I went to the weekly meditation class at the Yoga Tree in Fremont yesterday afternoon. This was my first time going to the class. I'm definitely going to go to it every week for the foreseeable future. Wow.

When I was going through my divorce--for the 6 months I was separated before the divorce was final, and for several months afterward--I cried a LOT. My ex and I separated in mid-July, and by early August I was crying several times per day, every single day, without fail. That went on for awhile, and only started tapering off sometime in mid to late December. (Stick with me, there's a reason I'm writing about this.) At first, all that crying was just exhausting--and dehydrating. I was manic, though, so despite the exhaustion I was sleeping less than normal, and I just buzzed around on this tidal wave of nervous, emotional energy. After about a month of that, though, the crying and the lack of sleep had the effect of peeling away the layers of..."intentionality," for lack of a better word...from my personality. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe, as a person, as a human being. I let go of my desire to control my life--not by choice, but because it was so clearly futile. There was all this turmoil and emotionality, and I was very deeply enmeshed in it--the tidal wave was still buffeting me and dragging me around--but I was somehow quiet within that, and I felt OK. Over time, that feeling of quietness and OK-ness, and the size of the space it seemed to occupy, grew larger and became more stable, became part of what I thought of as my "self." Ever since then, until a couple of years ago, I always had some semblance of this feeling, always knew that if I lost track of it for a little while, I would be able to find my way back to it with little difficulty. And that's how it went, for several years.

Yesterday I also spent some time reading back over some of the stuff I wrote in this blog between about April, 2006 and March 2007. It was the first time I've re-read any of that stuff, and it was like visiting the scene of an accident or a natural disaster, but one which still bore all of the traces of the time before, the time when the accident or disaster could have been diverted or avoided, or at least when its devastating effects could have been mitigated or minimized. It was interesting, because it was like watching myself get lost, then realize that I was lost, and finally become frantic with trying unsuccessfully to find my way back, and desperately anxious about the whole process. This is difficult to explain, but the tracks I left in this journal were just...plain, readable. (Also I was surprised at how clearly I understood what was happening, the issues involved, and what I should do about it, I just dithered around for months before I got around to doing it, and then it wasn't a choice that I made, it was a choice that my body sort of forced me into. My unconscious was screaming for attention. I willfully ignored it, or at least tried to strike what I already knew was an impossible compromise, between it and an untenable situation.)

While meditating, at least for a little while, I was able to let go of all that and to accept that there is no back. That was the real thing about what I was experiencing after my divorce, that grief (which is what it was): it came from accepting impermanence, the relentless motion of time, the unreachability and unchangeability of the past. I was quite conscious of this at the time; every time I cried, I was letting go of something connected to my relationship with my ex-husband: the children we would never have, the future we would no longer share, the house we would no longer inhabit together, etc. I wasn't on solid ground, I hadn't (finally) developed or found a "stable self," I was simply riding a wave, letting it carry me away from him and toward...I didn't know exactly what, except that it felt better, more true, more natural for me. And that was enough, that was all I needed--for it to feel right, even if I couldn't articulate what was right about it. A couple of years ago I got sucked under, and have been sputtering for breath ever since, but I think I made the mistake of going down, of trying to swim for solid ground that doesn't exist, or of trying to find the exact wave I had been happily riding, rather than accepting my new situation and letting myself float, letting the water (to extend my wave metaphor) carry me. There's no way to know, no way to control, whether or not I'll float upward and find air and a new wave to ride, but I have to find a way to trust that I will, to believe in the possibility. It's ironic. My adamant atheism has led me to a place where I have to embrace those most religious of values, against all reason: faith and hope. I think I finally get what's useful about those values. They de-clutter the mind, because they free it from worrying or trying to control, so that you have more time and space to breathe, and to be.

Interestingly, what I see after this one foray into meditation (it's not my first ever--I have done it before, but it was a long time ago), is that you can open this pathway by focusing on the breath. In other words, neither the breath nor the acceptance necessarily has to come first; they are mutually constitutive and reciprocally reinforcing.

I took my first yoga class today. Not my first ever--I have taken exactly 3 classes before, every time as a guest. I've also done some yoga on my own, using books and videos (with OK but not great results, because having a teacher correct the small elements of a pose is so invaluable). The most recent class I took was last Sunday, with my friend L. That class convinced me to get over the inertia hump and sign up for the introductory series at The Yoga Tree, which is right around the corner from my house. So my first class was awesome. I learned a lot, and it has done immediate wonders for my back and my sense of well-being. It also highlighted a few things about my personality--things that I have known for a long time, but tend to forget.

1. When I feel threatened, or when I feel like I will fail or do a bad job at something, I contract away from things. This makes me feel rigid in the world (get your mind outta the gutter, I'm being serious here), balled up, and it has the effect of increasing my anxiety. It becomes almost impossible to open myself to new things, to be resilient in the face of new challenges or possible losses. It's like my self turns into a whirlpool that sucks everything downward and there's no possibility for outward flow. Positive energy turns negative and adds to the ferocity of the spiral, like a big feedback loop.

2. My physical and psychological selves are so linked together that they have an immediate effect on each other. When I use my body in a way that emphasizes my strengths, that lengthens me and opens me up, I almost immediately feel more open psychologically, emotionally (to the extent that that's different), and intellectually. This might sound kind of woo-woo, but it also makes me feel simultaneously more humble, more vulnerable; and stronger, more capable. I feel more inclined to be open to people and things, to the world, to both loss and gain. I feel more accepting of the back and forthness of life, the reciprocity of forces. It's good, because it means that I can address my psychological state through my body. I have been in therapy for awhile now, and I almost feel like yoga (and running, if/when I can get past my tendinitis problems; I simply can't accept the possibility that I have gotten too old for it)--let's just say physical activity is more therapeutic for me than talk therapy. I guess it's particularly effective when they're paired, and in fact trois'ed with journal writing.

3. Which brings me to the third thing that has been reinforced for me today: the importance of reinforcement, repetition, practice. I can't just do this stuff once, or for a little while, and expect to get any long-lasting benefit from it; I have to keep doing it regularly--whether "it" is yoga, running, writing, teaching, or whatever. Feeling good about myself and feeling open to the world is a process; I'm afraid my "natural" or base state, the state to which I revert when I stop expending effort, is one of curling inward and downward, physically and mentally. Paradoxically, that state feels profoundly unnatural to me, and I don't like being in it.

In a little bit I'm going to head to campus to pick up my students' portfolios. Then I'm going to either come back home or go out to a coffee shop to grade-grade-grade-grade-grade. Tonight, hopefully going to see the Old 97's. It's sold out. We're trying to score some tix.