The arduous hour and a half Power
Vinyasa class is at an end.
Lying on my back in Savasana (the corpse pose)—
eyes closed and eyeballs fallen into the orbits, arms spread and legs open slightly wider
than the hips, palms up and chin
slightly pulled down—my body, heavy, melts into the floor. My breathing slows to 3 to 4 times per minute and a quiet peace
resides in my center.
I am lost in the moment. Time stands still and my mind floats
above the clouds.
The experience is the closest
I come to a religious encounter.
All the strenuous effort of the last hour and a half has
been a preparation for this serene, meditative
place. I never want to leave.
Ahhh. Yoga bliss.
Typical for me is this quiet stillness and serenity at the end of Power Vinyasa
Yoga: a vigorous, challenging Vinyasa-style practice consisting of a flowing,
vigorous, dynamic sequence
of poses, coordinated with breath.
This serenity took years to achieve.
Surviving Head Trauma
On a warm, spring day in 1987, my life changed irrevocably. Exhausted after a day of teaching preschoolers in inner city Chicago, followed by a night of teaching
college students at a community
college, I tripped on my clogs and lunged headlong down a flight of concrete stairs. I crashed onto the right side
of my head and suffered
head trauma.
At first, the only apparent injuries were bruises, a cut above my right eye and a headache
that subsided by the end of
the week. “Okay,” I thought. The worst that happened was stitches above my right eye and a black eye.
How wrong I was. The fall compressed and misaligned my skull and threw my whole body out of
whack. Over the course of a year, neurological symptoms erupted and hijacked my life: my head felt as if wrapped in a vice and
filled with cobwebs; my chest felt
constricted; my jaw was clamped and painful
from TMJ; my eyes were strained, darting and unfocused; my movements
wavered.
Every noise, bright light, and strong odor attacked me. Maneuvering through the world was like maneuvering through a sensory minefield, my life an on-going fire alarm—a condition called sensory defensiveness.
Even during Savasana I couldn’t unwind as my body was too wired, while my head burst with worried thoughts.
Exhausted, I barely functioned. I
had been a high energy, productive
person before the fall. On a typical day, I taught young children until 3:00pm, then took a jazz dance class, went to the gym or attended
class for my doctorate in developmental psychology, and then studied for the rest of
the evening. Now, by 6:00pm, all
energy was spent and for the rest of the evening I did as little as possible to conserve what energy was left. The laundry
piled up; dishes
stacked in the sink; dust covered floor
and furniture.
Years of Therapy
It took years of therapeutic interventions for my nervous system to settle enough to where my day wasn't an ongoing battle against overwhelming neurological symptoms, although I will always live with mild symptoms. These interventions included: neurocranial restructuring (NCR) to treat the
head trauma; a “sensory diet” to alleviate sensory defensiveness; alternative healing modalities to calm and relax, detox and rejuvenate; along
with, of course, yoga classes.
Yoga Bliss
Now, like clockwork, after 40 minutes or so into a Power
Vinyasa yoga class—about the time we lean over and stretch into Triangle—I
spontaneously inhale a slow, deep breath and feel at once lighter but grounded,
as a warm buzz trickles through me. Stress washes out of my body like a spring
rain. A load lifts from my shoulders and throughout the rest of the class, my
body flows rhythmically through the poses like a sun drenched float down a lazy
river.
By the end of class, mind, body and soul emit one
elongated “Ooommmm.”
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