Day 43: When your body says no

My body said "no" today, mainly with the feeling of lunch in the upper regions of my esophagus. From the onset of class, I had nausea to the point of tasting partially digested vegan energy bar swimming in coffee. I barely got through 3 breaths in the first set of pranayama and struggled to fully exhale for 6 seconds. This was the first time in over a month that I struggled with breathing. But this is also the first time in a month that everything has been completely different-my diet, my sleep pattern, my stress levels, my emotions, my whole life. My inability to control my breath and my body reacting so poorly was a reflection of my intense feelings of being out of control. Now, sitting down to my new favorite dessert (kefir and frozen blackberries), I'm breathing easily; calming down my chaotic day and evaluating all that caused such a stir.

When I'm stressed-physically, emotionally-my body has interesting ways of telling me to stop, drop and roll...or just to stop and think (but fire safety is for real, too). Like breathing shallowly, or feeling like I'm about to revisit lunch in a most unpleasant way. My body is saying "yo dude, what the fuck are you doing? chill out. it's fine. really. stop screwing me up with all this bullshit food; stressing me out with all this anxious energy." And it's right. All the stress is creating a terrible environment inside of me, which is reflected in all of my choices. This last week has been a series of band-aids on real problems. Instead of coming to terms with them, I've been masking them up; using the convenient, American "there's-a-pill-for-that" style of handling a problem. But a pill won't work. Nor will ignoring it. It's time to figure all this emotional junk out...and what better time then the emotional stage of a yoga adventure: Day 30 through 60 (Pulled from the 101 blog, which pulled it from Mary Jarvis' writing):

Day 31-60, we start to get into the emotional "stuff". As in the first 30 days, where we re-adjust the entire physical body, the next 30 days we re-adjust the entire emotional body while simultaneously regenerating and rebuilding every single cell in the body. We also begin to get into some serious realignment of the spine and the entire central nervous system. These next 30 days, you really begin to feel mentally fatigued, even in spite of the fact that you physically feel better than you ever have in your entire life!!!! This is the emotional readjustment.

And yes, there it is. Hello opportunity to handle some of the big, putrid, emotional gunk buried in the "I'll save you for later" section of my psyche's library. 

 

Class: Hot 90

Instructor: Jennifer

Studio: Open Door

Wins: Um...about this term "wins." Yeah, I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on Saturday. And while you're at it, Sunday too. Yeah, um, it looks like I'll need a double on sunday, as well. Yeah, um, thanks. Have a good weekend. bye.