It’s been a year. More than a year.
I thought of it because I was wearing the same dress this weekend. I think I’m going to throw it in the rag pile, it’s pilling badly and also, I don’t like the way it fits anymore. I can’t tell if that’s because my body has changed, or my PERCEPTION on my body has changed - both of these things are true - but now it seems baggy, like something a sad girl would hide in.
But wearing it made me think about when it was new, which was when I went to Sacramento to have my mind blown a year ago December.
I’ve never told you this story.
I thought of it because I was wearing the same dress this weekend. I think I’m going to throw it in the rag pile, it’s pilling badly and also, I don’t like the way it fits anymore. I can’t tell if that’s because my body has changed, or my PERCEPTION on my body has changed - both of these things are true - but now it seems baggy, like something a sad girl would hide in.
But wearing it made me think about when it was new, which was when I went to Sacramento to have my mind blown a year ago December.
I’ve never told you this story.
They stare at all the things that mark you as different and eventually you understand that there is no real difference between a stranger's compliment and a verbal assault.
When I was a girl it was impossible to find the right clothes to fit in, to find shoes that fit, to not hit my head, to get my knees under the desk. Even today - in my 40s and becoming more invisible every day - I can’t go a week without catching someone staring or pointing or remarking.
My senior year in high school was a good year for me in a lot of ways. I’d begun to grow into my tallness a little bit and was less self conscious, I’d lost some weight and gotten into decent shape biking to my job the previous summer. I still thought I was 30 pounds overweight, mind you, and that boys - one boy - didn’t like me because of it. But I also felt more normal than I ever remembered, I had friends in my class, I was growing into my own opinions, had become a little bit outspoken even. I was sorting out my feet and didn’t trip as much.
Somewhere I have a Varsity letter in Badminton from that year, the only time I’ve EVER voluntarily been on any kind of team (I was forced to be on the basketball team in middle school, and played field hockey as well, though I think that was just what we did. 7th grade most improved player, which is another story entirely) I don’t think I could hit a birdie anymore, but I was, erratically, very good then. And when the season was over I decided to take a dance class.
It seems wildly out of character, in retrospect. I don’t think I’m a good dancer now, and I dislike being looked at, but my school had a very good dance program, I knew a lot of the girls who were in it and it seemed like fun.
And it was. The early bits were stretching and bending, teaching your body the individual movements and beginning to build the strength and flexibility to make them. I turned out to be flexible and strong, I liked all the pieces broken apart, I felt like I was good at it, or could be. When we started to put the pieces together into a simple routine, the teacher went slowly and I mostly got it, but not firmly. I started to feel less good but was keeping up until a hideous flu came through campus.
I was in History and the teacher asked me a question and I burst into tears, which startled everyone. I couldn’t answer because I couldn’t even hear her over my headache and ended up in the infirmary. I missed some dance classes while I was sick, and finagled a little extra time off from the nurses because I was reluctant to go back when I knew I was already a little behind. And when I did,10 days later, I was finished. They were doing things I didn’t recognize, I had no idea of the steps or patterns.
When we got past the point of familiarity I felt choked, panicked, clumsy, absolutely terrified.
I started standing in the back corner of the studio, and when we got past those first 3 or 4 steps, the ones I had learned in the beginning, I’d start to feel frantic and hateful, sick and choking, incompetent.... and I would evaporate out the back door and hide in the ladies room until class was over.
After college a friend was trying to teach me to ballroom dance and I had...I guess a flashback? That same sick conviction of my own ugliness filled my lungs, took my air, and I had what I think was a mild panic attack and could not continue.
I should have asked for help. But I didn’t know that then. And the teacher, well, I think if she were a good teacher rather than a good dancer, she would have reached out to me to help me bridge what I had missed, but instead she confronted me in front of people one day with...my cowardice I guess? For hiding, or not knowing the steps...and ignored me the rest of the semester.
