Since at least middle school I've had an aversion to movement, to exercise. However, I've seen exercise as something I must do for my own good--I must push through the aversion. I've worked on the assumption that if I just keep pushing myself to do running and yoga, I'll get better at them, and the aversion will give way to pleasure in an upward spiral and I will enjoy eternal youth.
The upward spiral peaked in my early 40's with running, and around age 50 with yoga. But now, the spiral is downward: I have become more and more aware of the aversion, and less willing to push through it. When I was at the Forest Refuge in the fall of 2011, I became extremely sensitive to the aversion associated with running, and I've run very little since then. And I've really ramped down on the yoga as well. I've spent my time doing meditation and inner work instead. Over the past 1.5 years or so, I've seen my flexibility decline markedly in many respects: hips, hip flexors, quads, pecs, shoulders, neck, ability to twist the torso. I'm particularly surprised at the decrease in hip flexibility, because I routinely do the standard hip stretches whenever I'm seated on the ground. All of this is quite disturbing.
But I digress from the topic of aversion.
How does the aversion manifest? I only began to have insight into this about 17 years ago. I remember a time when, living alone in the small house on 16th Ave. in Seattle's Central District, I noticed the terror I felt upon opening my front door and beginning to walk out. Later, while staying with Nick in Dallas in 2000, I attended a yoga class and noticed the anger I felt at each instruction. I was committed to honoring the anger, not suppressing it, but I was unskillful--I tried expressing it by crying during the session, which scared me rather than soothed me. I wished for the teacher to offer me healing compassion, but whatever she did offer I did not experience as healing. A few years later I began practicing a lot at home without a teacher. There, I didn't experience anger, but at the beginning of each asana I'd feel a clenching in my chest. I sensed that it had to do with uncertainty.
I have many more stories to tell about my personal history with respect to movement, but I am feeling a sadness and sleepiness writing this, and I feel inclined to wrap this up.
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Just before beginning this post, I was doing spontaneous movement and observing the associated anxiety in detail. Here are the components I observed:
"No, don't make me do it!"
I feel anger--anger is uncomfortable and triggers a cycle of panic--must shut down.
Despair: having taken this one action, I am reminded of a thousand other actions I wish to take--the vast majority of which I will not take because I do not have the time (or will not make the time) and because it is so emotionally painful to take these actions--I feel great despair about this. Is this the right action out of those thousand? Most, perhaps all, of those thousand are actions I've been told to take, so I am reminded of all the instructions I am failing to follow.
Bewilderment, overwhelm at the range of possibilities. I then feel alone.
"I don't know what I'm doing!"
"I don't know how to take care of myself!"
"This is a waste of time!"
Pleasure
Craving
The sequence of emotions is less predictable when I am moving; therefore, I prefer to stay still.
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