MELTDOWN!

I'm quite certain I'm not alone...

Thursday was rough. I had a pretty big panic/anxiety meltdown, and I felt paralyzed by it. I have a great helper, who knows how to talk to me, but I am still the one who has to figure out how to rise up out of that quicksand and Thursday...I felt pretty damn stuck in it.

During such a meltdown, of course, everything gets exaggerated and nothing feels like it could possibly help.

All the tools in your toolbox suddenly seem like GIANT JOKES existing only to prove how awful you are or how little hope there is in the world.

Eventually I dragged myself off the bed.

During times like this, even *I* CANNOT bring myself to dance. It's THE tool, but even I just cannot.

BUT I can do other smaller things. If I can get myself to start with the idea of just 5 minutes of pilates -- something concrete and directed -- that can turn into so much more as the healthy brain chemistry starts to reassert itself.

Thursday, that was exactly what happened. I started with a video of 25 minutes of pilates (with no promise that I would finish).

Why a video? I need someone else guiding me; I can't possibly do this myself when I am feeling that badly.

From there, I moved onto a 10 minute core video.

THEN, only then, after 35 minutes of soaking my brain in some endorphins, was I able to approach some free movement, and even for that, I stayed on the floor.

I stayed on the floor and focused on my breathing and waiting and allowing and noticing.

The very basic principles of what I teach.

And as always, quite suddenly, I was fascinated by the workings of this body.

And as always, quite suddenly, I was out of the asshole brain and completely in the whole of myself.

Because here's the thing: your brain is just ONE ORGAN.

When we rely on it exclusively, we easily become rather dumb.

When we dive into the entirety of ourselves and tap into the wisdom of the full body ecosystem... that is the pathway out.

Spiritual constipation... Yep, you read that right

For some people, a crisis like my father’s stroke last October expands and deepens and affirms their faith. For some people, it has the opposite effect, and I am in that second group… much to my surprise.

You see, I have always and forever been a seeker.

From the day I saw… something… when I was jumped on in a pool at the age of six and immediately started to drown, the air pushed out of my body so fast by the weight of the other body.

From the day I walked into the kitchen soon after and asked my mother, “how do I know I am me?”

There are too many instances to recount here, but by the time I was maybe 10 or 11, I was sitting on a stool in our city library pulling books off the shelf in the Eastern religion section and trying to freaking figure all of this out.

I knew there was more than this and I knew there were too many simple explanations out there, keeping people from exploring and discovering. I knew that wouldn’t be me. I knew I wanted to experience what I had experienced in that pool, that’s for sure, and I wasn’t finding it in any church, though I’d get the occasional glimpse there.

Over my life, I have studied and studied so many religions and philosophical systems that resemble religion. I like this about myself. I like synthesizing and integrating.

If there is something bigger, something God(dess)-like, then a few things I do know are that one container is way too small, containers are metaphors and yet simultaneously real, and language (a construct of this limited human mind) can never touch reality.

And so, I like having Our Lady of Guadalupe on my altar next to Kali next to Kwan Yin next to…

Over my life, it’s been my relationship with Guady (as I call her) that has, for whatever reason, been the most powerful, the most consistent. When I am lost in a dark place of doubt, which happens not rarely thanks to this deeply curious mind, it is Guady who seems to somehow find me.

It sounds… fluffy, doesn’t it? but it’s the only way I can explain it.

My father’s stroke was remarkably transformative in ways I could not have foreseen and have not liked one bit.

Nothing that I used to do was breaking through.

Chant. Prayer. Meditation. Reading. Visualizing. The rosary. Going to mass.

What is the point of life if all we do is die?

I could not get past that question.

I could not get past the idea that there’s quite simply NOTHING MORE than this.

I’m writing about all of this as if it were in the past and it’s not.

It’s my right now.

I have some good helpers in this arena. They are all saying the same thing to me… do the things regardless. Do the chanting and the prayer and the altar creation even if you don’t feel it.

Plant the seeds. Cultivate. Keep working it. Wait.

In the meantime, a good friend giggled and pointed out that I am spiritually constipated, and I just need the right enema.

I’m thinking I’m not alone.

I know I’m not alone in this.

And speaking of Guady finding me…

A few weeks ago we were in Asheville and I knew they had a rather famous Basilica but I wasn’t going to seek it out. Instead, we walked and walked one day downtown and suddenly, we were at it. It loomed in front of us.

And she was in there, in so many of her guises.

I lit a candle and said a prayer that for the first time in a long time felt like a true prayer.

I say prayer like things when I am teaching all the time, but they are more inner directed.

In that quiet, cool, dark basilica, lighting that candle in front of a Marian shrine, for the first time in a long time, it felt outer directed.

I don’t believe in a God that sits above us, watching over us, judging or helping, but I do believe that I am woven into something bigger that I can access.

I believe that when I am not NOT believing it.

I believe that when I am not spiritually constipated.

In the meantime, my enemas include chanting and reading some tantra texts but also a new work by Mirabai Starr about women mystics. A few pages in and I can feel a slight stirring deep in my belly.

I have built a water and stone altar to Guady and I plan to create an altar to some of my significant ancestors.