For years this memory was absolutely clear. I could have told you what she SAID that day, except that it was a thing I was careful to not ever think about because the memory was almost as humiliating as the reality
And then I went to Sacramento and did a workshop with Havi and tried Shiva Nata. I was into it, I think. I’d been doing yoga for 8 months, I felt like I was over my self-consciousness. I hadn’t thought about dance class in years. I was energized by possibility, which is one of my favorite things. I envied the other participants a little, who already knew some shiva nata, who already knew what they were working towards. I am fascinated by Havi, and trust her. I was ready.
Dance of Shiva is based on patterns. There are arm and leg movements that you are working in opposition to each other, it’s fairly ridiculous to watch, and it’s incredibly, incredibly hard. It’s supposed to be impossible, as I understand it, because the idea is to fill your mind up with physical math, to distract it so it cannot get in the way of insight. So we spread out - me in a green dress because I’d left my yoga clothes at the hotel - and started to learn the patterns. And for a minute it was fun.
And then I started to fall behind (I am pretty sure there is no behind).
I could feel my self hardening. My face got grimmer and grimmer as I held myself harder and harder to the spot I was standing on, making mistake after mistake after mistake. It was the worst feeling, it was THAT feeling, I was in that class again, I didn’t know where to put my body, and my sinuses filled up with wet concrete and shame and I broke, fled to the studio bathroom.
I was waiting for the horror of a concerned person following me but they didn’t and eventually I stopped crying, blew my nose, washed my face and went back out there. Nobody looked at me funny. I got back on the floor and followed - badly - along.
Which sounds like nothing. A beautiful nothing. I was fine. The memory was there, but the misery was not. Instead I had a smooth hollow pit, like after a tooth pulling. You keep putting your tongue in it but the tooth is gone, the pain is gone, it’s just a depression in your jaw that gets a little smaller every day. I had trouble telling the story even now because...it’s not important. I don’t feel it. It’s not a horrible memory anymore, it’s barely even a memory.
The shiva nata experience was harder to write because that IS important. I told Havi that day that Shiva Nata was horrible - and she said she knew and was sorry. And this is true, so very true, but it’s not a bad thing. At my yoga studio recently we were talking before class about the other classes at the studio - there’s a bit of a bottleneck in beginners recently and the teacher asked me about my experience in the more challenging classes. I said it was harder and I could see faces around me closing. I booted that pretty badly, because I think she was trying to encourage people to go further. But, it IS harder. For me, that’s the point. Hard is good. Hard is change, or learning. Hard is mistakes, which is how you learn. Hard is leaving bad stuff behind.
Hard is love, and therapy, and sticking with new things after the first attempt.
Hard is good.
I have the DVDs to do shiva nata at home. I’ve lost them in my house. I mean, if I wanted to I could find them pretty quickly, but I’ve made sure not to look.*
I had no idea that THAT memory was a source of particular pain, though I can see how it connects to a certain unwillingness to look a fool or take physical risks. Having it rise up and explode was a complete surprise. On a day to day basis I don’t feel different. There is no magical clarity. Just a calm, healed spot on my psyche.
So I’m scared of what else might come up, what other bit of pain or humiliation is lurking in there to be released. Even though I know it’ll be ok, even better, after it does.
I love that, the reluctance to change when change is clearly the only way to escape a painful thing, the reluctance to be hurt on purpose even if we know the pain is easily survivable. I’m having a flare up right now of an on-again off-again muscle spasm in my leg. I was at the gym doing sit ups Friday and every time I passed the hip pivot point I had to brace myself before I crossed the twinge. Even though I know from experience that not using the muscle makes it worse and it’s at a totally manageable ouch, the avoid-the-ouch instinct is mighty. Humans.
I feel pretty stuck though, right now. Might be time.
*the morning after I wrote this I went looking for something else and there was this envelope next to it. What is thi.....the Shiva Nata DVD. Very funny, universe. Very funny.
