Monday, April 7, 2014

Driving and Passing Out

I noticed a few changes brought about by my yoga training while I was driving the other day.

Now I've loved driving for as long as I can remember.  A lot of that love comes from growing up taking long car rides to visit family with long conversations about everything under the heavens, or just listening to patriarchal relatives recount the stories of their lives and the lives of others since past.  In that way, and by reading me books like the Swiss Family Robinson and the Hobbit, my father cultivated in me a joy of listening which has been a boon to me in my life.  I even have fond memories tied to a multi-generational family road trip through Canada in a filled to capacity fifteen passenger van when my maternal grandparents were still alive and active.
My father, grandfather, and my Uncle Pete.
Though I had a singular driving experience behind the wheel when I was much younger thanks to my Uncle Pete in his old Bronco on some back roads in Redmond, Oregon, I learned to drive relatively late in my youth, and not until I absolutely had to.  My parents were leaving out of town, my older sister was already off at college, and the vehicle I was being left with was an old silver Acrua Integra with a manual transmission named the Silver Bullet.  The learning curve was steep and quick, and I was thrown to the wolves after only a couple of lessons from my father, but I soon developed a deep love for driving, often too fast.

The Silver Bullet met its demise with my youngest sister at the wheel (thankfully she was fine), and I have had many vehicles since.  In the Army I drove all manner of military vehicles, from Strikers and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to two and a half-ton trucks and Humvees.  I was a driver for most of my time in the military, and only briefly a gunner before the Army and I parted ways.  I bought a zippy little Kia Rio with my wife that was repossessed after our divorce.  Also memorable was a Frankenstein-ian car that belonged to a girlfriend spray painted dark metallic with a wrought iron fencing grill, a wooden roof rack we built, and more than half its parts replaced from a local U-Pull.

Recently I've been doing some amateur chauffeuring.  First for my cousin when I lived with her for several months while we were helping each other out, and now for my dad, who finds it easier to conduct business in the passenger seat as we drive all around the Greater Portland Metro Area and talk about anything and everything.  Both have been a really positive experiences, and ones which I am thankful for.

I will drive to the Oregon coast at the drop of a hat, or out to Idaho to visit my paternal grandfather, a man whom I could listen to for hours, and who recently has opened up more and more about the experiences he had in his lifetime, growing up during the great depression, moving to California to work in the ship yards during WWII, and the whole lifetime of adventure that followed.  I'll pause here to say that I love my grandfather dearly, I admire him, the man he is and was, and the legacy that lives on in his name.
My paternal grandparents
I simply love driving.

Just a few days into this thirty day challenge, and the last couple of days especially, I noticed a few changes while I was driving.  First, I started to find that it was more comfortable to sit with my hips pushed all the way back in my seat.  This wasn't my normal posture before I started this crazy journey, but it feels good.  Also, turning to check my blind spot used to involve me wrenching my neck around and glancing out of the corner of my eye, though I recently turned to discover I was easily looking all the way out the rear window.

It was a strange feeling turning so far around so easily, and every time I turn now I easily look back and around.  That just wasn't my experience before.  It is such a small thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

In the military during our train up for deployment we had to do a 72 hour op, which entailed three days of operations without sleeping, and I was still the driver.  On the third day people were passing out standing up, their knees buckling.  There is a wall you hit when you're that sleep deprived, and I think that everyone reacts to it a little differently, though commonly many start to get a little delirious after so little sleep.

I hit another wall today.  On Facebook I wrote that my first class was a mixed bag.  In all honesty it was exceptionally tough.  I was falling out of more postures, and even though I was still able to make an attempt at every set of every posture, some of my attempts were fairly pitiful.

I showered when I got home. Then I passed out.

I was dead asleep for four hours, not waking up until noon.  I had vivid dreams of falling down roofs and climbing wooden steps that were falling apart at my feet, though always unharmed.  Dreaming was particularly unusual, as I don't typically dream or often remember dreams after waking.

I can still remember vivid details of nightmares from when I was a child, in time fighting and defeating the monsters that haunted me, but that was when I was a child.  As an adult I have only rarely dreamt, usually when I have been sick, or briefly when I was taking melatonin.

I didn't know what to think when I woke up.

Was that my wall?  Am I out in just a week?

I immediately ate lunch, continued to hydrate, and mulled over my dreams in my head.  I have felt nearly feverish for days.  I am warm to the touch for hours after I leave the heated room.  I have been giving everything I have in every class, and it has been taking its toll.

I didn't know what to expect walking into my final class of my first week.  I just held onto a hope that I would be able to continue, but I had no gauge on what my body had in store for me.

I went in the heated room, lay down on my mat, relaxed in savasana, and after a few moments I discovered that I felt great.

In the first breathing exercise I began to feel refreshed and energized.

One posture after another I gave everything I had, and found much more than I expected to find.

There was no wall.  It was gone, invisible in the distance behind me.

Then I reached my nemesis pose during the standing series: triangle pose.

I had fallen out of nearly every attempt at triangle pose of every set of every class since I had started, but this afternoon was different.  I got down in the posture and, driving with everything I had, I pushed myself.  Then, when I couldn't push, I smiled.  I focused on smiling instead of the burning desire to collapse.  I smiled all the way through the end of each iteration of the posture, and as the instructor said "change" at the end of triangle pose I was still standing.  I stood up out of the posture, inhaled and brought my hands above my head as I stepped over the mat, then arms down to my sides as I exhaled, still smiling.

After class I posted my Facebook check in: "Defeated my nemesis with a smile! You're mine now, triangle pose!"

I was smiling at the end of class.  Laying in savasana with a beaming smile, tears started to stream out of the corners of my eyes.  They were tears of cathartic joy.

Today, at the end of a week of twenty one hours of yoga, I felt joyful.

I am blessed for the confluence of events that has led me to this experience.  I am grateful for all of you following along, for your continued support and encouragement.  I would love it if you would leave a comment below to tell me about something that you noticed change when you first started yoga.  It doesn't have to be anything profound or enthralling, just something that changed in your life that you didn't expect.

Namaste.

1 comment:

  1. Love hearing about your journey and the changes you see, even the small ones. I remember discovering the feeling of being refreshed from the inside out when I first started practicing Bikram yoga. I still love that feeling :)

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