[Last modified: November, 19 2024 06:20 PM]
For the last two weeks I have had some sort of illness… it began with food poisoning and morphed into a cold which I have quickly attempted to nip in the bud with an excessive consumption of ginger, garlic, elderberry, echinacea, miso, lemon juice and mint tea.
I have felt immensely connected to my body – but not necessarily in a good way. Feeling every ache, sneeze, and jab in the gut. A Skye – a self, which I don’t often meet until, at least, winter arrives.
I was tempted to dive deeper into these sensations but realized I am not fully out of the woods and would prefer not to mentally re-enter that sickly state. So instead, on this freezing, rainy day where I finally feel well enough to move my body, I have decided to join a yoga class at the Bloomsbury Theatre on campus. It starts at 5, it’s currently 4:13. I am sitting in the cafe, feeling stiff, slightly cold, and theres a slight ache in my stomach. I cant smell too well. The sweetness of banana lingers on my tastebuds. My face feels tired, as if I can imagine the dark bags under my eyes slowly growing heavier.
30 minutes later
I bailed. I stood outside the door of the class and a sensation and feeling crept up on me which I interpreted as my body telling me to go home. I listened. My legs carried me down the stairs, doubt flooded my brain – was I bailing? Was this a lack of self control? Was I letting myself down? Heal – I told myself, give yourself a chance and listen to what your body is telling you.
What my body is telling me? I pondered the question on my tube ride home. What was I telling myself? Was there some other sense, a sixth sense of intuition? A soul sense of gut feeling? I have had those feelings before and mostly I listen but sometimes I don’t. For instance when theres a person looking around, eyes darting everywhere in the Tube and instantly I think he’s going to shoot us or set off a bomb – run – my mind tells me, but I don’t. I convince myself its TV shows and media, it’s growing up in Miami with monthly bomb and shooting drills at school that makes me feel this way, not a real instinctual gut feeling.
So how do I make sense of this sense? How do I know what I mean? What my body means?
10 minutes into the journey I suddenly have a coughing attack and I feel very warm. Relief floods through me that my home is near and my bed and a cup of tea are waiting. Maybe the yoga would have helped, maybe I would have felt great after. But maybe just maybe my instincts were right and home was exactly where I needed to be. If there is a truth, a right choice and a wrong, I suppose I am just grateful for this body, that it exists at all. That I can question it, move with it, feel and sense with it, both my shell and my soul and everything in between.