How hard it is to let go. Of everything. Of everyone. To let go so I can move on. To let go so I can stay in what is.
What if we were so scared of feeling that the only possible way to do it was to get high, jump in, and feel all the feels and be “high” enough to, also, let them go? Because in the end the problem is not so much that a feeling is intense, but that we make it last longer than it has to, we get tangled in it, we can’t let go of the thread, like it’s a lifeline. And the tangling is scary because we lose ourselves in it, we choke and struggle and fight, but the way to safety is to let it go, to let it unravel, to watch the mastery of its disappearing act.
Mind altering experiences can give us enough distance from the fear that we don’t need to hang on so tightly anymore. We might be able to feel, and to see the thread, without choking. They might be the only condition that makes it acceptable to show emotions.
Is this one of the roots of addiction? That our human nature is, indeed, to feel deeply, to feel more, but we don’t know how to?
recovering from joy
Two of my regulars had much to celebrate when we met. One was acknowledging a year of sobriety. The other was allowed to plant a garden at the facility. Both spoke to how much joy they experienced, how they felt connected to their peers and sponsors, how they started to taste the taste of freedom. Both of them acknowledged how scary all of that was.
Sometimes we forget that we have an “upper limit” too. There is only so much happiness we can experience before it gets deeply uncomfortable, either because we don’t think we deserve it, or because we don’t trust it will last, or simply because great joy is a state of high arousal that our system might not have the stamina for.
For some, dissociation and self-medication are a response to happiness.
Working on the sensory window of tolerance has become a bit of a mission for me: we often think about helping ourselves and other recover from suffering, and that’s certainly part of it, but who’s there to help us with happiness? When it’s too much? Or afterwards, when we crash because the feeling of elation is not there anymore?
Recovering from joy.
Why I do what I do.
care
Sitting at a table, listening to music while we waited for folks to be ready to have class, we talked. He’s going to trial for manslaughter. I asked him how he felt about what happened and he went back to the consequences, to the prison math of 10 months making a year and time served and parole. So I asked him again: but how do you feel about what happened? He paused and I bit my finger until it bled, a common thing. He got up and went to get a bandaid for me (out of his stash. The generosity of sharing when they have so little always blows my mind) and when he came back he applied it gently to my bleeding finger while he told me how he felt. He talked about his pain for the people he hurt, and will hurt by being away, while caring for mine.
what does it feel like
“What does it feel like to come work here in jail” he asked. It’s not the first time one of the guys here asked me that. But this time it was a little different. Because I hadn’t been here in a while. Because it was the first time with this group. Because I had just asked him what it felt like and he told me that sometimes he just was so tired he thought he wanted to give up.
What working at Rikers surfaces for me is that not many people in here are inherently evil. That there are many reasons why they make the choices they make. And that there are lots of commonalities in the folks I meet here. Especially in the young adults dorms: black and brown bodies, broken families, alternative relationships built on the street. And how hard it is to break cycles, to change our lives, to stick to it while old habits pull us back. Freedom is in the choosing.
So here is what it feels like:
So close to accepting.
So close to being inundated.
So irrelevant.
b and lama rod
I sort of failed at the yoga today. I mean, I only taught Asana for about half an hour.
But we talked a lot, played Uno and discussed the fear of coming out after serving time, the courage of facing 15-20 years, what to do with a baby mama out there in the wild…
I got to sneak in my two favorite quotes from Lama Rod: everyone wants to be free but not a lot of people want to do the work it takes to be free. And my personal favorite, Liberation is in the choosing, which was followed by B, who has not engaged so far but today sat and talked to me the entire time, saying that if he went away for that long it better be for something he really chose. I asked him what would that be. He’ll tell me next week. Because whatever he thought would set him free would also lock him up.
Does it count as yoga when connections happen? When questions are asked? When feelings are felt?
on language and systems of oppression
Quick note: whenever I post stories of Rikers I get messages complimenting me for the work I do and the light I share.
Let me be clear.
I find this language of me “bringing light and awareness into their lives” colonialist, racist, and therefore, deeply problematic.
It takes for granted that we have a light to offer that they don’t have, and disregards the fact that if they can’t access it it’s probably because of the history of oppression and systemic conditions that people like me created.
I’m not a missionary nor a saviour nor a healer.
I don’t do anything incredible, actually. I offer a service. As for many teachers, it’s the students and the way I choose to tell the stories that make me look good. But it only proves that with the right treatment and resources, most people come out shining.
I’m not trying to scold or offend, but to invite us (yogis and more) to consider what motivates us and how we uphold hierarchical and colonial ideas that overlap with systems of oppression.
