#6: Maddy's physical therapy.

it's often the subtle lessons that impact us the most.

There’s a dream theory suggesting that everyone in your dream is a representation of you. You see them in the form of other people—both known and unfamiliar— and they sometimes play characters that are consistent with their personalities and life circumstances. But they are never really about the other person. Rather, they are always about you; your healing, your tendencies in relationships, your unprocessed feelings and emotions, or simply, your memory consolidation for the future. I don’t know if I fully buy into this theory but I do think it reveals kernels of truth and, recently, I have been curious to see if it holds any validity when applied to waking life.

There are seasons in which certain people or memories are uncomfortably present. Present to the extent that you become superstitious in wondering if the person on your mind is okay, if their sister-in-law is pregnant or if you are picking up on some subconscious information that has an undercurrent of worry, fear, and longing. But, as implied by this dream theory, I’ve recently been wondering if those feelings and recurring thoughts have less to do with the other person or the memory than they do with the lessons that you are preparing to learn in the context of life that you are experiencing right now. Maybe certain people or stages of life are top of mind not because of the person or place but rather because of the information that you need to work through and carry with you into whatever you’re being prepared to learn next.

My friend, Maddy, is going to physical therapy right now for a hip injury. She was telling me about the stretches that her PT prescribed to her and how counterintuitive the gentleness of each pose feels. She’s used to correlating the efficacy of her stretching to the amount of strain that she experienced. More is better, so she thought. But this PT experience has forced her to slow down, to stretch progressively, to know that she is doing it correctly if she feels barely anything at all. A gentle, pleasing form of movement.

We laughed about sharing this mentality. We see it everywhere in our lives. I am the first to distrust a new facial product unless I feel a palpable burning, stretching, stinging or actively-exfoliating sensation. A massage to me is well-executed if I can’t quite distinguish whether the touch itself feels good or if I am mentally satiated by demonstrating my high pain tolerance. So this idea of measuring the quality of stretches through imperceptible sensations is as foreign to me as it is to Maddy. Though, we both agreed it’s a good metaphor for life.

Part of this dream theory and lingering on the what-ifs of how people and situations could have worked out differently, is driven by our innate desire to wrap up stories cleanly. We grasp for putting bows on things and that— matched with the ‘no pain no gain, this face mask isn’t doing anything unless it burns’ mentality— causes us to loop and loop and loop until we feel like we’ve satiated a storyline that can help us put people and past settings to rest. It can be exhausting and a frustrating waste of energy.

So as I take time in the gym to lazily stretch after my workouts, pulling my hips back to a 90-degree angle in runners lunge instead of jetting forward into tear territory, I have been thinking that it may be nice to lend this same gentle generosity to the voracity with which we tend to approach wrapping up people, circumstances and storylines.

Restorative yoga is effective because it allows for the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system, putting your conscious mind and efforting to rest and letting your body relax into a state of healing. You may not palpably feel the sensations of restorative yoga postures “working” in real time, but the physiological and neurological pathways that are forming through the calmness of the practice have remarkable effects on your body overtime.

If we imagine that the dream theory holds validity and that other people and memories are occupying brain space for your own learning, preparation and development, then a restorative softening and releasing of the need to have it all figured out creates space for the restlessly rationalizing loop to end and heal itself.

It’s a simple mindset fix but in its very simplicity, there’s paradigm shifting power.

We have been socialized to think that good things come through effort and effort alone, which is true to a certain extent. But good things also come gently, slowly, surprisingly, and overtime. I remember when the catharsis I felt when I realized that I don’t have to run myself to the ground everyday physically to stay in shape. That same feeling emerged when applying this new frame of realizing that sometimes people or memories cross your mind and it’s okay to just let them be.

Like Maddy’s PT stretches, it’s usually the subtle and slowly-accrued lessons that impact us the most.

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Before you go, here is a quote that I can’t stop thinking about from Mary Oliver’s Upstream.

It is six am, and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all. There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time. (30)

Her words are often the course-correctors that I need to move from “I ought to” to “I choose to” in whatever it is that I am working on. She is the ultimate lender of creative permission.

And with that, I leave you.

Thank you so much for reading and I can’t wait to get “Caught Up in Char’s Web” with you next week!!