Falling Into Myself, and In Love With Yoga

It’s so rare that a get a quiet moment to just let go and exist within myself. I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I felt awful. After 3 bouts of diarrhea, my first attempt at an enema (for some reason I felt my body begging me to give it a try at 2 am), and almost 5 hours of being too tired to stay awake but too uneasy to fall asleep, I finally did. So when the family woke up for church I was finally enjoying some restful sleep. As a result I was gifted 3 hours of “me” time.

I started the morning off with a green smoothie (as usual) and another attempt at an enema, which went much better than the first one. I was terrified to try an enema and have been avoiding it for many years. Those first attempts were approached with nervous shaking and nausea. I’m delighted to say now that they really aren’t bad at all, and not half as humiliating as one might think. So there is hope that I will be able to get through my upcoming digestive cleanse and perhaps ease some of my fibromyalgia symptoms and get rid of this monstrous gas that has been plaguing me, humiliating me in public, and causing stabbing pains in my abdomen for the past year and a half.

After that I decided to re-attempt yoga. I first tried yoga when I was about 15. I must have gotten the wrong video for a beginner because the man in it was flying through the poses and I seriously didn’t know which way was up. Attempt number two, I was bout 19 and tried a Kundelaini yoga video with my best friend, which of course ending up being mostly fits of laughter and mocking the “breath of fire.” Good times, for sure, but not exactly contusive to spiritual awareness. I tried it once again about 6 months ago to a show I saved on DVR, but I didn’t have the foam blocks I needed to do all the poses and I wasn’t strong enough to hold them for more than a few seconds, but I did love standing balanced in the prayer pose and felt very calm and energized afterward. Today I had two Kundelani yoga shows saved on DVR. I glanced through them both and the second one was for spinal health and digestive strengthening, so I decided to give it an honest shot. I was still very weak, and for sure I couldn’t do all the poses exactly like I was supposed to, but I was a good sport. At the end she had you lye on your back completely relaxed and breathing deep. Out of the blue I began to cry, as I tend to in those rare moments of letting go. As this began to happen I felt my spirit fearing residing in my body and the woman on the TV said, “This is the most important point, this is where the body and the spirit come together.” I thought of how, all my life, I have had panic attacks when I felt any kind of discomfort or disharmony in my body. I have always said that I live in my head, meaning I don’t feel grounded in my body. I have the ability to completely disconnect from my body, which serves me well at the OB/GYN, but not so much in everyday life. I’ve always thought that was a defense from the sexual abuse I endured over a 6-year period when I was a child. I HAD to go somewhere else. My body was not a safe place. But, even before that I was afraid of my body, always fearing disease and death. I think this fear may even go back to birth, or the womb. Perhaps it’s something I acquired as a result of my mother’s feelings about herself, or me, or maybe the trauma of being born. Regardless, now I know that I am disconnected and I want to be grounded in myself. As I was lying there I whispered out loud to my spirit, “Its okay.” “This body is beautiful, and safe, and getting stronger everyday. Its okay to live here.” And I felt a rare and blissful sense of peace.

I’m sure that this is just the first step in a long process. I mean, I have to learn HOW to be present in my body. But I think yoga is the tool that will get me there. To anyone I would say, “Try yoga!” And if you don’t like it, try again and again. It’s so natural, so beneficial to body and spirit. There is a disconnect in almost everyone in this modern world. We aren’t living inside ourselves, we’re living in fast-paced society. Lets return to where we came from and remember who we are. Then, we can gather up all the God-given gifts within us and spread them about the world.