Tonight I Wanna Cry

I guess it's not surprising that I woke up early this morning, triggered, but damnit, I wish all that trauma would just leave me in peace.

Of course, I know better than that. I know how it works. I know that in order to let something go, you first have to feel it, and it doesn't really matter how long ago something occurred, it'll stay in the body until it's felt and released.

Yesterday I got to go to PJ's yoga shala, which was a real treat. PJ is the best kind of teacher: He is a dedicated practitioner, he is faithfully passing on the teachings he has been given, he is loving, and he has a sense of humor.

He looked at me when I was in baddha konasana (seated with the soles of my feet together), and said: "I don't even know what to do with you in that pose! I don't even know where to start."

The old me would've felt shame and humiliation upon hearing that. I would've likely cried, maybe even have needed to leave the room for fear of being seen feeling so exposed. Because the old me, the one that had been traumatized but not yet experienced healing, would've assumed a bunch of things upon hearing that that were neither intended nor true:

1) There is something wrong with me because I can't do this right;
2) It's my fault that I can't do this right;
3)  I should be able to do this right;
4) This is just one more example of my less-thanness (yes, I made up that term)

Instead, yesterday when PJ said this, I laughed and told him I was pretty sure he could figure something out.

"Ok" he said, "I'll try!"

And try he did. He didn't get me very far into it, and my body wouldn't really cooperate with what he tried to encourage it to do.

Even a year or two ago, I might've felt frustrated in that moment, even if I were past feeling humiliated. But I didn't. I just silently acknowledged that my body has a good reason for holding on in my hips and inner thighs, and it's not quite ready to let go there. It will. When it's ready.

When I was out in Berkeley working with Peter Sanson, another amazing Ashtanga teacher, he noted the same tightness in my hips: "Why are you holding? So long holding!" And reminded me that a physical blockage like that is always accompanied by an emotional blockage.

Yep. I am aware.

At lunch at the end of the Berkeley retreat, I sat with a woman who told me that her hips and inner thighs also resisted the opening in baddha konasana, and then she left her husband, and almost immediately she could touch her knees and chest to the ground.

Not so for me -- mine goes back further -- is deeper than a marital wound.

Yesterday I recounted all this for my boyfriend, telling him that I thought when he comes back, I'll be able to work through this.

It won't be fun, for either of us, but that's just one of the many ways we are good together. Since early on, we've been able to help each other heal from our traumas.

Awake early this morning with that "something old" feeling (which is one way I refer to being triggered -- I can tell in my body when it is stirred up by something old), I pulled the picture of my four-year-old self that I keep on my bedside table into bed with me. And then I thought about my boyfriend, because I find him comforting.

What came up was a moment in our conversation yesterday where he said a couple of things I didn't understand, so I asked him to explain. He did so, lovingly, and the moment passed. This morning, as I recalled it, I could feel the heat of shame in my nostrils -- do you know that feeling? It's unmistakable for me.

I knew that it wasn't about him, or even me, in the present day. It was an old feeling, that originated with a man who was also very important to me but nowhere near as conscious or as loving, and I was nowhere near as whole: My father.

I let myself feel it: the shortness of breath, the heat. And then it passed. And I gave thanks that I feel safe enough in my relationship, that my body feels aafe enough, to allow for release. I know this will continue when he is here all the time, and that eventually, whatever's in those hips will feel safe enough to release too.

I googled songs about feeling humiliated for this post, and came up with this number from Keith Urban that kinda fit:

Alone in this house again tonight
I got the TV on, the sound turned down and a bottle of wine
There's pictures of you and I on the walls around me
The way that it was and could have been surrounds me
I'll never get over you walkin' away

I've never been the kind to ever let my feelings show
And I thought that bein' strong meant never losin' your self-control
But I'm just drunk enough to let go of my pain
To hell with my pride, let it fall like rain
From my eyes
Tonight I wanna cry

My father has never been the kind to let his feelings show, I'm pretty sure he had the same thought about never losing self control, and he certainly drank like crazy for years in an attempt to not feel the pain of his own developmental trauma.

Instead, he passed it on to me.

And now I'm saying no thanks, Dad. That's not mine. And I'm doing my best to feel what is mine, and let go of anything that no longer fits or serves me...