What the Body Was Still Holding

Last week, I witnessed something really violent on the street.

It was random. Brutal. Completely out of nowhere.

Someone attacked someone who never saw it coming. None of us saw it coming. The person on the ground was as shocked as everyone else.

I don't want to describe much more than that. The violence itself isn't what I want to put into someone else's head.

I stepped in because I was trying to stop what was happening and protect the person on the ground.

Then the attention turned toward me.

I had to defend myself.

Luckily, another person stopped. He had a bike and was able to get himself and the bike between us.

Someone called 911.

I remember hearing police sirens in the distance.

Eventually it was over.

Walking home afterward I felt like I had drunk an entire pot of coffee.

Everything in me was turned up.

Other than that, I felt surprisingly normal.

But then the images kept replaying.

The randomness of it was what got me.

Someone had simply been going about their life and suddenly wasn't.

I've lived in the city for a long time, and being attacked indiscriminately for no reason has always been one of those fears somewhere in the back of my mind.

When I got home, I knew I had things to release.

I got into bed and connected to my breath.

I let my attention move slowly through my body and allowed things to soften.

Then I worked with the images.

At first they were exactly as they had happened.

Close.

Full color.

Loud.

I began making them smaller.

I moved them farther away.

I turned down the volume.

I drained out the color.

Smaller again.

Farther away.

As the images changed, my breathing changed.

My body started to calm down.

My mind did too.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

Then I woke up.

I put myself back to sleep.

Then I woke up again.

This happened throughout the night.

By morning, something was very wrong.

I was going about my morning, but it felt like I was watching everything on a screen.

I could reach out and touch something, but I didn't feel like I was actually participating in touching it.

My emotions were flat.

Sensation was numb.

It was almost as though the physical sensation of being alive was no longer present.

I could function.

I could walk around. I could think. I could do things.

I just didn't feel connected to any of them.

And there was another thought underneath all of it that I didn't particularly want to admit.

What if this is just how I feel now?

I don't know if other people do this, but when I enter a strange state of mind, there is sometimes this fear that it isn't a state at all.

Maybe this is it.

Maybe this is the rest of my existence.

I emailed the hypnotherapist I work with. I told him what had happened and asked if he had any time to see me.

While I was waiting to hear back, I went to yoga.

My friend Carey was teaching.

The first thing we do in Bikram is a breathing exercise.

And I almost felt carsick.

I wasn't falling over.

I wasn't dizzy exactly.

But I couldn't orient myself inside my own body well enough to find stability.

It was like my body was a separate vessel carrying me.

Then we started the warm-up.

Arms overhead.

Bend to the side.

I could make the shapes.

I could balance.

I could follow the instructions.

But I couldn't really feel myself doing any of it.

I kept going.

Carey kept teaching.

Then came the first backbend.

I lifted my chest.

As I began to go back, it felt like the entire front of my body was being pulled open.

My breastbone.

My heart.

My blood vessels.

My nerves.

Everything seemed to lengthen at once.

It felt almost like my breastbone was cracking open.

And something let go.

I felt energy begin around my navel and move upward.

Into my chest.

Into my throat.

Then into my head.

At first it almost felt like a headache.

But there was sensation.

For the first time that morning, there was so much sensation.

We kept moving.

And it kept coming.

More movement.

More release.

At some point there were tears.

I wasn't crying about what had happened on the street.

I wasn't really thinking about it at all.

The tears seemed to come from the release itself.

From feeling again.

I had spent the morning afraid that I had somehow disappeared from my own experience.

Now everything was coming back.

By the end of class, I could feel every cell in my body.

There was a buzzing sensation everywhere, almost as though I had suddenly been connected to every nerve at once.

I could feel the floor.

The heat.

The air.

I could almost feel the lighting in the room.

My breath seemed to reach all the way to my toes.

Every inhale energized me.

I was there.

The night before, I had quieted the images.

I had reminded myself that what happened was over and that I was safe.

And it worked.

But apparently there was more.

I find that humbling because I know this.

The body is not an afterthought in the work I do. I know to pay attention to sensation. I know that what we understand and what we feel aren't always moving at the same pace. I know the body stores trauma.

And still, I missed it in myself.

There's an Alan Watts idea I've loved for years.

You can't look directly at your own eyes.

You can't taste your own tongue.

You can't touch the tip of a finger with that same fingertip.

I knew what to do that morning.

I just don't think I could have done it alone.

Carey knew nothing about what had happened the day before.

He knew nothing about the night I'd had.

He didn't know what was happening to me in the room.

And he didn't ask.

Carey is an experienced teacher. He knows how to let people have their own process without inserting himself into it.

When the tears came, he kept teaching.

I kept moving.

I didn't have to explain anything.

I didn't want to.

I just needed to be there.

I've been trying lately to rely more on other people.

I think I imagined that meant getting better at asking for help.

But I hadn't asked Carey for anything.

He was teaching.

I was following.