Mindful Crashing

Part 1 – The Incident

About a month ago, someone I know posted on Facebook about an accident she had falling off the back of a motorcycle.  She mentioned that through previous moments of bodily trauma in her life, she had always rushed on too quickly, neglecting to pay proper attention the actual experience her body was having.  She said that this time, after she fell, she sat on the ground and became aware of her body, her surroundings, her sensations.  Mindful of her presence in the road, she moved to the side of the road and sat down, giving more attention to the injuries and shock her body and mind had just sustained.  Sitting with those and honoring them.  This past Saturday, when I swerved to avoid a car who was crossing over the double yellow lines separating the carpool lane from the rest of the highway, when I squeezed my brake as hard as I could to avoid slamming into the car in the next lane over and hit it anyway, when I sat on the asphalt of the 405 aware that I had just had my first motorcycle accident and I was both conscious and alive, this was the first thing that came into my mind – this woman’s post on Facebook.  And I thought, don’t move yet.  Just sit for a moment.  How are you in your body?  Sit with that.  Be present.  And so I was.  And I realized I was okay.  I was alive and sitting on the road by my bike.  I could see, breathe, stand up... I was alive.  Then I realized I was sitting on the 405, and there was probably a host of people around in their cars wondering if I was “okay” (I’ve come to realize in the past 4 days that there is no objective gauge for what this word “okay” means).  I waved to the car in front of me to signal I was not dead or dying.  I stood up.  The car that had necessitated my swerve was gone already.  The car I hit had not moved.  I walked up to the woman driving and said “I’m okay, but there’s damage to your back bumper.  Do you want to pull off to the shoulder and exchange information?”

“What?”

I repeated.

“Okay.”

I lifted my bike, got back on it, started it (!) and began to slowly creep across five lanes of traffic to the shoulder, with this other driver following me, her mom in the passenger’s seat.  I was aware that my wrist was not happy to be operating the throttle and brake, but it was not very far.  I got to the shoulder and kickstanded/turned off my bike.  The young lady got out of her car with her mom and they both came back to me “are you okay?”  Yes, I assured them.  I was okay.  I looked down and saw that my jeans had been torn from about the knee to about the hip.  There was an abrasion on my left thigh.  Nothing major – the type of thing you get from taking a spill playing basketball or falling off your bicycle.  And my wrist was hurting.  We called an officer to fill out a report.  The woman and her mother invited me to sit in the back of their car rather than standing on the side of the highway.  I accepted the invitation, gratefully.  The logistics of information exchange, speaking with the very kind, helpful, and supportive police officer all happened amid the loud noises of freeway traffic.  The lady I hit and her mom were incredibly kind.  They eventually left and I waited with the CHP officer for the tow truck to arrive.  After the truck arrived for my bike (which was in surprisingly good shape!), I said goodbye to the officer (who, sadly, wasn’t willing to take a picture of me in the back seat of his police car so I could send it to my mom).  I got in the tow truck and we began the 45 minute drive to northeast LA.  When I got home, I had to check in with my body again.  How was I feeling?  What was I experiencing?  What do I do about the fact that I have four massage clients scheduled in the next two days, and I just had my first motorcycle accident?  I am so grateful to the seeds planted in my consciousness by my dear sister on Facebook.  The encouragement to stop and be present.  To hold my body in love and tenderness and awareness.  To truly be there and to listen.  I don’t know what fruit my practice would have yielded without the explicit reminder that had stuck in my brain when I read it, but having it so fresh in my consciousness was a gift and a miracle.  It is not common to hit the pavement of the 405 and have my first thought be, “how are you, body?”  But it set the tone for a very sacred experience of being with my experience from that moment to this one. 

Part 2 – The Healing After

Fast forward.  Saturday night I cannot sleep until 2am.  General discomfort, and I think maybe I am still in shock.  Sunday is something of a blur.  Lots of emotions from lots of different things.  You know, because life doesn’t necessarily stop simply because we are hurt.  I don’t go anywhere, except to walk down to my yoga studio and say hello to some friends.  I am splendidly tired.  Partly because of how long it took me to fall asleep, partly because my body is repairing itself on so many levels I can’t even begin to imagine.  I have decided by mid afternoon that I will not go in to work on Monday.  Sunday night I sleep better.  I think I take aspirin more proactively so the pain doesn’t keep me up.  Monday morning I wake up and I realize my body is still charged with fear and anxiety.  The sheer physiological trauma of impact, alongside all of the stress hormone reactions that are created in the body by such events, still sits in almost every cell of my body.  I realize that my greatest task for Monday is to figure out how to heal and release this trauma.  I realize I am afraid.  That I want to curl up in a ball and cry.  And on Monday morning I do let myself huddle up on my bed for awhile and “dry cry.”  It’s been a long time since I’ve been very “good” at crying (meaning it’s hard for me to know how to let tears just come), so sometimes I just let my body go through the motions to move some of the energy.  I realize it is time for meditation.  I sit on my cushion.  I don’t sit to feel peaceful, I sit to give honor and give space to the fear and trauma.  I sit to let the cells feel.  And they do.  For the first half hour or so, the moment of impact plays in my brain again and again.  Each time I think of the crash my body twitches, jerks, or convulses.  It is releasing something.  I let it.  I’ve heard that animals who are wounded will go off by themselves and tremble.  They are quite literally shaking off the trauma (thank you, Taylor Swift, for the good advice).  I let myself twitch.  I let myself tremble.  I let myself connect with what I want.  I want someone to hold me, but I’m too vulnerable at the same time.  I want female energy, but I don’t want complications or emotional entanglement.  After awhile I realize that I am still that child wanting his mother.  I don’t judge this.  I just let it be.  I let that yearning grow.  After 45 minutes, the bell on my phone sounds.  It feels like the process has only begun.  I reset the timer and end up sitting for another 35 minutes.

After a while, I realize that what I’m wanting isn’t actually for my physical mother to be holding me.  I wouldn’t reject her presence, but it’s only an image or a metaphor for what I’m seeking.  It’s not the literal thing.  I think of going to Deer Park on Sunday and the people I will see there.  I think of my dear monastic sister who becomes more and more like a blood sister every time I see her.  I think of how I hug trees when I am at the monastery.  I realize I need to go hug a tree.  I plan to go for walking meditation when I am done sitting.  I think of the trees outside that I can hug.  Somewhere before or after this I realized that I can take a bath.  I realize that I can honor sensual but not sexual craving I have for touch, for reassurance, for being held by letting myself be safely enveloped by water.  I plan for a bath.  I realize I am healing through the elements.  Air: the breath in my sitting meditation .  Earth: walking meditation.  Hugging the trees – wood.  Sitting in the bath – water.  I decide without having to decide that the accident itself had enough fire energy for many days. 

I realize that this might be the first time I have had any connection with the idea of “mother” earth.  I’ve always wanted to, but I always knew in my heart that the phrase was simply something I said to sound “right.”  I’ve never really had much felt experience of the earth as my mother.  As a living system, yes.  As a source and sustainer of life for us all, yes.  As our sacred home, absolutely.  As our mother?  No.  No that is not how I’ve known this precious planet.  And then I realize that my longing for my mother to hold me is actually a longing that could be met in the experience of the earth.  I think of hugging the trees.  Of opening up my heart and letting the pain and fear and grief from the past two days pour out into that tree – into the earth, and I realize that it can hold it.  Can hold me. 

I think about writing this blog post – and about how much more my Caltech friends will consider me a “dirty hippie.”  Actually hugging trees.  I smile internally.  Doesn’t matter.  I need to heal.  Something about sliding into a car on the freeway generated a trauma energy in me that needs to release.  I’m not ashamed or embarrassed by my need to hug trees – to have my sacred mother earth embrace me.  At Deer Park we talk of “earth holding.”  I was asking the earth to hold me. 

I realized that my fear was as much about what didn’t happen as it was about what did happen.  Meaning, I wasn’t just scared of the collision.  I was scared of what the collision could have been – death.  I went back to the moment of impact in my mind.  I pictured it differently.  I pictured the force more violent, something different happening, a different angle or velocity or trajectory.  I pictured dying.  In one way, at least, quite graphically.  I relaxed my body in meditation and didn’t react physically to the image.  I didn’t let mental notions or judgments about this being horrible or awful or unthinkable creep into the visualization.  I just let it be.  I could have died.  I relaxed and breathed.  That was okay.  Then what?  I thought of the trauma it would have been for the cars around me to watch me die on the highway.  I breathed into that trauma, too.  I realized that even this would heal, eventually.  Even if it took generations.  Even if it lived in them in some way and in their children and in their children’s children.  Eventually the pain would heal.  The seeds of transformation are ever present.  Even the greatest traumas (which this would not have been) can be transformed – can be healed – can wash away.  No matter how much blood is shed, the river will eventually wash it away, eventually.  This doesn’t make pain easy to bear, but it does remind me that everything passes.  That fear is not worth the energy.  It let the cells open and release that trauma.  Not just the trauma of what happened, but the trauma of what could have happened.  It doesn’t mean I plan to go out and get killed.  It does mean that the fear-energy doesn’t live and move in my cells anymore.