That’s all I’ve got right now… some hope that these things might take root and grow, that I might find my way back to that little girl on that stool in the library who was so open and wondering and in awe of life.

Food, Alcohol, Pleasure, and Meds

The warmth during our trip to Asheville was my favorite thing…

I’ve written a lot (and still have so much more to write) about the changes to my brain since going on the right anti-depressant. (Here, here, here, and here.)

And before you read: Please remember that I am the mother of #ExperimentofOne. This is about what works for me. That doesn’t mean I think it would work for you. What I DO believe would work for you is questioning your own assumptions frequently and playing with variables.

To paraphrase Thomas Merton, we are built not for pleasure but for joy. The distinction is important. Pleasure is momentary and of the world; joy is deep and abiding and can be tapped into at any moment because it’s embedded in our operating systems, so to speak. It’s always there, waiting for us to notice. It’s not dependent on anything else.

Pleasure is good. I’m not a puritan. But it’s not the point and it can’t be our primary motivation. Or you can easily end up with a nation of high-functioning addicts. (Oh, wait…)

Pleasure is important but it’s secondary to the depth of joy.

Pleasure is easy. Go eat a cupcake. (Now I want a cupcake.) Joy takes devotion and awareness.

And eventually I’ll relate this preamble to food and my depression…

Though the anti-depressants have removed the Chemical Asshole from my brain, there is still work to be done.

I am still responsible for my own health, wellbeing, and happiness.

A pill can take care of the biochemical issue — and thank god for that — but there remains first, old habits developed out of coping with chronic depression, and second, a desire not just for “good” but for AWESOME.

The pill allows me to spend my energy where it belongs — on joy and love and writing and dance and relationships and learning and growing and all the good things that used to get eaten up by the energy it took just to live with my depression from hour to hour and not succumb to a deep desire to give up.

But the pill does not do All the Things. It does not suddenly make me a different or new person. It does not change who I am on a basic level. It simply gives me access to myself again.

I could decide this is good enough, but that’s not my nature.

I know there’s more to life even than this. I have Big Dreams and goals and desires. I have dance to teach, worlds to explore, books to write.

Because I’m not fighting Chemical Asshole, I have the power to dream again (I had recently totally and truly lost that capacity and that’s when I knew I had to seek help because I’ve ALWAYS been able to IMAGINE), and I have the power to go after those dreams. (None of this can be overstated. I’ll try to write about how this FEELS on a basic level at some point but the words aren’t available to me yet. I’m still adjusting.)

One of the most fundamental ways that I know to make my brain even happier and healthier is through my diet.

For example, in the past, when I’ve been pretty darn strict about being paleo (with occasional treats), I have had less brain fog and less systemic inflammation issues in general. I had more energy. I slept better. I felt more rested.

I also do better with VERY little alcohol in my life.

But I’ve noticed something: when I tell people that I am going back to eating like this and only drinking a beer once in a while, I get met with a lot of objections along the lines of…

But you like beer and wine…

But food is yummy…

What about fun and pleasure…

Life is too short…

First, thanks for the sabotage.

Second, life is too short, indeed, and that is my whole reason for doing this.

I’m much more interested in joy than pleasure.

I will eat the occasional cupcake, but I want the energy and focus it takes to do great and good and big things in this life.

I want adventure and learning and curiosity and excitement and experiences of awe.

Wine with dinner that gives me a headache the next day or somehow numbs me to the now? No, thanks. Depression numbed me for 20 years. I want to be HERE in the NOW; I want to FEEL this life.

Food that makes me feel sick and throws off my system and leaves me creaky and exhausted? Nope. A side effect of my depression were chronic pain issues that left me pretty darn immobile and thinking I needed a cane by the time I was 35. (For real.)

Why the hell would I choose yum over being completely in my life?

And why is it not enough to enjoy a simply perfect peach? What about a square of dark chocolate?

Why are we slaves to foods and beverages that do not uplift us and sustain vibrant life? These questions are important and our resistance to answering them can be telling.

I want more joy and if that means eliminating a bit of momentary pleasure here and there… well, that is devotion to myself, to my purpose, to ultimate love.

To paraphrase that rather awful Kate Moss quote and turn it into something meaningful: Nothing tastes as good as joy/happiness/mental health feels.

I Thought I Knew the Difference: Thriving versus Surviving

I THOUGHT I knew what thriving was when I really was just at another, perhaps a bit “higher,” level of surviving. (I wrote about this a little bit in a post about managing depression, right here.)

At that time, now that I can look back with a clearer mind, I was mistaking not being suicidal with thriving. I thought because I wasn’t 24/7 thinking about death or passive relief that I was doing as good as I could. I thought the health I had gotten to was the best I could expect after so long of such darkness.

Here’s an important point that I want all people suffering to read a few times:

Because I was still actively depressed, I also thought it was the best I deserved.

I didn’t think I was worthy of true, deep, abiding, peaceful happiness. I thought I was broken, that something was wrong with me, that I had made such bad choices in life that I could only expect so much goodness to come my way. I was constantly expecting something bad to happen to prove that I deserved to be punished. I saw my depression as part of that punishment and so thought a mild form, at the very least, was always going to be with me.

