Adventures du jour!
Jesus fuck my hips are sore today. I’m mostly gonna write about yoga-slash-mind-body-practice; you’ve been warned.
What I’m finding out lately about yoga are things I knew at one level, but didn’t know at this level until recently. Now that I know things at this other level, I need to restate them to see what I’m thinking. I’m going to use my “I know things” voice to write it, but really I’m just experimenting/testing. So please take this as a) really subjective, b) not an expert, and c) in flux.
So what I knew (or thought I knew) was that my mind and body were connected. Obvious, right? Mind is part of body; body is effectively inoperable without mind.
What I’m learning is practical mind/body hacking skills. These hacking skills will not work for everyone! Some minds and/or bodies are not meant to function like this, and some aren’t capable of it. No judgment here. I know a couple of people who might take this personally: “But I can’t do that! Do you think I’m useless?” No, I don’t think you’re useless. But I am going to talk about what I’m experiencing because it’s useful for me and others may be able to extrapolate from it, not because I think everyone “should” do it.
If I could go back in time and tell myself a few things as I was about to start doing yoga and other mind/body stuff, I would say these things:
–This stuff isn’t about what it seems to be about, but about finding and using loopholes between the way your mind seems to work and the way your body seems to work.
–The way authorities and experts talk about this stuff will not necessarily resonate, both because some of them aren’t experts, and because what this feels like is so subjective that it often won’t translate until you hit the same point.
–Because it’s hard to translate this stuff, pay attention whenever you hear language that resonates for the problems you’re facing in the moment. This language can come from stuff that has nothing to do with mind/body stuff. I end up using a lot of language about food and touch.
–Particularly pay attention to the things you’ve gotten good at and see if you can translate your experience using those terms. “It’s like following recipes your whole life, then learning how to cook without a recipe.” “It’s fiction, but it’s a *useful* fiction.” “No matter how many times you practice a piece of music, it’s never quite the same experience.”
–Meditative practices (at rest) are about disenfucking your brain. It seems like they take a long time to do anything, but it’s cumulative. You cannot un-meditate the way you can stop exercising. New crap will come into your brain and need to be disenfucked, of course. Bad meditation is better than no meditation.
–The sweet spot of meditation is boredom. The longer you can hold boredom, the more your brain will get disenfucked.
–Yoga and other posed practices (between rest and motion) are about retraining your brain. You will spend a lot of time doing stuff that feels stupid and embarrassing and pointless, that gradually builds up for fortitude to endure big, often sudden jumps in ability.
–The sweet spot of yoga is discomfort and embarrassment. You will fart, burp, wobble, fall down, find yourself in positions that make you feel exposed, feel emotions that you’re not “supposed” to feel. Often around a room full of other people doing the same.
–If you’re in pain, either emotionally or physically, back off. Go for just enough discomfort that you want to stop but you don’t have to. Suffering is a bitch that shakes people’s souls across generations. You don’t want to suffer; you want to build resilience. Suffering consumes resilience.
–There’s a world of difference between stretching and releasing tension. You stretch with willpower. You can easily damage yourself by forcing a stretch. You release with your soul, a mysterious process that involves both giving up and keeping going at the same time. Don’t worry about releasing. Just allow yourself not to stretch so fucking hard, and observe where the line between pain and discomfort is that day.
–I don’t want to jinx myself, but it seems like throwing up my hands and going “fiiiiiiine” precedes one of these release things, both in yoga and in writing.
–A bunch of demented shit will come up if you’re particularly locked inside your head (DEANNA). Watch for opportunities to translate it into the things you’re good at or that you care about, like “Today I had the urge to message X person and it turned out they needed it” or “I’m going to talk to my characters out of my work in progress, because…reasons?” “The most important thing I can do today is make fancy ramen.” Intuition at work sounds demented, when you’re out of touch with your own gut instincts. Just be safe.
–The care you give others is the care you give yourself. If assholes can project their negative feelings onto you, you can choose to project healthier things onto the world. Maybe it’s ultimately selfish; maybe it’s a virtuous cycle that makes the world a little less miserable; either way, you’re going to have to do something about feeling better, as things miraculously release. Maybe it’s a glorious mistake that we keep reproducing because it leads to better species survival, as we help each other. C’est la guerre.
–Flashes of deja vu are your soul or subconscious underlining the moment. You just had one, when you wrote the statement just above.
–Walking and other moving practices (in motion) are about integrating your nervous system at different levels. In order to think more clearly, walk. In order to process new emotions (negative and positive), walk. In order to shake off soreness after a release, walk.
–The sweet spot of walking is observation. Whatever it takes to make the world outside your body worth observing, do that. Walking so fast that you hurt yourself isn’t good. Walking the same route over and over without noticing new details, also no good. Bring a pet, listen to different music, take different routes, walk at different times, take photographs, stop and make notes of whatever ideas cross your mind, talk to people along your way. Engaging with the external shakes out the bugs internally.
–It’s okay to have conversations with imagined or imaginary people in these situations, but don’t carry those conversations with you all the time.
–“You’re such an asshole” isn’t a healthy conversation to have with yourself for hours at a time. “He’s such an asshole” is a much better one to have, if you have to have one.
–The worst things that come up generally precede the best things that come up. Both the best and worst things that come up generally precede being fucking SORE the next day or two. Take it easy, but make sure you get some walking in soon after both, so you can re-integrate after changes.
–Also expect everything you’ve made progress on to vary, day by day, particularly after a big release in one area. You’re literally holding yourself differently and everything else has to shift around to find its new local minimums and maximums.
–When in doubt, just observe.
…
I’ll let that settle in my mind for a while.
Other stuff!
Writing: Got through the scene so it’s no longer triggery, but still honest. Victory! Next scene: another unanticipated plot twist. Defeat! It’s interesting watching the characters gather themselves into groups and alliances and why they do it. “I’m gonna support you” versus “I’m going to protect myself” seems to be the split my brain has fastened on.
Midjourney: I worked on something very cool but I’m not done yet. Saving it for tomorrow. Digging through some other AI use cases to try to mentally sort what I might be able to do with them.
Kotatsu project: I’m putting together a heated snuggle table for Ray. Right now, it’s an Ikea Lack table with a duvet on it and the “shelf” from the table on top of that; we have a cover and a big pet heating pad coming in the mail soon. I was going to get a traditional table, but a) they’re expensive, and b) they’re dangerous. You really need a power converter, too. So I thought about it long and hard, and did a bunch of nosing around, and realized there’s no real need for the heat on a kotatsu table to come from above. (Koreans have had heated floors for a VERY long time.) So: heated dog bed. We’ll see how it goes. Even with just the duvet and the table, Ray has been pretty much inseparable from it and has even brought out some hand sewing to do. GOOD ENOUGH.
I’m looking forward to opening up the patio door, letting the apartment get super-chilly (for Florida), and hanging out with her.