Caves (floating and breathing)
Posted in ashtanga yoga, technology, things i like on 06/21/2010 12:08 pm by karenCave of the sacrum. We’re all familiar with that (thanks, RF!).
In the flotation therapy pod on Saturday (of course I went back!), I was struck by how empty my head was. Nice. The darkened pod as container a strong metaphor for the inside of my skull — as if I were a tiny figure floating in there. Except in the dream, the pod/skull is thick black rubber. I have no idea why.
Nevertheless, it is a womby container for the empty that is inside the figure inside the skull that isn’t me.
How do I know? By the breath.
The breath gets cave-y and resonant in the empty. Indication of and access to.
During Ashtanga practice, that same cave-y breath. I can hear the empty in my head (which I love and am accustomed to). There is a new cave, though, which I can intuit, if not actually feel. Cave of the heart. This frightens me. I am accustomed to the heart being full.
Full or empty, same or different?
06/22/2010 at 2:10 pm
Funny. I have been thinking every time my joints pop of the word “cavitation.” The fancy way of saying bubbles in the synovial fluid collapsing under pressure. The effervescence of that, and its sense of “gone.” Sort of related, maybe.
Also, I MUST do this flotation business. The only people I can find here are some kind of Facebook club of frat guys. FUNNY. Hey, whatever floats your boat!
The primordialness of it… when I sit Mahamudra style with Shinzen, he guides us in to a very oceanic, pre-differentiated, sort of primordial space. Very Jill Bolte Taylor. I feel like a peaceful lizard…. a being made entirely of sympathetic nervous system, but whose system is for the moment at rest. Undifferentiated from the rest of existence, like a fetus.
Does any of that sound like the flotation thing?
Seems like a VERY brilliant way of soothing the deepest aspects of the fight-or-flight system.
06/22/2010 at 6:55 pm
Mmm. Like vipassana-watching of things manifesting and dying away, this cavitation? Here. Gone. Yes, it’s like that.
For info about where to float, the Floatation Federation (srsly!): http://www.FloatationFederation.com/wherecanIfloat.html
You are welcome to float here in the desert, we can have a chat afterwards about privilege.
And re: the Shinzen thing: yes, the floating is similar, though the body slips away entirely in that environment. So it’s more a sympathetic nervous system floating in emptiness. Come on over, I’ll take you to the pods!
06/23/2010 at 4:49 am
If they have their own federation, this must be serious stuff.
I might have to come to Arizona soon…