I walk more gently now. It’s not because my knee aches or my hip hurts, though they do sometimes.
It began over six years ago. Shaken awake by my nervous system, all night and every night, I fell into a deep hole of exhaustion.
Two years seeing five neurologists and trying a dozen medications taught me that regaining my life wasn’t a pill away.
“My heart still pounds at night,” I told my doctor. He recommended breathwork. Not a little breathwork. A lot. I breathed in for 4 seconds and out for 6. I did this for 20 minutes, twice per day, for months.
Then I saw it.
I saw that I did everything from a place of stress. I was intense all the time. Work wasn’t just getting the job done, it was pounding the keyboard as fast and hard as possible, demanding the highest standards in the least time. Recreation was just another box to check on the to-do list. My nervous system was telling me it couldn’t take it anymore, not if I wanted to sleep anyway.
My intense self would have to go. In a moment, I threw him out, banished him. This was the hardest breakup I’ve ever experienced.
Hard because he was the center of my life, the organizing principle, the motivator, the achiever. For him and his accomplishments, I was rewarded. He was how I excelled in school and in the workplace. He was how I managed at home, stayed on top of it all. Without him, who was I? How would I do anything?
I grieved the loss of myself for two years.
Then I found a path out, not all at once, but little by little. I could not change my nervous system so that I could return to who I was, but I could transform my relationship with it — with myself — to become who I needed to be.
How? I had no idea, so I did everything I could think of: therapy, journaling, meditation, dancing alone, dancing with trees, walking miles barefoot, drawing, painting. I even painted with my feet! Gradually, over time, transformation arrived as grief faded. I learned to live with and love my nervous system, to love myself.
Loving myself required removing layers of armor I’d worn so long I couldn’t see or feel. It takes bravery to remove the armor, to drop the shield. We are designed to fear the arrows of pain, disappointment, and misfortune, so we guard. But very few arrows come from outside. Almost all are from inside. Armor to protect from the world also shields us from ourselves.
The shield is always at the ready. The first sight of an external threat and BAM! Up it goes. There’s almost no chance of harm getting through. Knowing that, bravery comes more easily. The risk of lowering it is smaller than it feels.
The more time I spend with less armor, the more I feel what the deep breath reaches. Into my core it finds that I am OK just as I am — fully and fundamentally, as a birthright.
I am not different from you in these ways. Your mind messes with you as much as mine does me. Our minds tell us: “If I hadn’t…,” “If only I could…,” “When I finally lose (or gain)…,” “This will not end well.” The truth is, the ends of our minds’ stories are not yet written. The ends we fear rarely arrive.
If we bravely breathe deeply, for long enough — 20 minutes, twice a day, for months if needed — we might shed some heavy armor. Without it, one really can walk more gently.
