Bipeds, generally, are not aerodynamic. This thought came to me as I was running into the wind this afternoon. Thank goodness for our tool-making thumbs, or we all would have been smooshed by lumbering mammoths eons ago. Not only are bipeds not aerodynamic, but I am among the most non-aerodynamic of us, which in the most technical sense would make me the drag queen, and in many ways this is quite fitting. I have long thought of myself as a drag queen trapped in a woman’s body. I mean, seriously, look at my shoes.
All this to say that I am not much of a runner. I move slowly, slowly enough that sometimes I wonder if the people around me are wondering why I don’t just walk, because that might actually go faster. Every Spring I get the urge to run, and I do for a month or two, until my back has had enough, and then I stop. This year has been different, though, and it started the first time I got on the treadmill. After a few minutes I was feeling terrible, and I reminded myself that the first mile is always the hardest, and then I thought about all the times I have been in a yoga class and thought that I was going to pass out in the first ten minutes, and then I took a breath, and another, and another, and then suddenly I was having a very powerful ninety minute practice.
Finally, FINALLY I realized how much of my aversion to running was all in my head. I guess there are only so many times that I can stand in front of my students and say, “The mind will give up long before the body does. Let your body show you how strong you are,” and not have it become reality off the mat. I went out on my regular route today – how I managed to plot a route that is almost completely uphill is beyond me – and did my seventy minute walk in fifty minutes. After a fifteen minute walk to warm up, I ran for thirty-five minutes, taking just a two minute break at the top of a particularly gigantic hill. Thirty-five minutes, almost completely hills. This is something I never, ever, thought I would be able to do. Of course, I am starting to think about a 5k now, or maybe splitting a half marathon between running and walking. I will continue to think about this until my back starts to say “no.”
On a related note: yoga nidra. Yoga nidra is essentially a trance state. If you want to get all eastern about it, it is a state of union with divine energy, particularly one’s dharma. If you want to be all western about it, it is guided visualization in a semi-dream state. Either way, it is deeply relaxing and energizing, and I have enjoyed it as part of teacher training.
But, today I GOT it. Before teaching, I did a short meditation, followed by a twenty minute sivasana, during which I did a methodical scan of the body, looking for holding, tension, and sensation, without expectation. I got down to my guts, which were feeling a little funny and saw the side of a mountain, and a tree that grew up in three separate trunks. (It occurs to me that many of my powerful mind/body moments have involved tree imagery.) One trunk was dead and being pulled out of the ground with a rope. Then I saw / heard / felt: I can’t be normal for you, I won’t be normal for you. I am intrigued because it is such an adolescent statement, and I do not know who the you is. But it does tell me that somewhere, some small part of me is still putting on a performance.
Then I taught. Ran. Wrote. Cracked myself up. Worked. Showered. Ate. Life went on in this body.
