A is for Ahimsa

Three more days will mark the day that my life fell apart five years ago and lately I have decided to pick up the pieces of some of the things that I was doing at the time but never managed to finish when my life veered of its tracks. Five years ago, I had just started the Blogging From A-Z Challenge, an April blogging challenge where you write every day about the topic associated with a letter of the alphabet. At the time I successfully finished four blog posts and then disaster hit so I never finished.

I'm a few days behind but this year I am going to start anew and finish it. Yesterday I blogged about how I wanted to explore the 8 limbs of yoga, which are the philosophical underpinnings that guide the system of yoga. One the first limbs are "Yamas", which are restraints and ethical considerations in life. There are five yamas, of which ahimsa, or harmlessness, is the first yama/restraint that should guide the behavior of people engaging in yoga.

The word ahimsa means nonviolence or harmless towards yourself, towards other people, and towards your environment. Do not harm, in other words. By practicing ahimsa we engage in nonviolent behavior, speech, thought, feelings and actions. 

It's always been said that all change starts from within. We often are so harsh with ourselves in the ways that we push ourselves too hard, don't respect our own boundaries or don't put ourselves first. Lack of ahimsa manifests itself in the tendency to overwork ourselves or be overly critical of ourselves. We often beat ourselves up for mistakes that we have made and aren't as forgiving of ourselves as we are towards others. We don't listen to our instincts or what our bodies are telling us. We are sometimes surrounded by toxicity. We engage in dysfunctional coping mechanisms. And if we aren't peaceful and loving with ourselves, we won't be able to be peaceful and loving with others. 

Lately I have been thinking about my practice of ahimsa. I've noticed that one of the ways in which I am not practicing ahimsa is that I tend to overuse the word 'crazy' when describing something about myself. I say things like: This might sound crazy but (insert an innovative idea), I hope I don't sound crazy but (insert my opinion), I have a crazy idea! (insert a sentence about a great or unconventional idea), Why do people look at me like I am crazy? __ thinks I am crazy because I ____. Would you think I were crazy if I (insert fun or unconventional idea). 

Now that I noticed this pattern, I am going to work hard at replacing this type of language with more loving and compassionate language such as:

• I have an innovative idea. 
• I have a great idea! 
• I have an alternate opinion

For the next few days I am going to pay more attention to what I am saying and if I do say something about me saying or doing something "crazy", I am going to immediately correct myself and say, "No, that's not crazy, it's _____". 

There are so many aspects to ahimsa but I think that the first thing that I need to do is start with the words that I am using towards myself. It's no wonder that three people within the last week have suggested that I shouldn't do this or that because people might think I'm crazy. Of course people would say that sort of stuff to me because I say it about myself. So it's time that I change that and stop speaking so harshly about myself. 

In addition to being conscious of the language that I am using towards myself, this week I am also going to practice the following forms of ahimsa:

• Not thinking a bad word if someone cuts me off in traffic 
• Send a random card to someone
• Telling someone that they are special to me
• Honoring my body and coming out of a yoga pose if I feel fatigued or don't want to do it 

Etta Hillesum, a writer who lost her life in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, said it best:

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty,                                                                            to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves,                                                                  more and more peace,                                                                                                       and to reflect it towards others.                                                                                       And the more peace there is in us,                                                                                     the more peace there will be in our troubled world.  

You can find more letter A blog posts from other blogger by clicking here.  

Healing and Creating New Memories

For over 20 years, beginning when I was 9, I dreamt that I would die a tragic death when I was 36. The dreams were so vivid and insistent, that I held off on having children because I wondered if it were true. I never knew how I died but I always knew that it was violent and tragic. I also had a parallel dream that I would call 911 and couldn't get through for various reasons: busy signal, no connection, they couldn't hear me, it would ring and ring. Sometimes the 911 call was related to a man hiding in a field after trying to kidnap someone and I figured it was the field around the corner from my mom's house. Eventually that dream went away before the death dream finally also disappeared.

All my life I periodically went to counselors to discuss my anxiety about dying when I was 36. They all convinced me that everyone has fear of death but in my heart something just didn't feel right. I started going to a counselor when I was 35 because I had so much anxiety about dying. At the time my boyfriend wanted to have children and my counselor suggested that perhaps I always knew deep inside my heart that I would try to have children at 35 and my dream symbolized death of my old life and the beginning of a new era. My 36th birthday arrived and nothing bad happened for a few months so the anxiety slowly started to subside.

