Hawai’i | March, 2023.I do live in Hawai’i, but I’ve been pretending I don’t.
And I’ve gotten so good at this deception over the course of the last year, I almost started to believe it myself.
Here’s how: Every weekday morning, I wake up, shower, get dressed, make some coffee for Kevin and tea for myself, take a fistful of vitamins, eat a piece of fruit, and head into a dark room with a desk and a monitor where, for eight to ten hours, I stare into a black hole that occasionally lights up with moving images of other people doing the same thing, or flashes to inform me of something I need respond to.
My mind is fully encapsulated in this reality; my body is anchored to it. My skin has turned the shade of pale reflective of other parts of the world in winter months. I even dress in sweaters and long socks — to… what? Combat the mild 74 degrees of my office? In solidarity with the single-digit temps my co-workers experience? I don’t know. I just feel cold.
My sympathetic nervous system keeps me in a heightened state of awareness to combat the perceived threat brought on by stress. My sense of responsibility keeps the stress turned up to 11. My mind replays the patterned thinking and fears of what will happen if I release this sense of responsibility. And the fear itself is what perfectly orchestrates this whole show.
That is, until a month ago. When I picked back up a practice of muscle release called block therapy and discovered a psychological one in reading the book Letting Go by David R. Hawkins.
Once you become aware of something, you can’t un-know it. This my current reality: I am split; between the life I appear to be living, and the genuine one of my soul that calls to me in dreams at night and thoughts throughout the day that I jot down on post-it notes like life jackets, to be rescued and resuscitated on weekends when I have my life back to myself.
I took a Friday off a few weeks ago to salvage some of my energy, to wrestle back some time from the Hungry-Hungry Hippo mouth of work. I had a plan for all the things I would do that day — go to the volcano, treat myself to a nice lunch, write, go to the ocean. I was so excited the night before, I almost couldn’t sleep. But the minute I woke up, I became conscious of debilitating pain in my head. I lay in bed rubbing it as if to push it away. I rose from the bed and went to the kitchen to fill a glass of water, thinking I must be dehydrated. I chugged the water and laid back down, hoping to wait out the brunt of it.
In my former life, I used to distract myself from elevated work stress by drinking myself unconscious and powering through the hangover the next day. It was as effective as it was destructive because when the body feels like it’s on the verge of death, you can only focus on its physical survival, and all other problems seem to fall away. Then when life starts to return to it, the contrast creates almost a euphoria that continues the distraction.
But I didn’t drink the night before this hangover-grade headache (nor the 1500 nights prior). I don’t cope with stress in that way anymore. I read and went to bed early. I slept a full eight hours and awoke naturally to birdsong, no panic-inducing alarm. So I waited for the pounding to subside, having a slow and gentle morning. And when the clock turned lunchtime, I popped two ibuprofen in the hopes of jump-starting my day. When it became clear that the headache was a formidable opponent to the (likely expired) man-made solution for what’s probably the body begging you to rest, I acquiesced.
I rested.
When the sun started its decline and reduced its menacing mid-day intensity, I pulled a picnic blanket behind me like an adult version of Linus and posted up on the lawn with a book. My skin glowed under the sun’s warm embrace, like a hug from a parent after being away for a while. I intermittently read and nestled into the blanket like a smiling cat for hours.
Accepting the headache at this point but perplexed by its staying power, I decided to try a practice called bibliomancy, where you ask a question, open a book, and randomly point somewhere on the page for the answer. My question was “What is causing this headache?” The answer I landed on, finger pointed dead middle of two words: “Letting go.” I understood immediately and laughed at the obvious.
The theory behind the Letting Go book itself is that emotions are the cause of all negative thought patterns. e.g., You feel fear and make up a story that justifies to your mind why you feel the fear. That thought gets filed away, and then when the feeling comes up again, your mind dusts off the thought and replays it like a tape. If it does this enough, you start believing the tape, even though it’s a story the mind made up, as true as The Lion King. The more you believe these low-vibrating thoughts, the more they accumulate in the body. And the body becomes clogged with disease.
BUT, the good news is, you can prevent all of this by simply noticing when you’re having a negative feeling or thought come up, and instead of reaching for the tape, choosing to hit eject and let it go. Simply by putting your awareness on what’s happening, you will begin to break the tapes and release the gunk they’ve created.
In reading the Letting Go book, I started working with the technique, and I started noticing small shifts. Things that would normally be triggering to me had less emotional pull. I didn’t feel the need to explain or defend myself as much. I felt myself laughing easier. And by noticing these things, I was choosing to be conscious rather than playing the reruns. I was choosing which garden to water, and this headache was the result of the little seedling breaking ground.
I didn’t end up going to the volcano that day, but I didn’t need to. My body continued its own process of release over the weekend and I surrendered to it with rest and relaxation and not a “should” in sight. And though the effects aren’t as obvious as that first wave, I’m continuing the releasing process. It might well be a life-long process, and I’m committed to seeing it through, not just because I’m a terrible actress, but because it’s much more fun to create the world I want than to uphold the one I don’t.
I live in Hawai’i with a gaggle of ducks and a horde of cats. I buy bubbles and blow them out the car window in traffic. I eat ice cream every night. I recently bought a trampoline. I’m a writer and a dreamer. And I am a work in progress. It’s been nearly 40 years since my birth and I feel like I’m just becoming aware that I’m alive, starting to awaken from a long slumber and break through the over-frozen earth.
I wonder if this is what it feels like for the rest of the natural world every spring. I wonder if peonies get headaches when their buds crack open. If they experience each petal unfurling as a painful surrender. If they fearlessly let go into their essence, and if they’re aware that the birds arise every morning to rejoice in their becoming.
P.S.ssst…
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Credits
Spiegel im Spiegel by Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà (composed by Arvo Pärt)
I pretend I don’t live in Hawai’i...