimsy bush in our front yard, so that didn't really help either. I did go over and use the wall for balance, I practice I usually eschew because it requires me to leave my spot, and to stand in the center of the room amid other yoga people, therefore - gasp - calling attention to myself and my lack of balance. So maybe that's improvement. Maybe that means I'm...something different, anyway.

Afterwards, I made myself go decaf in my morning latte, which is also remarkable considering the speed at which I've been mainlining the most readily available drug on the planet. I'm still feeling a little bit weird, and I'd still advise folks not to come at me with anything challenging today, but after an hour and a half of twisting my body into unusual positions, and holding my own weight up with my own spindly arms (Hello, kitty. I am so not tiny) I'm a little too exhausted and rubber band-like to dredge up much adrenaline. And that, as they say, was the point.

Comments

[joanna]

Been there,done that. Yoga is something that I need to get back into when I come home from Boston. Where do you take classes?