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.
