RIP Ujjayi (for now)

8 angle pose in the Laguna de Santa Rosa.  Photo cred Marissa LaBrecque

I have a really loud ujjayi breath that I quite enjoy and tends to either trigger people or help them in their own breath.  Here at the workshop my breath has been the source of much resentment expressed.  Though I have completed with those people, I’ve decided to suspend my ujjayi breath for now to keep my focus on other things I want to get out of the workshop.  If I get time during the day I’ll go do my own practice with my beloved whisper breath.  A theme for me has been holding who I know I am while other people get triggered by me.  The ujjayi breath gives me a great opportunity for me to practice this, though with all the work we do all day long, I am feeling the need to get some breaks. 

There has been a lot of resentment expressed about me saying I’m a healer and a yoga teacher, the ujjayi breath seems to be a way to refresh the resentment!  I have felt at times that I was being targeted or worn down about this and that I had to fight for myself.  However, I get that we are each here to put down whatever strategies we had before the workshop and surrender to the process here.  So Brad does not want me to breathe ujjayi, I am hardly allowed to explain things, and we had been in what seemed to be a stalemate about tracking sensations in the body.  Until the other day…

Brad gave me the assignment to just feel, not think, and let my body do whatever it wants, eyes open while “Judgmental Prick”—let’s say his name is Mark -- was in the hot seat (Gestalt therapy style) about an issue in his life.  I had been coming into a crescendoing emotionally raw place that Brad had been circling in on getting me to just feel and not do anything about it.  I dove into the assignment, and it actually felt like quite a relief to have permission to just be my freaky self.  I was breathing deep, moaning, sobbing, rocking, coughing and even gagging as Mark went through various similar expressions as the coaches tried to ferret out his feeling, especially anger.  I felt like I was being a super freak and was likely opening myself up to lots of resentment and that people would think I was full of shit, but I stayed with it, not thinking, just feeling and letting my body do what it wanted. 

Numerous times I would feel like coughing or gagging and I’d allow myself to do it, and shortly afterward, Mark would too.  A number of times I would cry when Mark was holding back, but then when he would cry I would feel at peace.  Once my head went all the way back, jutting out my neck and chin and after a bit of that I opened my eyes to see he was doing it too!  I felt like I was channeling his emotions and physical sensations, especially the unexpressed ones.  At one point I felt a primal scream brewing in my belly and at that point inside of myself, I refused to deliver it.  I started to feel very angry as I saw him going into sadness while I was convinced this was a case of sad=mad; I refused to scream for him.  The funny thing looking back is that one of the reasons I did not scream is because I am much more comfy in the realm of sobbing and gagging than I am in the realm of growling/screaming from the depths of all my repressed anger.  I then started to feel sorry for myself that when I just open myself up sometimes I sponge up other’s emotions and I will either be helpless to my own experience or I will have to put a clamp on it and walk around controlling myself all the time.  At this point, feeling sorry for myself, imagining myself as this homeless freak channeling other people uncontrollably all the time, I began to sob for myself.  I had let a thought come in and distract my empathic trance with Mark.  One of the trainers sitting nearby put her hand on my shoulder and said to me “Open your eyes and look at reality”; I told her I was too tired, she said, “that’s why you need to look”.

Now.  Her timing was incredible in that the very moment I let some thoughts come in and I started crying for myself, she brought me back in.  I spoke with her a bit about it today and it seemed that while we may be saying similar things, we don’t feel like we agree.  I’ll tell ya, though, this was a very validating experience for me about who I am and strengthened my knowingness.  I am a trigger and a catalyst, which is one of the ways I am a healer.  I don’t think many people in my group would agree with me on this using the word “healer” but I have had a number of people come up and thank me for the work I’m doing and telling me they’re learning a lot.  No one has resented me for being a freaky feeler during that hot seat session, and Mark was not even aware of my presence!

All of this gets me to thinking that it would do us all well to use curiosity as our go-to mode when something that triggers us or is new comes along.  I imagine that the people who are triggered by the word “healer” have a sort of BS charlatan judgment of healers: It’s no wonder, there are so many frauds and unethical people in the field, and my sense is that there are many more people who are legit.  Healing in my opinion is not something you do to someone, it’s something two people do together through a combination of techniques rooted in allowing the truth and mirroring. 

Since that session I have felt much more grounded and much less resentful about not doing my ujjayi breath.  It is so beautiful to go through these little muddy hells and come out the other side with a lotus in my hair.  Actually, another language tool we work with in the hot seat is to replace “it” with “I”, even if it is grammatically fucked up.  So: I am so beautiful to go through these little muddy hells and come out the other side with a lotus in my hair.  And on to the next!