This is a core lie of depression and I want you to know that you can stop believing it. I want you to know that you can stop hearing it.

That’s the part that I still can’t get over: I no longer hear this shit in my head. It’s just gone. POOF.

I keep saying to my doctor, to loved ones… to anyone … HOW was this CHEMICALS? However it was, it was. And that’s that.

But I digress…

Here’s a paradox for you…

Now that I have my brain chemistry issue on the mend, I’m downright confused what to do with it…. how the heck to live with this level of health that I’ve not known since I was very small?!

The vast majority of my life has been about surviving, so it’s been about hyper vigilance, awareness of symptoms, care-taking, watching everything I do, eat, watch, see, read… This kept me very busy with lists and tasks and efforts and plans and research and and and…

My life has revolved around this illness. How could it not? This illness threatened my life. I’m lucky to be here.

Without this project, what now?

Furthermore, a lot of the things that I love in this world — dance, chanting, yoga, writing, art of all kinds — those things were drafted into the service of this project. They became “medicine” to the nth degree. They were no longer for creativity or expression but simply for my survival.

What were those things now? WHY were those things now?

I sat in front of my yoga class recently talking a bit about this. We do that at the beginning of class; we have a true sangha — awareness circle — and I am not above it or outside of it but in it and so I talk about my own challenges as much as anyone else.

I asked them about this what now.

A few of them answered all at once and said just about the same thing:

“You do things for FUN, for joy, for fulfillment, for peace…”

WHAT?!? For FUN? For JOY? For…fulfillment and peace…?

I squinted and then I laughed at myself for this was truly confusing to me. I could cry and be sad about this but my new brain chemistry is like, “what’s the point of that!?”

So I giggle instead and answer, “How delightful! A new sort of project!”

That’s where I’m at: watching for opportunities to redefine experiences, reframing, and simply allowing things to be what they are. I’m doing the reps, if you will… strengthening muscles that had been atrophied.

Brain Chemistry & Meditation

People who love meditation love to tell people how meditation is the answer to pretty much everything.

What these people don’t realize or don’t know or simply ignore is that different brains are, well, different and that difference counts with something like meditation.

As an embodiment artist and teacher, I’ve met and talked to far too many people who feel shamed by their “inability” to meditate.

Of course, the usual definition of meditation by which most people judge themselves is often too narrow and often simply wrong.

Meditation is not, for example, the attempt to eradicate all thinking. Good luck with that. Not possible. (Though you might get moments when it feels this way.)

Meditation is the nonjudgemental observation of the thought process whereby we train ourselves to not get attached to stories. This develops witness mind.

Witness mind can be developed in other ways than simply sitting and counting your breath or whatever of the millions of techniques you’re exploring. And here is where the definition usually gets far too narrow.

You needn’t sit on some specific cushion in some specific posture for some specific number of minutes.

For a long time, for example, the only way I could approach this sort of mind space was through vigorous and joyful movement. I would tell people that it was then that I could sit inside the “eye of the storm,” the storm being the normal overly chaotic state of my (depressed and anxious) mind.

And here’s where a limited understanding of and a shrinking of the idea of meditation actually gets dangerous, and yes, I said dangerous.

Jon Kabat Zinn, MD, and author of the very famous mindfulness book, Wherever you go, there you are, says that to teach meditation to people with PTSD with no body/somatic component is akin to malpractice, because sitting in the filthy nest of our not-well minds can actually make it all so much worse.

Do I ever know this from personal experience! When he said this, I felt so damn relieved. I was not alone.

When I attempted meditation, it simply allowed me to sit and observe all the depressed and anxious thoughts and in that sitting and observing, those thoughts GREW.

I felt like meditation allowed my mind to basically start eating itself with hatred and worry and fear.

But dance and play? That part of my mind, thanks to in-the-moment swimming-in-happy-chemicals, was shut down or at least quieted. I could see above those thoughts for those moments.

I moved enough and taught enough that those chemicals got a bit steadier and my mind got a bit healthier.

But… my mind was still not healthy enough to allow for the absolute stillness and quiet of seated meditation. That was still the danger zone for me, which was a big clue that my depression and anxiety were not just circumstantial but something much more.

Now that I’m well into the wellness created by (FINALLY!) the right anti-depressant (in my case one that not only blocks re-uptake of serotonin but also of dopamine and norepinephrine), I can see that all along my problem was not one of “not doing enough wellness; not taking the right herb; not eating the right diet; etc., ad nauseam.”

Nope. My base issue was a brain that had bad chemistry. Like a diabetic, I had an actual biological issue and it took medical intervention for me to finally see and feel and believe that.

I’ll try in more posts to write more about how different this is, but…

I can now sit in meditation. NO PROBLEM. Hello, healthy brain!

I now CRAVE moments of stillness and quiet.

My movement work is reflecting that in ways I could have never imagined.

See? That’s what I’m talking about. Different brains… meditation only is efficacious if the brain is already in some shape or form “healthy.” Healthy brain chemistry is needed, and sure, eventually, meditation can be a pathway to even MORE healthy brain chemistry. But you need a base to start.