I love that feeling inside after sitting on the beach for a few hours. My head is empty, I'm so relaxed.....
On a recent visit to Northern Michigan, Vince and two of our friends stopped at a local pub after a day of gallery hopping. I found myself saying aloud: “I haven’t felt this calm internally in over a year.” In retrospect, that isn’t an accurate statement, but there was a striking difference between my every-day state of being in Springfield and my vacation state of mind.
If your first thought is I had been served something interesting at the pub, I had a glass of water. Likely, your second thought is, well, she should be calm, she’s on vacation.
For the purposes of this musing, let’s describe “vacation head.” I am going to do this in a format that would inevitably send my high school English teacher into another planet. Vacation head: calm, easy going, not-rattled, flowing, content, peaceful, recognizing that something bigger is at work, knowing that I don’t control outcomes, understanding connection between all beings, honoring all beings, at-ease, surrendered.
Can we have “vacation head” year round? Can we keep the internal calm that always settles in for me after a few hours on the beach in Mexico? Or after sitting by a pinion fire in the mountains? Or that feeling I experience after finishing the asthanga primary series?
On a different day of vacation, eating lunch, looking at lake Michigan, eating fish and basking in the sun, I brought this subject up to my friends. They suggested keeping small souvenirs from the trip that will remind me of the feeling I had when on vacation. They also suggested pictures from the trip, which could remind me of the state of mind I was in while vacationing. Although I will most definitely have a picture of us sailing, I wonder if a picture of the full moon setting over lake Michigan will really help me when I am experiencing stress in October?
Stay with me for a moment while I ponder the idea that “vacation head” is a state of mind, an internal experience. Even better, ponder that this internal experience is always inside us, undisturbed. Even a step further, ponder that this is who we truly are underneath when we are experiencing the feeling of “not-even-close-to-vacation-head.”
I believe yoga practice can give us hands-on experience that “vacation head” is always with us, is us. Take for instance a time you have experienced a significant amount of stress during your work day. After work, you begin driving to yoga class and realize you are late and you forgot your yoga mat. You hit every possible red light and because you are late, parking close to the studio isn’t an option. Your head is going a million miles an hour about how bad you look entering class late, about how poorly you are being treated at work and how you should have gone to watch your five year old practice soccer, rather than going to class. You sneak into the back of yoga class, quietly unroll your borrowed yoga mat and say to yourself “there is no possible way this can be an enjoyable experience and there is certainly no way to unwind in the 5o minutes left in class.” Sound familiar?
About twenty minutes into practice, you are focused on the sound of your breath, aware of body alignment and suddenly aware of the strain in your right shoulder. You are falling into the rhythm of something bigger than all those fluctuations of your mad monkey mind. By savasana, there is relaxation. As you sit in padmasana (meditation posture) there is this recognition of an intimate connection between the breath and something bigger than your pea brain. The sensation of being connected to all other beings is front and center.
Hmm. What is happening? There is not a beach, not a pinion fire and less than an hour ago you seemed to be a different person. Could it be that we have to go to yoga class more often to find this state? Could it be that sirsasana (headstand) brought this on? Maybe all of that asana practice and pranayama practice creates calmness.
Have you ever experienced calm during a crisis? Who could imagine, “vacation head” during the middle of a tornado? We all hear stories of people knowing exactly what to do during the middle of an emergency. Maybe we could look back at a time when we were on a run and we were in the “zone.” Who could imagine, “vacation head” at mile 24 of the marathon? Is “vacation-head” only available to us when the body if flushed with adrenaline or when the body is exhausted?
I believe the more we practice and study yoga, we are provided an opportunity to look deeper. It allows us to see this state of calm is always present. The practice allows us to see that this experience isn’t created, it’s who we are all the time. For example, let’s imagine that you drop your favorite ring into a calm pond. You jump into look for it and begin splashing around like a mad person. Splash- splash- splash and the calm surface is disturbed, no longer calm. It occurs to you that underneath all of the splashing is calm water, undisturbed. If you stop splashing (stop believing you have to put so much effort forth) the water will calm and you will see clearly where the ring has landed. You see, it’s always calm underneath. With yoga practice, we get to see that we aren’t our ability to put our leg behind our head, we aren’t just an employee, or wife, or partner, or mother, or father, or whatever label we attach our identity.
We could say that this calm, unchanging, never-wavering peace is who we are at the core of our being. Never separate from our higher source, part of it. Like the drop of water forgetting it is part of the ocean. There is no way to separate the drop from the ocean. The drop might forget who it really is, but it can’t separate itself from the big blue sea.
Maybe vacation and asana practice simply provide us with an opportunity to recognize who we are and who we aren’t.
“Vacation head” is simply one way we express, or one way I express, how life is experienced when there is recognition that I am not in the driver’s seat. That this pea brain is really part of something bigger-never separate from. This being named Ami is more than the stresses of work and family and the external circumstances of this life. Beyond aging bodies and personalities and the external events that occur in this life, we are all spirit. We just sometimes forget that “vacation head” is really who we are all the time. We can remember we don’t have to fly to Belize to find it. Now that’s something to say Ahh about!
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