Composting weary

Weary. That’s what I’ve been feeling, for literally months.

It is hard for me to write that, to confess that here on the internet. But if I can’t be honest here, where can I be?

I can’t even remember how it began now. Did it begin with winter? Or did it really start in the summer? Did it begin with an erosion of freshness and vigour? And then slowly deplete my strength and endurance? I imagine freshness, vigour, endurance and strength as vials of coloured liquids that that feed my soul through small tubes as I sleep. Maybe I forgot to close the valves one morning and everything dripped out onto the floor when I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe the vials were all smashed by the chaotic circumstances that seem to have descended on my life and the world.

However it happened there is no way to deny it any further. Weary I am. It is a persistent weariness of mind and body that I just can’t shake. Some days, especially when the sun is shining, I think it has passed. The sunshine fills my vigour vial up just a little and it flows again, into my heart. A little bit of life force energy penetrates my being and I start to hope again that I can find my Self in here somewhere. And then, it’s gone again. Sometimes in an instant. Sometimes in a trickle. But I keep ending up back at weary.

It’s actually never been this bad before. I thought I was burnt out in 2018, but that was nothing. I was falling apart then, for sure. I needed to learn how to take care of myself and disentangle my life force from my business. And I did. This is different somehow. The more I examine it the more I judge myself for wallowing in it. I am missing the strength to do hard things right now. And writing this seems like a waste of time I could be doing something productive with. In that judgement I see the echo of all the expectations I project on the capitalist system I feel like I’m a prisoner of, and yet, over and over again I am reminded that the only thing that is imprisoning me right now is my thoughts. I cannot solve this with my mind. I have to let my body compost it.

As a coach and yoga teacher I know the answer. And yet it can be so hard to allow myself the time and space to do it.

In my heart I know that as inconvenient as it may seem, I must renew my yoga nidra practice. And so, I roll out my mat and support my physical body. I invite myself into stillness and just…let go. I don’t DO anything. I follow the instructions of my own disembodied voice and I detach from time. And 45 minutes later I emerge, a little less weary for now.

The thing about composting is that it takes a lot of time. If you have ever had a compost pile in your garden you know that the transformation requires time but can be accelerated with some nurturing. Yoga nidra for me is a little bit like stirring the compost pile. It doesn’t look like anything is happening but you are reorganizing the pile a bit, creating new connections between the parts, shaking it up, creating the conditions for a little bit more distintegration.

If you are familiar with Martha Beck’s work you might recall the way she describes the first phase of the change cycle, aka Square 1. She uses the analogy of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, but she taught me that caterpillars don’t actually just grow wings in the cocoon. Their entire body DISINTEGRATES into caterpillar goop and then reforms as a butterfly. This blew my mind. And as I recall this right now it occurs to me that maybe I have to go through weariness to reach disintegration. And through disintegration…well, you know how it ends.

This time I want to be a blue butterfly. I’ll keep you posted.