Eventually my whole world imploded and fell apart, spiraling me into years of multiple hells. Every time I got on my feet from one thing, something else knocked me down and kicked me when I was down. At one point my worst fears came true while I laid on the floor, holding my front door shut with my feet while a drug-crazed man tried to kick it in, yelling that he would kill me if I didn't open the door to help him with his car. I called 911 and the dispatcher said that they had no officers able to assist because there had been an officer involved shooting. The dispatcher told me that she couldn't give me advice but that she could hear that the man was threatening to kill me and I was in my right to defend myself. Later I found out that the man had parked his car in the middle of a field across the street from my house, claiming to police that he broke down there. I chalked it up to coincidence that I dreamt for years as a child about calling 911 and also about a man hiding in a field.

For years now, I've dreamt every once in a while about the policer officer who, when looking at my driver's license said, "Happy birthday, by the way. Huh, so much for that". And for over a year I dream about the district attorney telling me that the police department failed me and other people in more ways than one until the sheriff department finally stepped in. And then there are dreams about being re-victimized and ran through the mud on the witness stand.

Somewhere along the way my counselor asked me for the exact date of when my world imploded. I found out that it was at 11:59 p.m. on the night before my 37th birthday. My life fell apart one minute before I turned 37 years old. I'm never going to forget how many chills ran through my body when the counselor said, "So your whole world imploded on the last minute of you being 36, when all your life you waited to die when you turned 36 years old. Perhaps it's a coincidence but I'm inclined to think that it's due to fate and that you always knew that something would drastically change your life. You just predicted the wrong timing, thinking you would die at the beginning of 36 but not knowing you'd have a metaphorical death at the end of 36". Could I really have had a 20 year presentiment that something drastic would happen in my life when I was 36? Could I really have known for over 20 years that I would call the police and they wouldn't be able to help me? Or, are these just random coincidences??

It's easy to attribute coincidence to many things but ever since then I haven't been able to shake the idea that perhaps it is all related to fate. Perhaps I knew all along that my life as I knew it would change, that the old me would die and that a new me would begin. Since that moment, on the last minute of the 36th year of my life, my life imploded into a nightmare of repeated tragedies and traumas that beat the life out of me. I thought I was completely broken at one point and would never emotionally recover. Perhaps all the pain, anxiety, trauma, depression, betrayal, and fear have all been worth it somehow because it was all ultimately meant to be. It's scary to wonder if something is much more than just a coincidence because it's as scary as heck to feel that I might have instinctively known that something was meant to happen in my life before it happened. So, I keep convincing myself that it's all a big coincidence even when that voice in my head says that nothing is ever a coincidence.

For five years I have walked around like a zombie, not knowing who I am anymore and where I am going. I have felt numb and I have grieved deeply. I've been in survival mode, holding it together at work but pretty much letting my personal life fall apart. I've been abandoned or betrayed by almost every person that I previously loved. I was kicked while I was down. Since the beginning of my trauma, my counselor told me that it would take me years to recover because I have had multiple traumas and that I should be patient and compassionate with myself. Every birthday I have relived the night that my world fell apart, reliving the pain of the past for weeks before and after my birthday. I missed my 40th birthday as I relived the beginning of my trauma. Every birthday I hide like a hermit and avoid doing anything special because it's just been too painful for me to process. Not to mention all the years that I lost leading up to my 36th birthday, always afraid of it. I have lost so many years of my life.

Every year I have written in my journal that this is going to be the year that I get my life together and move forward. But it's never been the year, although I slowly get better. I get stronger every month. But the past few weeks I have been fighting off the pain that I typically go through around the time of my birthday. For weeks I have felt as if I am in a funk, and I feel sensitive and raw. I cry often and have been allowing myself to cry as much as I need to because I held it all in and didn't cry at all for years. I am slowly starting to feel a release.

This year will be the 5 year anniversary of the night my world fell apart. I recently told someone that I finally want to mark a new era, a new 5 year period to celebrate the beginning of my life on my upcoming birthday this year. I told the person that I wanted to go to the mineral hot springs on my birthday this year because the indigenous peoples in the desert have always said that they are healing waters and I want to rebirth myself into having a more happy tradition. I want to own my own birthday again instead of the tragic memories robbing me of my own day. I want to see this day as the beginning of my life, as opposed to the day that my life fell apart. I want to cultivate a new mindset.

So that is what I am going to do. And I'm going to do it alone. I appreciate the few people who stuck around and helped me through the fire. But most of the journey I've had to face on my own and no one can help me conquer the bad memories that hold me down. I will be celebrating this 5 year anniversary alone, with things that make me happy. My world fell apart while I was alone and I want to go into a new era alone so that I depend on myself. One of the most painful things over the past 5 years has been that I depended on people emotionally who ended up failing me, so I want to start a new era just depending on myself. I can't wait for a new era to begin, no matter how rough the growing pains are!

