The Perfect Storm

Today I write not as a yoga practitioner with insights and breakthroughs, but a woman who is trying to sift through splinters without pricking herself too badly. Today I write as a person who has momentarily abandoned all attempts to transcend the madness that is life.

I have been doing everything ‘right’ these past few weeks. I have opened myself up to my emotions and told myself to ride out its peaks and dips. I have honoured it volatility by offering it an outlet of soft tears. I have diligently unfurled my purple mat each evening, enjoyed monologues with Pema Chodron and made personal breakthroughs of which I am very proud. And after a hard night, I have made myself a soothing cup of tea and encouraged myself to take one more step forward, because I am doing ok. I am Androcles asking the great and hungry lion to have a ‘velvet paw’ and treat me gently.

But what I really want is a big fat bottle of Chardonnay and permission to snap, snap, SNAP my jaws.

I want to allow my inner child to leap out and perform a dance of wrath. A dance that is rich with the fury of tornadoes, the slashes of lightning, the screaming of banshees. A dance so wild with rage, it sears all those who witness it. I want to be Androcles who demands that the lion either fight me or eat me alive. I want to stuff bodhichitta in a box until I am ready to befriend it again.

I am angry. And it feels good to say it aloud. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go make myself a cup of tea.