When Yoga is Not the Answer
How Boxing and Beekeeping Brought me Back to Myself
Sometimes, yoga is just too potent of a medicine. Sometimes, we are too hurt to receive it.
Full disclosure: The inspiration to write this came to me during a yoga practice. It was my first in-depth session since I lost my pet about a month ago. That’s saying something for me, who normally practices yoga almost every day.
Not now, though. Not since this happened. I have not been able to authentically show up on my mat, vulnerable and broken as I am. I have closed off those nooks and crannies in my body, closed them off so that they can hold all of my sadness and grief and regret and anger.
When a tragic event happens, we sometimes tend to lean into self-destruction. I have been seeking out yang energy, the energy that transforms. I want to feel power and rage. I don’t want to feel gentle and nice. When people talk about hardening — it’s not just emotional. It can show up as a real, physical thing. I’ve hardened myself emotionally and physically. The emotional and physical bodies are energetically intertwined in a powerful way where one can affect the other, and vice versa.
I have closed off my heart. Back-bending is a physical position that literally opens the heart, not just physically but emotionally as well. So I have refused to do any back bending. I have practiced enough yoga to KNOW the effects of this position, which is the reason I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t open that place right now. No, that’s where I’m holding my grief. So instead I sit, rounded in my chest, and fill my lungs with smoke. Because that is where my sadness is. I want to hurt.
The first thing that got me to move some is when I was forced to hit the punching bag. It’s required for me because it’s my job. I need to demonstrate hitting the bag when I teach a class, so it forces me to muster up that strength.
It started out with just the minimum amount of movement needed to teach the class. Slowly but surely though, I’ve added more boxing into my life. I’ve started to take classes again, not just teach them. It’s bearable because if I wail on the bag hard enough, it satisfies my self-destructive craving. At first, I did it barehanded, just for about 10 minutes or so. I wanted to feel pain and wished that it made my knuckles bleed. Now, I’ve worked up to taking full classes again. I’m building muscle back after letting it melt away in the initial weeks after his passing. I’ve begun to literally harden those places that are holding my grief and sadness and shame.
Usually, I try to be careful and mindful of my shoulders when I box because they tend to get injured, but right now that is of no concern to me. I don’t have time for that weak bullshit right now shoulders, you need to toughen up because I need you to hold all of this pain for me.
I get a similar type of satisfaction from my other job, which is beekeeping. In the days following my tragic event, I was forced to either perform the manual labor needed that day or potentially lose my job. I spent the day lifting heavy honey boxes, without thinking, one after the other, and it was the first day I started to feel a little more like myself. I could feel the shift as I was working. Lethargic, apathetic and annoyed at first, I started to become angrier and energized. I tore into the boxes, disregarding body mechanics, not wanting to take a break. Eagerly breaking into the next box, I ripped off the lids. I attacked those hives like it was fueling me, and it was. I ravenously went box after box, breaking into them with a firey rhythm that was feeding my soul.
Sometimes we just can’t bring ourselves to self-care. Sometimes things happen and we don’t want to feel good or get better. Those are the tricky times. You can’t convince yourself or anyone else to want something that they don’t want. Sometimes emotions manifest and you want to hurt, you want to fully feel the pain, you want to punish yourself and to self-destruct.
When I was beekeeping that day, I got stung once and noticed a stark difference from my usual reaction to a sting. Usually, I’ll say OUCH and curse the hell out of the bee that hit me. But this time was different. I had a very apparent lack of reaction — very different than my usual animated response. In addition to the lack of external reaction, there was an internal pleasure, like I wanted to be stung. Yes, sting me. Fuck it. What else do you have for me, universe? Bring it on.
The best emotional therapy I have received has been through physical movement. Difficult, mindless manual labor, and hitting the heavy bag.
As a boxing instructor AND a yoga instructor, the contrast between the two is very clear. Only after almost a month was I finally able to allow myself to open up a little with yoga, to approach those familiar places in my body that seem so unfamiliar now that they have become tight and painful and hardened.
During that yoga practice, I sat with the tightness and pain and felt those places again. I fully realized that this type of gentle and forgiving movement actually takes MORE strength for me right now. Or — a different kind of strength — than beating the hell out of a heavy bag or lifting heavy boxes.
Sometimes in your healing process, the only pathway back to softness is through hardness. The only path back to yin energy is with yang energy. Self-destruction has been my pathway back to even considering the possibility of taking care of my body again.
When you are sad, you need to feel your body. And if the only way you can feel your body is to hit that fucking bag, you better do it. With all your might.