I started standing in the back corner of the studio, and when we got past those first 3 or 4 steps, the ones I had learned in the beginning, I’d start to feel frantic and hateful, sick and choking, incompetent.... and I would evaporate out the back door and hide in the ladies room until class was over.
After college a friend was trying to teach me to ballroom dance and I had...I guess a flashback? That same sick conviction of my own ugliness filled my lungs, took my air, and I had what I think was a mild panic attack and could not continue.
I should have asked for help. But I didn’t know that then. And the teacher, well, I think if she were a good teacher rather than a good dancer, she would have reached out to me to help me bridge what I had missed, but instead she confronted me in front of people one day with...my cowardice I guess? For hiding, or not knowing the steps...and ignored me the rest of the semester.
For years this memory was absolutely clear. I could have told you what she SAID that day, except that it was a thing I was careful to not ever think about because the memory was almost as humiliating as the reality
And then I went to Sacramento and did a workshop with Havi and tried Shiva Nata. I was into it, I think. I’d been doing yoga for 8 months, I felt like I was over my self-consciousness. I hadn’t thought about dance class in years. I was energized by possibility, which is one of my favorite things. I envied the other participants a little, who already knew some shiva nata, who already knew what they were working towards. I am fascinated by Havi, and trust her. I was ready.
Dance of Shiva is based on patterns. There are arm and leg movements that you are working in opposition to each other, it’s fairly ridiculous to watch, and it’s incredibly, incredibly hard. It’s supposed to be impossible, as I understand it, because the idea is to fill your mind up with physical math, to distract it so it cannot get in the way of insight. So we spread out - me in a green dress because I’d left my yoga clothes at the hotel - and started to learn the patterns. And for a minute it was fun.
And then I started to fall behind (I am pretty sure there is no behind).
I could feel my self hardening. My face got grimmer and grimmer as I held myself harder and harder to the spot I was standing on, making mistake after mistake after mistake. It was the worst feeling, it was THAT feeling, I was in that class again, I didn’t know where to put my body, and my sinuses filled up with wet concrete and shame and I broke, fled to the studio bathroom.
I was waiting for the horror of a concerned person following me but they didn’t and eventually I stopped crying, blew my nose, washed my face and went back out there. Nobody looked at me funny. I got back on the floor and followed - badly - along.
Which sounds like nothing. A beautiful nothing. I was fine. The memory was there, but the misery was not. Instead I had a smooth hollow pit, like after a tooth pulling. You keep putting your tongue in it but the tooth is gone, the pain is gone, it’s just a depression in your jaw that gets a little smaller every day. I had trouble telling the story even now because...it’s not important. I don’t feel it. It’s not a horrible memory anymore, it’s barely even a memory.
The shiva nata experience was harder to write because that IS important. I told Havi that day that Shiva Nata was horrible - and she said she knew and was sorry. And this is true, so very true, but it’s not a bad thing. At my yoga studio recently we were talking before class about the other classes at the studio - there’s a bit of a bottleneck in beginners recently and the teacher asked me about my experience in the more challenging classes. I said it was harder and I could see faces around me closing. I booted that pretty badly, because I think she was trying to encourage people to go further. But, it IS harder. For me, that’s the point. Hard is good. Hard is change, or learning. Hard is mistakes, which is how you learn. Hard is leaving bad stuff behind.
Hard is love, and therapy, and sticking with new things after the first attempt.
Hard is good.
I have the DVDs to do shiva nata at home. I’ve lost them in my house. I mean, if I wanted to I could find them pretty quickly, but I’ve made sure not to look.*
I had no idea that THAT memory was a source of particular pain, though I can see how it connects to a certain unwillingness to look a fool or take physical risks. Having it rise up and explode was a complete surprise. On a day to day basis I don’t feel different. There is no magical clarity. Just a calm, healed spot on my psyche.
So I’m scared of what else might come up, what other bit of pain or humiliation is lurking in there to be released. Even though I know it’ll be ok, even better, after it does.
