my goodness (another digital freudian slip there -- i typed "my goodnews" instead of "my goodness"), so much has come through my life in the past few days. instead of giving you a play-by-play of the past 5 days, i think i need to hash through this philosophical/psychological wall i'm bumping up against right now. i'm talking about the edge.
those of you who are familiar with baron baptiste and his philosophy know what i'm talking about. in journey into power, baron says:
"the edge is where we come right up against ourselves and what we can do and be. it is the boundary between where we are and where we grow - the place of comfortable discomfort where all growing, and healing, happens."
which i get. i mean, i get the idea of the edge, i've been there on my mat and in my life more times than i can count. for a long time, i reached my edge very quickly coming into camel/ustrasana and it didn't always feel good. because it happened so fast, suddenly i felt like wile e. coyote in that moment when he's somehow run off the cliff, and has a second to realize he's about to fall... yeah. that's how i used to feel in camel a lot of the time. shear panic -- ice cold liquid in my veins and hot flashes all at once. i'd shoot back up to a seated position and just wait for the rest of the class to finish with their posture.but then something happened -- i caught on to this pattern. i asked myself what the heck i was so afraid of. "it's just a posture. what's the big deal?" i decided to stay with the panic moment, to stay with myself through it, to see what was on the other side. and (you all know how this story ends) what was on the other side was BLISS. yup, just plain old peaceful open-hearted bliss.
not surprisingly, all this asana struggle & breakthrough taking place on my mat was being played out off of it as well. at the time, i was in an exceedingly difficult situation with a woman i worked for. boundaries were being crossed left and right, and i found myself in drag-down fights with her, usually ending in tears and slamming doors. yeah, it was absurd. and emotionally exhausting on a daily basis. after about 3 months of this, i started having fantasies of quitting my job -- what really scathing horrible thing i could say to her on my way out the door, dead things i could send to her in the mail, etc. you know the drill. i was in a bad place with her. but every day, i'd leave work and go directly to the studio and work through my anger with her on my mat and in my practice. that's when the camel panic hit its peak. and when i had that breakthrough, i learned something about staying -- something i'd somehow managed to avoid learning for over 25 years. i learned that if i could stay with myself through a tough moment and not plot my great escape, i might find a peaceful, triumphant place right on the other side.
that, to me, is the edge.
but okay. so i stayed at the job. and the mean woman left a few months later. and it's been over year since she left and i'm still here. but i'm not happy.
which brings me, at long last, to the problem:
if the edge is a place where you come up against yourself, as baron says -- where things get a little chaotic inside and you feel like you want to run -- then what is the difference between the edge and just being really done with the thing you've been doing ?
baron also says:
"playing your edge in yoga doesn't always mean going for it or pushing yourself to do something that overwhelms you. that's ego stuff and it can lead to injury."
right. ego stuff. THIS IS ALL EGO STUFF. right now, i am a big bag of ego stuff.
ugh. i think i need to go to yoga now. being in your head sucks.
am i on the edge or am i past it? maybe i'm actually falling.
update:just realized something important talking to AP -- usually my ego says GO and my intuition says STAY. but right now it's the other way around. right now, my ego says STAY but my intuition says GO.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment