Nidra

Ack! Where to begin.

Some of my health issues have started to come back-not in an incredibly serious way yet, but in ways that have caused me to stop and contemplate the world around me. I have been thinking about the amounts of trauma I have endured in the last two-ish years of my life, including my great-grandmother passing away, my hysterectomy (and three other surgeries prior to it), my step-father dying pretty unexpectedly, having the most significant relationship in my life come to a jolting halt, not to mention graduate school drama and stress. I have been through a lot. My body has been through a lot.

I went to DU Health Circus because my body has just not been quite right for awhile now, I have shifty mood swings, I have lost close to 40 pounds since last May, and I have this weird itchy crawly feeling on my skin 85% of the time. I saw a Dr. (a reproductive endocrinologist) because of my rapid weight loss (something generally not to be worried about, but in my case I have to worry, because it could mean an issue with my hormones, and thus, bone loss). I have to monitor these things. Strangely enough the Doc told me I looked good and that the weight loss was nothing to be concerned about, unless it keeps going down. He actually listened to me, a straight, white, man doctor made me feel more listened too than my female gyno EVER has. Crazy how that works. He told me a lot of my issues probably have to do with the stress of my life and some of the major changes that have occurred in it. I do have to see the nutritionist to make sure everything is "normal." She will probably inform me that Yogurtland is not an acceptable dinner choice...fair enough...I'll listen. And I have like three hormone level tests being checked too, to make sure I am ok on that front. I do not want to regain the weight I have lost, I feel better now than I have in years; but I don't want to be unhealthy either. I am trying to get my body into a place of health again, but the body is always connected to the mind and emotional stress. So I have been searching out ways to reconcile my mind with my body, with the trauma and loss, and other emotions I have been experiencing very rapidly.

So I went to church in December. Yes, like real church, in the Highlands of Denver, listened to Christians be Christian (in a welcoming, warm, and inviting way.) I wanted to go to another church in the city (I still have plans to do this) because it is an ELCA, RIC church, which connects me to my past and my roots in a way I am kind of ready to re-explore. I do not identify with organized religion very much, but I feel that I am ready to be sort of open to this. Partly because, I feel that I cannot get through the shit of my life without connecting it to a spiritual practice of some sort. It feels like it is missing from my life and now that I live in a city with many options, I am attempting, to flesh this out a bit. I'm not saying I am jumping on the Christian bandwagon, far from it, but I am trying to be open to experiencing a presence of religiosity/spirituality in my life again.

On top of this, I have started going to yoga at this beautiful studio in Glendale, called Harmony Yoga. I chose to go there instead of say, Core Power, because of the element of spirituality that occurs in the classes they offer. I have been accused of not being respectful of religious practices associated with "New-Age" spirituality. And what I have found is that is an unfounded and completely false accusation. Like wanting to go to church, I also want to go to yoga to experience a spiritual presence. Of course yoga is good "exercise" but for me, I have never enjoyed yoga that was not rooted in the spiritual, and yes, metaphysical roots. While I do not believe in bodily transcendence, I do believe that we experience emotions at a cognitive level and affects at a subconscious level and that we can become more in tune with both of those elements through practices of moving energies, being still, and releasing the body. Being in a place that asks me to simply be with my affects and emotions is a new experience for me and something I work on in therapy all the time. Be with your emotions without judgement. Learn how to deal with traumatic situations without judgement.

So I get that this is problematic, as a critical scholar, I feel we should never sit idly by, especially when injustice is happening around us. At the same time, I am beginning to feel that without letting emotions happen, without experiencing them, we cut ourselves off to what we as individuals need in order to more effectively/affectively form relational bonds with others and work for social change. Maybe sitting in a place of Nidra is where affective potentialities lie. And what is strange is that in this space of the yoga studio, with a teacher who reminds me of an old friend, I sit in a place where I let my trauma reside in me for a moment and then I open my heart chakra, and I let it go. I let the ugliness of my past traumas, death, health issues, depression, anxiety go out through my heart chakra and honestly I feel it opening in ways I never knew were possible. And this is helping to make me re-open myself to the possibility of forming intimate and loving bonds with others again.

In this space of Nidra, I focus on the color orange, which is so strange to me, because it is not a color I associate with myself (although I believe it is the color most associated with self-love), and I can imagine loving and being in love with someone again, being open to that possibility more than ever before. While being cautious, I realize I cannot give up on myself or in humanity, because in doing that I give up on the possibility that anything could ever change for the better. And I am just not willing to let my past ruin my present or future like that.