I love that, the reluctance to change when change is clearly the only way to escape a painful thing, the reluctance to be hurt on purpose even if we know the pain is easily survivable. I’m having a flare up right now of an on-again off-again muscle spasm in my leg. I was at the gym doing sit ups Friday and every time I passed the hip pivot point I had to brace myself before I crossed the twinge. Even though I know from experience that not using the muscle makes it worse and it’s at a totally manageable ouch, the avoid-the-ouch instinct is mighty. Humans.
I feel pretty stuck though, right now. Might be time.
*the morning after I wrote this I went looking for something else and there was this envelope next to it. What is thi.....the Shiva Nata DVD. Very funny, universe. Very funny.
It is reading things like this that make people realize that they are more like one another than they are different.
(I'm very late, I know, but there it is.)
Posted by: Jeanne | 28 July 2011 at 07:11 PM
in 2008 i travelled to new york, headed to rhinebeck (a major thing for me.. to afford travel), and didn't i get really sick on the friday before everything started happening. i had an appointment with toni at the fold booth, and instead of taking advantage of a spectacular opportunity i stood there like an idiot, and could hardly wait to leave. so.. my friends bundled me into the vehicle and took me straight to the hospital. (thank the god lord for travel insurance) - really serious UTI... anyway.. i went to rhinebeck on saturday morning despite all, and on the long trek from car to gate, i had (HAD) to use the washroom. i dunno if i looked desperate, or sick or what... but you let me sweep by you and get into a washroom. all i can remember is that not knowing how.. i knew it was you. i can still see you in my mind's eye. so tall and gorgeous and i thought at the time that you'd have to be a person of stature to support such a radiant smile. a just-because smile. i expect if you were 5'2" you'd still be 6'something.
Posted by: annie | 19 April 2011 at 02:11 AM
Thank you. The verbal crap is a bit different for the midgets among us, but it's there. At 43, there are people in my life who still treat me like an incompetent child.
The avoid-the-ouch instinct is, indeed, mighty. Facing it every day now, and although I know the other side of it is worth the ouch, it's still damned hard.
Love to you, my friend.
Posted by: Lee Ann | 04 April 2011 at 06:49 PM
I felt the need to reply to this post and read the first comment...I couldn't have said it better than Caroline did.
We all have our things. We all struggle to overcome them. It doesn't make yours, or mine, any less difficult to deal with, and sometimes it takes years x 100 to effectively learn to live with these things. Good luck in getting unstuck.
Posted by: Jaimie | 03 April 2011 at 11:13 PM
Strangely (or perhaps not), at that same class, I started crying and couldn't stop. I have NO idea what was getting triggered there.
Posted by: casey | 29 March 2011 at 12:08 AM
Sometimes being conscious of having survived is the most extraordinarily fulfilling moment. It's like taking a firm step forward and knowing that you will never again look back in fear.
Posted by: Samantha | 26 March 2011 at 08:52 PM
Thank you so much for writing this.
Posted by: Jodi | 26 March 2011 at 02:46 PM
whoa, beautiful post!
I have similar memories too, of being physically weaker and uncoordinated, of running some kind of race in gym class and being the very, very very last one to cross the finish line, long after everyone else had finished, had a drink, walked around and gone back to class. The horrors of "dodgegball" (do they still make kids do that in gym class?) where the man-sized class bully kept drilling the ball into my stomach, over and over again while everyone laughed.
I oddly also have an even stronger shame and panic around learning languages because of a cruel and stupid French teacher in grammar school. Those experiences are like islands in our consciousness, floating there unmoored somehow. You nailed it.
Posted by: seizuresalad | 25 March 2011 at 02:48 PM
I was referred to as the Jolly Green Giant in 7th and 8th grade. Without going into lots of detail, EMDR was the best money I have ever spent in therapy. Changed my brain and my life.
Posted by: mary lou | 24 March 2011 at 11:36 AM
Totally agree with Marji. And I missed you something fierce -- thank you for posting!
