Put your own oxygen mask on first
Today, I am not a happy camper. I have been ill for 9 days straight. All the while, I haven’t stopped moving, working, grinding. This has been one of the most violent cases of the flu that has hit me in years, yet I REFUSED to stop and acknowledge it. The past week has seen me host my first ever webinar, half-day coaching workshop and bring to a close my many classes before the holiday season. I. Haven’t. Stopped. I came close to stopping. I swear I did. Pinky swear. I asked to be replaced. I was told to take a pill and suck it up (“we’re all sick”). So I sucked it up. And because I am a freelancer and susceptible to my own financial pressures, I cave in easily to my own tunnel-vision that blinds me from the fact that if I don’t put everything on hold for a while and heal – there will be no short-term nor long-term productivity.
In a nutshell, when I get blind-sighted by my own pressure, I think I am both irreplaceable and disposable as a freelancer. “No one can do my job as good as I do”. Yet, in the same breathe, I get the nagging feeling that if I take a breather – I will get replaced by the next Maša that rolls into town. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I can’t have scarcity and control running the show. That just ain’t my jam. I don’t operate on fear. I got side-tracked. Taken aback by the scary novelty of being self-employed. And I lost track, just for a moment, of where my breath is. How well am I taking care of my body, my vessel.
Funny enough, what reminded me to slow down and recover was a job offer. To do a one-day workshop on the embodiment of health and self-care. Ha! The irony of that offer didn’t escape me. I took one look at the heap of used up tissues and nasal spray that lay right next to the laptop that I was furiously working on regardless of my rising fever. I let out a soft chuckle and immediately closed the laptop. Back to the drawing board. Or rather, back to bed. Back to rolling gently on my Yoga mat. Back to being taken care of.
I shut everything off. Cancelled all my plans for the day. And sprawled myself in bed and lay staring at the ceiling. For a hyper squirrel like myself, this was a luxury beyond words. Once I made this space to rest and reflect, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. How ridiculous I was to not slow down. Not only because of the fact that I teach people the exact opposite of what I was doing. But also because I have been here before. Two years ago I took part in the Embodied Facilitator Course, the first part of which is about widening our own range of being and behaving. Since I noted in myself that I was not good at resting and digesting, in all real and metaphorical senses, I took on a daily practice that was completely new to my way of being – I vowed to do half an hour of gentle self-massage on a roller at the closing of every day.
This was by all means supposed to be a restorative practice aimed at toning down my nervous system. What, in fact, happened was both funny and sad at the same time. The first day of my self-massage, I decided to go for a full hour instead of just half. A half an hour is for “normal” people. I pounded myself on the roller, grinding all the tight spots I could find. An hour later, I got suddenly and violently ill. Vomiting like never in my life. The second day, I repeat the same. Again, I throw up. Only on the third day did it dawn on me…waaaaait a minute, I wasn’t actually being gentle with myself. I was approaching self-massage like a power training – trashing my muscles on the hard roller. No wonder my body reacted so violently. Take a hint, Maša.
It took me a minute, but needless to say, I changed my ways in the two years that followed. I found the humour in my persistent roughness and took gradual steps to learn to really savour true, gentle self-care. Which at times took the form of a slow day with nothing on the schedule, at times it meant a delicious night of sensorial pleasure, but mostly it meant setting boundaries with myself and others. Saying no to projects that were draining me more than nourishing me, no to relationships that ran around in circles, no to my own endless ambitions.
And what seemed like an endless stream of “no”s coming out of my mouth was actually shaping a miraculously big “yes” to myself. And not just a “yes”, but an adamant “fuck yes!”. I stopped going big and went back home. To my body, my peace of mind, the essence that is me.
And so, here I am again. Being reminded of HOME. The body. The only thing I truly own. The only place I reside. And boy, is it yummy.
How long has it been since you’ve been home?
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