Monday, November 19, 2007

Running

"If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you."
Jesus of Nazareth
The Gospel of Thomas

Today I began running again. It has been almost a 2 month hiatus. I stopped running when I began the 108 day yoga practice. At 5:30am every weekday morning I have made a committment to meet my running buddy in front of the studio and run for approximately 3 miles. Sometimes we will do a little more, sometimes a little less. I must confess that I was a bit worried that I would not be able to run 3 miles. My running partner, ever patient, slowed down her pace for me this morning and the run was just fine. Actually it felt awesome. I need to sweat like I did this morning every day. I need my heart to pump and my blood to circulate from aerobic activity or else I get unbearable to be around. I feel sluggish and just not "right."

Today was a gift, to run again in the dark with my friend. To complete the run and actually feel great (although a little sore in the hip flexers). I walked in my studio a little after 6 am ready to do some yoga and I was quite surprised by my yoga practice. First of all, I never did quite drop into my practice all the way. I remained on the edge. My mind couldn't settle. Instead I got angry, really angry. I got angry with one of my friends for something that I thought I had let go of and come to an understanding about. This is one of those situations where instead of confronting the person, you decide to let it go and just accept that this friend has a shortcoming in a certain area and it is best just to avoid interacting with her in a certain way. In this case, combining friendship and business is just not a good idea. We have bumbled throught it unsuccessfully for over 5 years and instead of being resentful, I had made a decision to just not interact with her anymore on a business level.

This blog entry is not about her. She wasn't even with me this morning. I haven't spoken to her in a couple of weeks. She is a wonderful person and I have no desire to alter our friendship in any way. She has some areas in her life where she could mature. We all do. This blog entry is not about her but about me. Why does the running bring up these emotions for me? This is not the first time. I have noticed this before. It stirs up my dark side. It stirs up the ugliness, the pettiness, the old hurts, and the unworthiness. I have heard it referred to as a "pot of self loathing. " We all have one. It is a pot that we must bear witness to when it tips over and spill through our consciousness. We may not recognize it at first because it is both guilded with compensatory feelings such as superiority, arrogance, anger and judgement and it's camouflaged pretty well with worldly attatchments such as youth and health and success and pleasure. But woe to the person whose pot of self-loathing is struck by an outside event like a rejection or a failure or a loss or disease. These events cause the camouflage to disappear or the guilding to get scratched, exposing the darkest imaginable feelings inside. This morning, during yoga, my pot tipped over and spilled into my consciousness.

I believe that we all have this pot. If our parenting was really really good, making us feel really really loved and welcomed on this earth- then we may have just a little pot that leaks out just a little self-judgement, unworthiness, or feelings of imperfections. Our pot probably doesn't give us too much trouble. But if we got the parenting that most of us got, a parenting with large amounts of critiscism and shame in it, we grow up with a large pot where self-loathing, and self-negation drip from our hearts.( I am not blaming the parents here-they did not know better. I believe this was a generational approach to parenting.) When this pot tips over, it fills our self talk with words sounding like mine this morning.

Why does the running stir this up for me? Is this good or bad? My yoga wisdom tells me that when this post of self-loathing pot tips over, it is important to stay present. Feel it spill into my body and my consciousness. Feel its tightness in my throat and its heavyness in my belly. Speak its words and cry its tears. Let all that sewage spill out and then I will feel lighter, cleansed, more peaceful.

Will I give up running even though I absolutely adore and crave how it makes my body feel? I will not. I understand the pot of self-loathing will exist whether I run or not. It will fill again and spill again and again until it's emptied out, I die or I smash it. My yoga tell me that the easiest way to get rid of it is to smash it and destroy it. The only way I can do this is to love myself unconditionally. This will smash the pot into tiny shards and the self-loathing inside will evaporate. How do I love myself unconditionally when there is a pot of self-loathing inside? I must start by loving myself for having it and then go on from there.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This makes me want to get back into running too again!!! Thanks