Language is one of those ways. So thank you, but no, thank you.
waves
The guys started to take turns on the mats today, rolling in and and out as they felt, and I literally taught the same basic thing 6 times in a row: I’d give the task to one and then another would hop in and I’d give it to him and then another would leave and they’d switch and so on…
I asked them to close the eyes and imagine a good place. Somewhere they wanted to be. Somewhere safe and beautiful. I reminded them that our bodies hold the memory of our experiences, so they could bring those back as a way to travel to that place with all the sensations in the body. Once they found the place and settled in, I asked them to shift the attention to the breath, and lengthen the exhale. Count 10 of those breaths, and if they got distracted and lost count to go back to one and start over. A total of 5 minutes, maybe less.
I don’t know where they went or what they felt but every single one of them came back a little softer.
And I think that the guys watching saw that too and that’s why they started to roll in like that. Because it’s so hard to be soft here.
It felt like rolling waves kept coming and I was just offering the practice as the sand to roll on. The good days are good
shame and the 5 remembrances
“If you are ashamed of it you have no business doing it”.
That’s the wisdom imparted to me by my student in rehab today. His grandfather told him that, when he was complaining to him during his first stint in jail. There were many more after that, but a sense of integrity radiates from him, through the fog of questionable choices.
He’s been working with the 5 remembrances for a few weeks and the one that resonated first was “My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”
Not surprisingly though, as he prepares to witness his mother’s passing, the fourth one is really hard: “All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.”
I’m pushing him though. To look at it. And as I push him, I push myself. He becomes a mirror as I look at the way I deal with grief and change (not terribly graceful…) and we walk each other through, hesitantly, but with care.
on struggle as a moral imperative
Thinking a lot about struggle these days. About the many ways we fight, strive and struggle for values, food, or life.
Often the most valuable moment for folks I work with is at the end of a class, when they get to lie down and surrender the fight for a moment, and just be.
In my own practices the struggle is a tool, a medium to go somewhere, to learn to surrender the fear or fight.
In patriarchal capitalist societies struggle is a necessary feat of survival. Struggling leads to hustling.
But, in Chinua Achebe’s words, here is the thing with struggling:
“No one is going to guarantee us the outcome. Nobody's going to say if you struggle, you will succeed. It would be too simple. But even if we are not sure how it is going to end, what success will attend our enterprise, we still have this obligation to struggle.”
Then struggle becomes a moral imperative, and a path to integrity, a journey in and out of hope.
So we keep going, even when there is no hope. Because the struggle itself is what sets us free sometimes.
gratitude
I’m grateful I went inside today.
I’m feeling the sadness and the desperation, mental health struggles, heart breaks… I’m feeling all the things we’ve collectively lived through, and the resilience it took.
One person told me it was the best meditation they've ever had. They had never focused on the body and on resurfacing memories of safety in the body before. They forgot they had ever been safe.
I’m grateful for resources and resilience and for the privileged capacity to take over some of their pain, sometime.
I’m grateful to them all for showing me all the ways in which we are the same, and responsible for each other.
the multiplicity of oneness
I talked to a woman today who had a premature baby 21 days ago, in jail. I talked to another who told me the officers and staff are sneaking into her cell to put snakes and worms in her bed and they are meddling with her food and that’s why she has an infection, but because the dentist is in on it she didn’t want to go to the clinic when they called her. I talked to a third who had an episode because she’s bipolar and has now been fine but stuck in the mental observation unit for months and a fourth who told me the nurses are really nice and she’s somehow grateful to be inside. I did breath work and meditation and even some movement with each of them and some more. This work can take a lot out of me. But I get to leave. Go home. See my loved ones. Play. Rest. Make choices that support the way I want to be in the world, even when they are not the most skillful. Sure, I didn’t kill anyone, not even in self defense. I don’t sell drugs, not even the legal ones. I don’t steal, because I don’t need to. I go to therapy and have resources and if sometimes I make you uncomfortable because I tell you weird stories just know that I appreciate your ability to hold some of the weight for me. Because that’s what we do: we share the load because it makes it easier to carry. We share because “that” is “this”. The multiplicity of oneness.
on happiness
There is a poem by Toni Morrison called “Eve remembering” that I’ve been reading over and over for a couple of days.
It brings to my mind the fierceness of doing “wrong” things for the right reasons, of breaking all the rules to build rules that matter. It reminds me of how much we owe to women, and sex workers, and disruptors. It calls on us to cherish the harvest of our actions.
I read it again this morning crossing the bridge onto The Island, and I couldn’t project that cherishing through the gates I was about to cross. It’s a question I walk with often: was it worth it? Can we cherish the harvest of darkness and dehumanization, and what does that even mean? Where does the righteousness of an action cease to be worth the suffering?
How far is the summit we are trying to be?
Towards the end she says “I would do it all over again”. What if that’s a measure of happiness? That whatever I did, I would do it again, because it was worth it, even when the harvest was poisoned?