Strange Manifestations

The other night at yoga Teacher Katchie was talking about how our bodies tell us to slow down, become grounded, and get a grip on itself even when our brains won't allow it. She discussed weight gain, catching colds, exhaustion, other symptoms of when we are forced to take a time out if we like it or not.

This caused me to think about being in a long distance relationship and the repercussions discovered in my own body over time. As it progressed, so did the feelings of living in two places at once, feeling no certain connection to either city. At the time it was seen as having the best of both worlds. I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted in San Francisco. Stay out late, get messed up, cheat but not categorize it as cheating because of the refusal to adopt the title of "girlfriend" due to the distance, (boy did I get away with that for a while!), create the ability to always look like a winner by never truly letting someone in because of the infrequent interaction. While in Portland I was the doting "special lady friend", discussing what could be if we lived in the same town, living in temporary land where everything looked brilliant and new seeing only the happy happy joy joy which eventually cannot be sustained and is merely prolonged when actually physically seeing one another happened 3 days per month, if things went well. Not to mention the majority of the time spent in the bedroom. Over this year and some change experiment went on, feelings of becoming a human ping pong ball developed. As things got more and more complicated with increasing flights, long weekends, and disconnection of everything, I began to put on more and more weight. Right before taking off on sabbatical I weighed more than I had since college (all that PBR and pizza with no exercise other than walking to the bar!). I firmly believe it was my body saying "Why can't you just stay put for a while?". Along with weight gain came a constant state of sleepiness, impatience, and depression. Once removed from the situation and traveling, the weight came off, not so much sleep required, and a heaviness on my shoulders lifted. On this same trip the relationship in Portland ended and so did my body's instinctive reaction to ground me. Goes to show what living in the future can do as opposed to dealing with the here and now. It's all we have got and getting any further ahead does nothing but ruin the day which is here.

This is perhaps the most connected I have ever felt both spiritually and physically in day to day life. It's making it a whole lot easier to get through the day, and that's just it. There's no "getting through", it just happens on it's own rather seamlessly. How about that?