Nothing About Anything
What I know.
Do you ever just want to cup your hands around the sides of your mouth and scream? Like, holler so loud you have to bend your knees and tense every muscle in your body just to open your mouth wide enough to get the proper sound out? Does it feel as if you, too, were to, in fact, do this right now, no one would even notice? Would anyone look up from their iPhone or even take out an AirPod to listen? More and more it feels like we’re all just shouting into the void. “I’m here.”
A friend recently told me, unsolicited, that he thought I should really do a Rage Room. Not because I seemed particularly rageful, he just felt I probably had to be based on what he knows about me. Who doesn’t need a rage room? And I’m sure I am rageful, but actually, the words I wish to scream at the top of my lungs? “I DON’T KNOW.” It’s really that simple. I don’t know anything about anything. I don’t know a thing about a thing. Nothing, Zip, Nada, and I am beginning to really severely question anyone who pretends to have a clue. Frankly, I am downright uncertain. I am bona fide unfuckingsure. And maybe that doesn’t sell. Maybe that’s not packagable or palatable, but it’s true. I can provide no ten-step program to save your life.
This was especially evident last Tuesday. For days, I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I was overpromising and underdelivering. Never have I made more calendar errors in my entire life. Sorry, dear reader, if you were someone affected. After a morning paying a speeding ticket, a few hundred dollars for cruising 12 miles over, I was beginning to question it all. I frantically checked to see if my laptop was even charged for a Zoom meeting and looked down to realize I was still in last night’s sleep attire, black sweat pants, and a giant happy face t-shirt, a messy top knot sitting above my unwashed face. Currently, I am in a year-long mentorship studying astrology with my yoga therapist, Sarah Jane. As she popped onto the call to go over the next sign in the zodiacal wheel, tears began to well in my eyes. “I’m overwhelmed,” I sheepishly lamented. “I got you. Let’s pivot,” she quickly jumped in. She instructed me to lie on the floor and began a yoga therapy practice. A few slow breaths coupled with arm movements known as nyasa to calm my nervous system, and she began offering a visualization. “You’re lying on a rock in the sun. Right now, you are no one, you have nowhere to be, you are nothing.” The literal stress that rode out of my body on my exhale, I can’t even express how good it felt, even just for a moment, to be no one. To need to know nothing. To be reminded that I don’t have, or need to have, the answers, and that’s a good thing, because I don’t. The few times I’ve told that story in the week since, people have almost instantly booked a yoga therapy session with me. Don’t we all just want to be nothing for a moment? Aren’t we all a little uncertain?
Emerging from that experience, I realized what I do have and what the practice really provides. I love to learn, but more so, unlearn. I love sitting with myself and questioning my belief systems. Where did it come from? Is that really me? Is this judgment for someone else or myself? Is this who I wish to be? When I feel heightened, I can take a deep breath and pause before responding. Can I sit with myself even when I am my very most rattled and ask myself these questions? Being able to do this is undoubtedly a byproduct of years of daily yoga practice and countless hours sitting in the discomfort of postures, breathing slowly on a mat, or just becoming comfortable with getting still and listening deeply. So, no, I don’t have and can’t sell you any answers, but yoga has helped me, and might help you sit with the questions, too.
If you, too, wish to be gently reminded you’re nothing, you can book with me here.
Photos above by the unmatched, Angela Doran.