Spring is Here!

Yesterday I did 108 Sun Salutations. Spring is here!

It’s not the first time I’ve done 108 Sun Salutations, 108 Vinyasas or 108 prostrations, but it was the first time I haven’t counted. Yesterday I let go, and had faith in my teacher to do the counting for me. I tried to breathe through each salute as if it was the first, or the last, and let go of my need for control. It sort of worked.

Doing 108 Sun Salutations is as much an exercise of the mind as it is of your physical body and your breath, and boy did my mind try to play games with me. In the past I’ve done them in sets of 12, so you know that there are nine sets and you get a break after every 12. Yesterday, I just breathed. Without my glasses on, I counted even see the 108 flowers on the mirror, one of which was taken down after each flow, no way of knowing how far I’d come, or how far I had to go.

It’s interesting to observe where my mind goes, when my body is pushed, there’s sweat pouring from me, and I’m in a room with forty two other dripping people. I thought about work, I thought about my past, I thought about my future, I let the thoughts come, and I let the thoughts go, trying to come back to my breath, and only my breath.

There was also a constant battle going on between my mind and my body, as I worked to find the balance between pushing myself, and killing myself. After five years of yoga I usually know the difference. 

It started with my feet, they hurt, they felt crampy, “maybe you should just take a break”, said a part of my mind. Then it was my calves, and my hamstrings, aching, and a part of my mind saying “maybe you should just give up”. Other parts of my mind fought back, I knew I could do this, I’d done it before, I deepened my breath, deepened my resolve, and my teacher put on the Spice Girls. Definitely not the most reverent or bliss inducing choice, but the absolute perfect thing to give me the energy to keep going.

I danced my way through the next three songs.

Then it got hotter, or it felt like it was. I began to modify my Sun Salutations, proud of myself for getting through so many, as I’ve always modified all of them in the past.

My body is amazing.

I started to shiver despite how hot I was, and started wondering if this was a symptom of heat stroke, even though I know it isn’t, and besides, I was still dripping away. And all of a sudden in amongst the aches, the shivers, the sweat, and the back and forth in my mind, we were down to our last 12. Deep breaths. Jump Backs. Counting out loud. Rihanna. Gaga.

It was over.

I lay in savasana and decided not to move. I was overwhelmed with the heat, and the physical effort and the emotional battle. But, there was a smile on my face, and there is now as I write this. We do this all so that we can come back to savasana. How amazing does savasana feel after a practice like this.

The final mind battle was the urge to flee from the room. In the wise part of my mind I know that the longer the savasana the better, after all that exertion and all that breathing. Other parts of me though just wanted out, to be cool, to have salt, to have sugar, to have anything that wasn’t savasana in a hot room. And I breathed, and I waited, until  I slowly left the room and joined some of my Sangha as we sat and shared our joy.

laughable

When I interviewed for my job at the work placement team (yay for new job) I really did NOT think I had done well.  I knew I had gotten some of the questions bang on, some of them half on, and only completely made up one answer (oh how I wished I'd actually done some research).  There was one question though, a very serious questions that I grinned and started laughing at...I thought it was definitely worth sharing, although I do realize that it is kind of morbid, and it shows me just how calloused my job has made me.  

So, the interviewer asked me to desribe a time when I'd intervened with someone who was suicidal.  Now, she wanted a professional answer of course, so I could use anything to do with my sister and her multiple issues (which reminds me of another post I want to make) but in my head I was thinking that I've dealt with enough suicidal people to think of something!  And that's when I started laughing, see this is what came to mind.  

A while back, I wrote about a man who tried to strangle himself in the drunk tank.  In this case, he was extremely drunk and high on an unknown substance(s).  Talking, as it often does in cases of intoxication, did me no good and right infront of me he took he shirt, wrapped it around his neck and began to pull tighter, and tighter and tighter.  I ran for a coworker and by the time we got back he was unconcious.  We opened the door and untied the knot.  When he realized he wasn't dead, he went nuts and it took six police officers to carry him out and take him to the hospital to get checked.  

But that's just one story, if it was just that, maybe I wouldn't have laughed.  When the police who apprehended him came back the officer looked at me and said "weren't you here last week when we took someone out who tried to kill themselves" and I had to ask "which one/which time".  Because it happens SO often.  I mean, people are really creative.  I've dealt with more then one hanging, more the one strangulation, attempted wrist/throat slashing, and of course, the good old bang head into wall until you pass out.  One of those ones fought the cops for a good long time begging them to just let him kill himself.  This was all I could think about.  All the lives I've potential saved with "suicide intervention", and I laughed, because I knew this was not at all what they were asking for, but it was all I could think of.  

Finally, I smiled, and said something like "I spend a lot of time with intoxicated people and their situations can be kind of exreme, let me tell you about a time I dealt with someone sober..." I based my answer on a client experience, but in truth, I just walked through the steps of a suicide intervention and ended with a likely outcome.  One of the reason I want this job, is so that I can have those experiences.  Right now, if someone's suicidal, once their sober, we pawn them off on the crisis team, we don't have the time to deal with them, I'm too busy watching out for the one in the cell beside them ripping his mat into ropes or watchign 71 other people in the shelter making sure they don't kill each other after a percieved sock theft.  

Suicide is not a laughing matter... just one of the reasons I got a new job.  

digging deeper - treating people as people

I'm not entirely sure why, but this photo evokes really powerful emotions in me. Tonight was my night off, and I spent some time working on a project for church. I was looking for photos which so a variety of different people from a variety of different walks of life and cultures. Seeing all the people reminded me that one of my intentions for the year was to see people as people and that got me thinking about my job.

It's all fine and well for me to say I want to remember that people are people, but I realized, when thinking about things, is that part of the way I cope with my job is to forget that, it makes things easier. Maybe that's good though, and maybe that's bad.

For example, when I have someone screaming and calling me unspeakable things (or at least things I won't publish here) it is much easier to think of them as "that intoxicated person" rather then give them a name. In fact, I generally refer to them as their cell number (interestingly enough though, i tend not to do that with clients I know well). Then there's example two, again, working the drunk tank. A girl sobbing, crying, begging me to help her, telling me of her horrible life, about the abusive relationship which wound her up here. So much easier to give quick reassurances and move on. Experience and practical reasoning has taught me that there's no use arguing or doing interventions with intoxicated people. In these situations, it's fairly easy to justify, whether that's good or not, I'm not sure.

Then though are the turn aways. It's really, really hard, to look someone in the eye, call them by name, and tell them they can't come inside the warm shelter when it's -30 outside. Exposed skin can freeze in less then 10 minutes, and what do I say? "I'm sorry sir, we're full, you have to get here early, we're usually full by 9PM". "I'm sorry, all the shelter beds in the city are full, you'll have to figure this out for yourself". Those, and other things, but generally those. Nothing can prepare you for that, and it's so much easier for them to remain Jane and John Doe then to dig deeper and ask their names, and how they wound up at your door that night. For some, especially the 2:45 crowd, it's simply that the bars don't close till 2:30, but for others, there are most deeper issues and we're their last hope.

So what I need to work on finding, as I've said many times before, is balance. A little pain keeps us moving, it's what keeps us fighting for change. Making things too black and white, and blocking out the suffering of people hardens us, and getting harden to far makes us, well, hard. I don't want to be like that. I also don't want to be the girl who runs to the bathroom and cries after each turn away (for the record, we don't have one, I just don't want to become one).

something to ponder as I fall asleep, what is it that dehumanizes people, is it our actions or our attidudes, must it be one, the other, or both?