Discomfort as the Comfort Zone

If you want to master anything, you cannot be afraid of effort. ~Dylan Werner (yoga instructor, veteran, world traveler, musician)

I've been absent from this blog for a little bit.  Sometimes being on a spiritually awakening path makes it hard to maintain all the things we want to do because so much of our energy becomes focused on what we are experiencing, trying to make sense of it.  I am hoping that I have reached a point where I can be more consistent here as I am working on a memoir, and I think blogging will be a helpful part of that process.

Very recently, I have had to come to terms with a part of my shadow that was creating suffering in all its attempts at feeling virtuous.  Have you ever taken a step back and asked yourself to what degree are you responsible for your own suffering?  It isn't an easy question to ask.  It causes our ego to become defensive.  We begin to justify our actions and our operating beliefs.  However, one of the most powerful things we can do for ourselves is to bring into consciousness the patterns that may have at one time preserved us, but in our current configuration are no longer necessary and therefore have become part of our suffering.  In doing so, you're highly likely to experience some resistance if not an all out refusal of the mind to let go.  It's pretty damn uncomfortable.

​In August 2018, while doing my normal Buti Yoga workout (a form that combines strong vinyasa, pliometrics, HIIT, tribal dance, primal movements, and spiral structure technique), I felt what I thought was a pulled muscle.  It hurt like all hell, but I let the pain release just enough that I could push on through my workout and finish.  By the time I finished my practice, I felt like I must have just strained it and everything would be fine.  After analyzing what happened and what I was doing when I felt the pain, I came to the conclusion that a tight piriformis was giving me trouble.  The next morning, I woke up unable to move without pain, and I have been in some degree of pain since.

For two years, my normal yoga practice has consisted primarily of Buti Yoga with all of its add-on elements - SCULPT, BANDS, HotCore, and DEEP.  I did the recommended schedule of 3 days of practice followed by one day of rest.  I adored this practice.  I certified in Buti.  I audited another certification weekend.  I believed, and still believe in its transformative possibilities.  After my injury, I tried to push through the pain to keep up my schedule. Initially, there was some improvement, but by early December, sometimes I would give my best effort at lifting my legs and they would barely rise off the ground.  I found I was having to clinch in odd places in order to perform the movements because the pain was so intense.  This was causing more pain.  It was then that I made the hard decision to back off of my chosen yoga form, that I had grown to love so much over the last two years, and do only the restorative version DEEP, and add in the more "traditional" yoga styles that led me to yoga 17 years ago.  Even though I am a 200RYT (200 hour registered yoga teacher through Yoga Alliance) and certified in Hatha and Kundalini yogas along with Buti, it was hard for me to accept that I hadn't somehow failed myself.  I had only practiced Buti for 2 of the 17 years I have practiced, but it has enriched me in all ways beyond description and made advanced yoga asanas more accessible to me.

It's been a struggle to let go of the blaze it took to keep up that level of commitment to a form of yoga that at times is very high intensity.  It gives new meaning to the term "ride the lightning," which normally means being put to death by the electric chair.  Instead, this is the scenario where you harness the lightning and use it to become what you thought was an impossibility.  I have been an athlete my whole life.  I played girls basketball, volleyball, and ran cross country.  I have always been active regardless of my weight.  Buti helped me reach plains of being that even as a high school student, I would never have dreamed I could access.  It was beautiful and addictive.  

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This all came about during a time (the last five years) when my spiritual and personal path has taken a radical turn.  Everything I thought I knew about myself is in question.  Upheaval of the belief systems that have kept me afloat since childhood.  It was no coincidence that at the same time, I became terrible at asanas (yoga poses) that required any form of balance. I was ungrounded.  The driven fixer in me didn't understand why I seemed to be going backward in this area, and began to push for more strength, playing limits, and striving.  When I found and experienced the magic of Buti, I trusted that eventually I'd find my feet under me again. 

I have not yet.  In fact, the only improvement that I have seen in that area has been since I pulled back my practice.  This past Sunday, I took a mystic yoga class that was geared toward the root chakra.  The teacher created one of the most intriguing sequences I have ever experienced for the muladhara (Sanskrit name of the root chakra).  There on my mat, my still small voice from within asked, "Are you all in or does your effort reflect only the trying?  It always appears you are in the process, but you are afraid to arrive.  What do you fear?"  I used my breath to not cry.  I decided instead to forgive myself and be with what my body wanted then.  In those moments, I understood what had really been happening in my practice.  Afterward, the teacher gifted me the beautiful smoky quartz you see me holding in the picture above.  Another woman in the class looked at me and told me she had watched me practice and it inspired her.  There in my weakness, my strength was recognized.  I have been refusing to accept my strength for the pursuit of a body and mind that I think I should have.  And yet, I'm too afraid to become the thing I think I have the potential to be because it is completely different than any state of being I have ever known.

I had allowed maximum efforting to become my comfort zone. In the guise of self improvement, I was loathing myself into extreme fatigue and injury.  I wasn't giving myself time to celebrate my gains, but constantly pushing.  During these last two months of backing off of Buti, I am finally able to actually feel how strong I am!  I was keeping myself so weak from overdoing that I couldn't recognize where I was physically.  I was ignoring my body's cues in order to make it submit.  I was stagnant in the familiar places of pain, discomfort, illness, shame, and anxiety while to the outside it appeared I was doing great things for myself.  I didn't fully believe I could ever have another experience of life aside of that list of descriptive words because I had never known it before.  As they say, "Seeing is believing."  Therefore, it was true that discomfort and dis-ease had become my comfort zone.  I had taken it on to heal, but instead of nurturing myself there, I was browbeating myself into submission.  I had wondered why I sometimes felt states of panic when I rolled out my mat for practice.  I loved my yoga.  It made no sense.  I had made myself blind by hiding self destruction behind the mask of self care.

That brings me to now.  This is my injured practice.  I am giving myself permission to practice pinchamayurasana against a wall.  This is a recommendation I'd make to any student working on inversions.  I wouldn't let myself do it though.  I posted the other day some stills from my practice and said - if this is my injured practice, I need to see and be grateful.

This injury is giving me the opportunity to access states of being that I have been resistant to.  I will write more about these things and the modalities I am finding helpful in the healing.  It is far from coincidental that Source brings me here right now.  I'm not sure what self love looks or feels like.  My self care has never been about self love, but always about improvement.  Never about learning to accept myself.  These last few weeks, I've allowed myself to be amazed at where I am.

Yoga teachers screw up too.  It's all a journey.  Always a practice.  Honestly, its not screwing up.  It's opening up.  A Buti Yoga Core Value is - You can only LEAD others as far as you have led yourself.

Yoga is a journey to the self through the self. ~Bhagavad Gita

All yoga is about coming to know who and what you are, unifying all parts of your being through the breath and practices.  It is about coming in to santosha (yoga niyama meaning contentment.  It is about fullness right where you are as you also see beyond your limiting beliefs.  Even Buti Yoga has as one of its main mantras - Total body love.  Today, see yourself where you are and think about what it means to love yourself there.