Beyond the Yoga Pose

Ever since I had the flu over a month ago, I've struggled with consistency in my yoga practice. I've even sort of downright rejected it. I managed to take at least one class a week since I healed but throughout the entire class, I hate it. I reject it. I lay on my mat for half the class. I don't want to make it a priority. And I haven't been practicing at home like I was before I had the flu. I just feel like I am in a funk. It feels like I am forcing myself to be there in class and it's felt a little demoralizing.

A few evenings ago, I became very overwhelmed with so many pieces of my life that I have let just fall apart. Sometimes I am paralyzed and don't even know where to begin. I've felt burned out lately also because we had a stressful federal audit at work and I feel like all my energy was drained and I have little energy to put towards getting my life together.

That particular evening, I was working in my garage with unpacking some boxes, thinking about everything that I needed to do and I suddenly started to have an anxiety attack. The man across the street told me that I shouldn't have dogs in the front yard because he saw coyotes on the street. I started to have a meltdown thinking that I couldn't put them in the back yard because the fence was broken. And I let it get overrun with weeds. And then I thought of every other thing in my life that was falling apart that I haven't been able to get to and a full blown anxiety attack came on. 

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks and said to myself, "It's ok. It's going to be ok. Just do one thing at a time". I started breathing deeply. I pushed my shoulders down to release tension, breathing in and out slowly, lowering my shoulders and releasing tension also in my chest. "You've had a bad few years. You will get it all under control but you just have to give yourself a break, make lists of what needs to be done and just keep chipping away at your list," I told myself. I breathed, and breathed and breathed, and then released tension, calmed myself down, got my anxiety under control and then made a list of a few things that I needed to do that evening. 

Suddenly it occurred to me that this is what yoga is all about. We tend to view yoga as a series of postures or exercises, which is called "asana", but yoga is much more than that. I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but yoga is an entire system that isn't just about the postures. In fact, I've been reading lately that there are some people who still continue to practice yoga without the postures. So, what exactly is yoga? 

There has been some ancient theory that discusses yoga as consisting of eight "limbs". One of the first limbs are the yamas, which are 5 self-restraints. One self restraint is "ahimsa", which means "non-violence". Yoga encourages non-violence in thought, word and action towards others as well as towards yourself. It occurred to me at the time that when I was calming myself down with positive, self-compassionate talk that I was engaging in the observance of ahimsa.  I noticed that I was beating myself up emotionally, recognized it and changed my thinking to be more self-compassionate.

Another limb of yoga is pranayama, which means breathing techniques or breath control. While I stood in the garage having an anxiety attack, I was able to control my breathing by breathing deeply and releasing the band of tension that was surrounding my chest and making me feel suffocated. As I breathed deeply, I could feel my mind starting to calm because I was focusing on my breath instead of the anxious thoughts I was having. I realized that I had been holding my breath and breathing shallow breaths. My breathing helped me realize that I was raising my shoulders with tension. The deep breathing slowly helped me release tension, lessen my anxiety, calm my mind and refocus on what I needed to do.

At that moment, I realized that perhaps I hadn't been rejecting yoga as I had been saying for the past few weeks. It helped me realized that all in the course of 15 minutes that I engaged in two limbs of yoga in my garage. It made me realize that I was just struggling with the asana limb of yoga, which are the physical postures and poses that we all tend to think define the meaning of yoga. I suddenly realized that we all have backslides in all limbs and just like I wouldn't emotionally beat the hell out of myself for not being self compassionate to myself or not breathing deeply, I shouldn't beat the hell out of myself for not always wanting to do the postures. 

After I had that realization, I went back to my yoga class yesterday and was much more compassionate with myself over the asana/posture part of it. And I was actually more successful. When I felt fatigued in class and didn't want to do a pose, I honored my body and just did stretching and breathing. On Friday night I also took a class and when I didn't want to do a series of flows, I literally just sat there and breathed. I didn't feel the frustration and stress that I had been fighting as I was in the mindset of feeling as if I were rejecting yoga. 

Everyone says yoga is a journey. I've been practicing yoga for about 9 months now, but primarily the asana part of it. I'm just starting to learn about the other 7 limbs and all of the subcategories within each of those limbs. Yoga has changed my life so far in so many ways and I can only imagine the potential that it can have in my life if I start to explore the other limbs that I haven't gotten to yet. I'm going to start studying the yamas/restraints, such as  ahimsa/nonviolence as well as the four other yamas. 

As yoga increases in popularity, this ancient healing system is being commercialized and the power of it all can be lost so I plan on blogging about my journey so that other people can understand how powerful yoga can actually be. Welcome to the ride! xoxo

Disclaimer: I'm on a journey, so if I'm not understanding the philosophy part of it, please feel free to add clarification in the comment section!