Loosening the Grip
Literal and Metaphorical Exhales
September was an uphill climb of a month. I haven’t written anything because there literally hasn’t been time to write anything. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on that, but suffice it to say - I’m doing considerable re-thinking about my relationship to my work and what is and isn’t reasonable as I think about a purpose-driven career.
However, I was reminded the past week how grasping is the root of suffering (more on that here). I think a lot of the reason that September was such a struggle was that I was holding on to the idea that things HAD TO get better, that the SHOULD be a different way, that I EXPECTED people around me to behave differently and was deeply disappointed when what I thought MIGHT happen didn’t. Instead of finding a way to accept the things that were and work with them, I was throwing my energy into the frustration that they weren’t as I thought they would be.
I spent last weekend in Cape Cod. My husband and I have wanted to go there since we first considered the idea of “vacation” when we were 22. There’s danger in going somewhere that’s long held anticipation. Will it be as “good” as you hoped? Or will the version you’ve built up in your imagination make the real experience pale in comparison? I was concerned that the trip might not meet my expectationst, but I also find great satisfaction in realizing a long-held idea. Fortunately, one benefit of exhaustion is that it’s hard to make plans or know what you’re looking for, exactly. When our friends asked us what we wanted to do, my answer was, “be cold enough to wear a sweatshirt and see the ocean.” The Cape did not disappoint. A weekend with friends who don’t care at all about my work (not in an apathetic way, just in a “you’re a person outside this role” way), lows in the 50’s after 40-something straight days of 100 degrees+ this summer, hiking in the rain, ocean breezes, and biking in earnest for the first time since I was a child did a world of good.
One of my favorite experiences of Cape Cod was seeing seals up close in the water. I’ve seen colonies sunning on the beach before, but I’ve never seen them zip through the water. I could see why our friend’s mom had been adamant about us going to see them - their playful energy and reminiscence of puppies begging for snacks at the dinner table was joyful and utterly unlike anything I’d seen before. This was the first moment of the trip where I could feel the grasp start to loosen ever so slightly, that I could breathe just a little easier. I loved their excitement and their play and felt fully engaged with them in a way I hadn’t been with a single thing in a long time. There was space, for 10 minutes, to just be in one place, at one time, not expecting them to pop out of the water but being absolutely delighted when it happened. As I watched them, I started to be able to see light at the end of September’s tunnel and to begin to think about what imagining a life with a different orientation to work could look like (that’s an intentionally clunky sentence - begin to think about imagining…it’s exactly what I mean). My heart felt a loosening of the stranglehold of overwhelm for the first time in months.
And then I promptly came back to a day where I was in class or meetings from 7:15am-6:30pm and turned into a ball of anxiety all over again.
Because old habits are hard to break.
Friday night, after not having been to yoga in over a week (which is a long time in this season of my practice), I went into class with no expectations. The classes I’d gone to in September had a frantic quality (mine, not my teacher’s or the sequences’); I couldn’t get out of my head, couldn’t stop the thoughts or stop trying to stop them. I went into every 75-minute class thinking it could fix the level of overstretching that I was feeling. It didn’t (because that’s an unreasonable expectation of 75 minutes of anything). Friday before class, I’d felt a tiny bit of loosening, perhaps just a little bit of Cape Cod wriggling its way in. Yes, my last period class is a little bit bananas; yes, I was exhausted from trying to help 11-year-olds conceptualize higher level thinking; yes, the expectations of my job are impossible. AND I’m doing the best I can with what I have, my kids are learning something even if I leave every class with a mild overstimulation headache, and a 20-minute observation (read: a long time) at the beginning of my most challenging class yielded mostly positive feedback and a couple of key suggestions that unlocked ideas for how to fix persistent problems.
I was still too tired from the week to think much about class before logging in 30 seconds before it started. I hadn’t considered any requests, and didn’t really know what to ask for anyway, so I let other people’s needs and my teacher’s intuition guide my experience. I didn’t ask the class to fix my off-kilter balance and I didn’t go in looking for a transcendent experience. I just showed up.
And, because the universe is the universe, the experience did border on transcendent and I felt an integration of all of the space from Cape Cod, the little bits of light from the week with my students, and gratitude for the mysterious ways that our brains and yoga as a physical and spiritual practice can work.
All because, I think, I was able to loosen my grasp on SHOULD and OUGHT and WOULD and WILL and just BE.
None of this is to say that I’ve figured out how to deal with unreasonable expectations (I haven’t) or that I have good boundaries with work (I don’t) or that I won’t be exhausted next week (I will). But it was such a timely and perfect reminder that, while we don’t have control over everything, we do have at least a little bit of control over loosening our grasp, even if we can’t let go completely. Even if we can’t release consciously (I certainly didn’t - I just ran out of reserves to hold on tight), we CAN welcome the effects of a physical and/or metaphorical wiggling of the fingers, the almost imperceptible deepening of the breath, celebrating the little bits of freedom as they happen, whether we willed them into existence or not.
Due to the above, I’m focusing on offering one class in October. You can register by clicking on the calendar. If you have feedback about class times that would work best for you, please let me know in the form or comments.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about your experience with loosening your grip, relaxing your expectations of the outcome, or any tiny moments of shaking loose or delight that you’re experiencing lately!