Posted by: FaithEllen | 23 March 2011 at 11:00 PM
Yeah, what Caroline said. When women rule the world, we will outlaw junior high. I don't know why kids are so appallingly hard on each other as young teenagers, but I know it took me a good 20 years to begin to recover (but I'm slow, as you know).
Sometimes I think I knit and spin and weave so furiously as a way to distract my brain from everything.
Posted by: Lynn | 23 March 2011 at 09:04 PM
The Universe is big on jokes and irony. Oh, Universe. Some days, we need kindness more.
Posted by: Adrienne | 23 March 2011 at 02:17 PM
It must be the universe that made this post. I'm struggling too with finding a new path, after 10 years of recuperating from head injury and a lifetime of "who the hell am I and what am I supposed to be doing?" And I realized last night that what I really need is to just open the door to a small change in course.
Maybe 25 years ago I spent a week at Esalen (Big Sur CA regenerating space) and had that experience, recognizing that it's like a boat in the ocean changing its course by a single degree; by the time you make landfall, your arrival place can be hundreds of miles from your original destination. Small initial change, BIG eventual transformation.
Now if I can just identify what that tiny change needs to be -
Posted by: Baraka | 23 March 2011 at 12:46 PM
I frequently find your posts to be profound and blindingly honest and universal. Thank you.
Posted by: Marji | 23 March 2011 at 12:17 PM
Havinhas a Siva Nata blog too, and she recently had a guest post with 101 ways to do Shiva Nata. I found it really helpful to see so many different interpretations/possibilities...
http://bit.ly/f1njpa
Posted by: Whitney | 23 March 2011 at 09:42 AM
I do read the Fluent Self, though not all the time.
Havi's got a really unique voice and way of approaching problems of the self.
Posted by: Juno | 23 March 2011 at 09:27 AM
I think I found Havi through you a couple years ago – and I’ve done Shiva Nata about twice in the last year. Because, hello, yoga and writing have made the last year so fucking hard (I alternately bless & curse my teacher for making me sit down with a journal). But good too. Really good. I don’t know if it’s because I’m just terribly uncoordinated or that my brain was THAT stagnant, but every time I lose my way in practice and don’t know left from right or up and down… something happens. And the Shiva Nata is like that yoga confusion on steroids. I’ve already had to face up to everything I’ve been trying to shove out of sight for the last decade - I’m not sure I’m ready to go diving further in. But I know I will.
Every time someone asks me about the yoga and I say “It’s HARD” in that way that they get that I’m not talking about my sore muscles - I feel kind of weird. This yoga stuff is supposed to be great, right? Love and relaxation & stuff? It IS great actually. Incredible. But maybe not in the same way.
I want to say thanks for this – It may not have been easy to write or probably, to put out there. But thank you. And, I’m so glad for you (not for the stuck - for the hard. I think it means you'll get past the stuck).
Posted by: mel | 23 March 2011 at 09:08 AM
You know, this is not, necessarily, the takeaway from this post, but you know what they should have is group therapy for recovering tall girls. Because sometimes somebody else saying "yes, it was just like that for me too" is exactly what you need to hear.
Posted by: Ashley | 23 March 2011 at 09:06 AM
Well, the Universe at it again...I did a little bit of shiva nata right before reading this post. I've been trying to get into a regular routine with it, and have actually had trouble making it hard enough. Some kind of mental resistance probably. But I've gotten to the point where I don't feel too self-conscious doing it at home alone...I would love to take a class but I'm on the East Coast. Do you read Havi's blog?
Posted by: Whitney | 23 March 2011 at 08:32 AM
It's the having of a certain kind of soul, chica. there will always be something the others will point to, make fun of, etc. trust me, I was NOT tall and yet junior high and high school had that same effect. If it isn't the height it's the bubble butt or the brains. The funny thing is that even when the healing occurs years later, the invisibility (or urge to same) takes a while to, er, vanish. must check out this Shiva Nata...And thanks for courageously posting it all.
Posted by: caroline | 23 March 2011 at 02:01 AM