I went outside and walked slowly along the sidewalk.  Present with my steps.  Walking on the earth.  The miracle, Thay says.  Truly that day it was a miracle.  I could be dead.  Any time you crash a motorcycle you could be dead.  I wasn’t being melodramatic.  It wasn’t a “hey look at me, can you believe what I just survived!” type of awareness.  I’m not a Lifetime movie.  I’m just aware that it is/was a possibility.  But instead of being buried or cremated, I am walking on the earth.  Two days after a motorcycle accident on the 405, I am walking on the sidewalk, breathing the air, being with my steps, honoring my body’s wisdom.  Honoring my need to surrender and heal.  Miracle.  I am alive.

I stop and hug a tree.  When I hug people I don’t open my heart and flood them with the pain I carry inside of me.  I embrace them as a welcoming, a meeting of souls and bodies and friends.  When I hugged the tree I was hugging the earth.  I was hugging my mother.  I let myself melt.  I let myself become a small child.  A hurting child.  I let myself sink into the bark and empty the damaged, fearful, skittish and frightened parts of myself into the energy of this representative of the planet’s love.  The planet’s ability to love, embrace, accept, transform and heal.  I wonder if my pain nourishes the tree-life the way my respiratory waste (CO2) nourishes it.  I wonder if we are built in symbiosis in this way as well.  I wonder if the trees offer us their trauma as healing for us and if our traumas can be life for the world of plants when offered in love, gratitude and sincerity.  I don’t think about that for very long. I am too busy being held by my mother.  I am too busy pouring out. 

I let go.  I feel cleansed.  In my bones.  In my heart.  In my core.  I keep walking.  Slowly.  Mindfully.  I hope no one calls the cops on me because I look like a fucking weirdo.  I cross the street and walk back.  Dogs like to bark.  I feel sad that they are not more at peace.  I think about how fear cycles into the animal kingdom.  How we live in a world where there is violence, and so we train dogs to protect us.  This is not “wrong.”  It just shows how our fear conditions the worlds we create around us.  I look at the dogs with loving, sad eyes as they snarl at me through the fence.  I walk a little farther away because I don’t want to incite them to this kind of protecting.  Most of the dogs who are barking simply seem to enjoy the sound of their own bark.  Only one dog truly seems hostile and angry.  I keep walking.  I hug another tree.  I stop and touch the bark of still another.  There’s an energy there.  I could spend all day with it.  I am more healed now than I ever could have expected to be two hours previously. 

Part 3 – Healing with my motorcycle

Eventually I come back to my home and I look at my bike across the street.  I realize it is time to go make peace with my bike.  I don’t pressure myself.  I walk over and sit down on the curb next to my bike.  Like a friend you haven’t seen since a big fight.  Just sit, don’t say anything.  Just let the energy become safe.  I looked at it.  Impressed at how it held up under the collision.  Impressed at how my own body held up.

Saturday night in the shower I had thanked my right arm for taking the brunt of the impact.  I thought about how my jeans tore.  I thought about how my leg got scraped up, and I realized how much more severe my wounds could have been.  The pain in my wrist was from its absorbing momentum that would have otherwise been transferred and absorbed elsewhere in my body.  The price my arm paid in taking that momentum saved other parts of me in ways I can’t know.  I thanked my arm from the bottom of my heart.  Perhaps it even saved my life. Probably it saved my leg from a deeper cut or a stronger bruising. 

I look at the bike from the curb.  Not an enemy.  Not unsafe.  Not a danger.  I sit on the bike, hold its handlebars in my hands.  I think I would have started shaking if I had done this two hours earlier.  But I’ve already played out the “worst” case scenario of motorcycle death in my mind.  I’ve realized I don’t need to be scared.  Sitting on the motorcycle, I am at peace.  I am truly at peace.  My neighbor comes home and asks how I am.  I say I am okay and that I am doing some of my psychological healing.  She nods as if to say that is a good and natural and appropriate thing to do.  She says she is going to the store in twenty minutes and asks if I need anything.  I say, “Which store?”  She says Vons.  I say “Epsom salts.”  She says she will get some if they have any.  I know they have some.  A few hours later her five year old brings me epsom salts.  I thank her and she walks away.  I’ve never been handed epsolm salts by a five year old before.  The universe is always creating new situations.  How many times have I said “there’s a sentence I never thought I would hear in my life!”  Every experience is – or at least can be – something brand new.  “There are no ordinary moments.”  Or maybe every moment is ordinary, and the ordinary is also extraordinary. 

I don’t think I realize how much I needed this day of mindfulness until I watch myself on Tuesday doing things that would have completely paralyzed me at another phase of my life.  My bike is towed to the dealership.  I go to the rental car agency.  I go to urgent care.  I get an x-ray.  I go from urgent care to CVS to fill a prescription.  I sit and talk with someone for a long time.  I go home and have a message from the insurance adjustor.  My motorcycle is totaled.  Totaled?  It looked like I wouldn’t even round out my deductible payment and it’s totaled.  I call the dealership to confirm.  Totaled.  I need a new vehicle.  I call my dad and we brainstorm.  When I can’t handle anymore I say “I’m maxed out, let’s talk more later.”  No hostility, no irritation, just acknowledgement.  It’s been a long four days.  I go to Caltech and put in an appearance at the group meeting of one of the research groups with which I work.  I’m not sure if they all know what happened, but I think they do.  I get a few smiles.  I’m glad to let them see that I’m still alive.  I leave to go see my boss and another coworker who are both not there.  I leave to go see another person on campus.  Also not there.  I go to acupuncture.  Another way of caring for and loving myself through this process. 

Part 4 – Right Mindfulness and Ongoing Reflections

I think about the lesson I learned and lived throughout these few days - to take the time to ask/listen for what needs to be done… and then do that thing (and sometimes that thing is to do nothing).  My conversations with my insurance company (about an hour’s worth of conversations in between finding out my bike was totaled and calling my father) was no less a practice in mindfulness than my hour and twenty minutes of sitting meditation the day before.  If I had chosen to sit on my meditation cushion when I needed to call Geico, I would have been hiding from the thing that was indicated for my life in that moment.  If I had tried to have an hour conversation with my insurance company instead of sitting and letting my body relive its trauma in a healing way, I would have been doing what far too much of the world today does: charging ahead of my healing.  Acting unskillfully, unmindfully, and unaware of the habit energies determining my behaviors and running my life when I am neither conscious nor awake.  In each moment I have had the opportunity to live mindfully and awake.  This is not about perfection; it is about intention.  I am sure there were many things about the past 4 days that could have been handled differently, “better.”  But the choice I made from the moment I hit the pavement, inspired and nourished by someone else’s experiences and reflections, to be present to my body with mindfulness – that choice began to create a ripple effect in how I have experienced these subsequent days.  The simple act of stopping to honor my body led to the next moment and the next moment.  How do I honor my body now?  And now?  And now?  How do I honor this moment – this process – this experience? 

“Most people go their whole lives without every really waking up.”  I quoted this in my last post.  It’s so easy to go through life asleep.  Asleep at the wheel, asleep at work, asleep with friends, asleep while watching tv, asleep while on jury duty.  All I really did was begin to pay attention and become willing to listen.  Continually listen.  I gave my body what it needed without being self-centered or narcissistic.  I remembered to tell my supervisors I wasn’t coming in.  I took care of medical, financial, physical, emotional, and spiritual needs – none to the neglect of the others.  I stopped.  I listened.  I sat.  I hugged trees.  I filed claims.  I made phone calls.  I didn’t tell a bunch of people what happened to get sympathy or pity or attention.  I was mindful that, depending on how I told people, it might spark feelings of fear in them, and so I tried to be careful how I told others, and when.  More than anything, perhaps, I did not waste too much energy fighting this as something that should not have happened, nor berating myself for being stupid or foolish. 

I know that I was driving between lanes.  Overall, what I did was safe and yet also risky.  Someone chose to break the law and cross in front of me over a double yellow line.  I have dealt with the frustration, anger, and disappointment that someone could steer a motorcycle into another car and then simply drive off.  I am still dealing with that, I guess.  I am willing to reevaluation my priorities that lead me to “lane split.”  I am wondering at what point the increase in risk to my life ever becomes worth consistently being able to “arrive” more speedily at a destination.  Is even a .001% (and of course it is more than that) increase in the likelihood that I could die on the road a worthwhile chance to take so that I can cut 15-30 minutes of my commutes during rush hour?  I am rethinking the words in the fifth mindfulness training: “I am determined not to gamble.”  I do not have a problem with lottery scratchers or slot machines, but perhaps I think the payoff of getting somewhere just a little sooner is worth a gamble with my life.  I am not answering these questions yet, but I am sitting with them, and letting them reflect back to me more deeply where the priorities of this world and myself lie.  It gives me pause to reflect on what is important to me, and why – and how not lane splitting might be my most powerful act of nonviolent resistance in a society consumed with getting “there” more and more quickly.  I don’t know.  I do know that I am alive.  That I am here on this earth, and that I can walk on the ground and kiss it with my feet.  I know that I can hug the earth and let it absorb my pain and my trauma with its seemingly infinite capacity for love and restoration.  I know I can celebrate the sunshine and the starry night sky for another day.  And I know that I am here with you, reading this blog.  Either rolling your eyes at my hippie-ness, or struck by something that for you is a “takeaway” piece of wisdom or insight.  I know that we are here together.  Today.  And this, more than anything else, is the miracle.