A few weeks ago, bored of my solo pandemic exercise routine, I decided to try out The Class. The Class is an hour-long, live workout that has been my ultimate release. I make strange sounds, move in ways that would make people on the street stop and stare, and completely let go for an hour.
Throughout each workout, Taryn Toomey and other instructors draw parallels between physical strength training and strength training of the mind — in other words, the resilience needed to get through a strenuous, sometimes monotonous routine is not unlike the resilience needed to get through the emotional aerobics that are life.
I feel extremely annoyed as we move onto minute three of a burpee, hoping that the instructor will give me permission to stop. But then I think about the other difficult things I want to get through in life — loss, argument, illness — and all of a sudden the ability to do 100 burpees feels a lot less like imposition, and a lot more like privilege.
Each class ends with what Taryn calls heart clearing, where I sit cross-legged on my mat, lift my arms up like a cactus, and pulse them back and forth. It’s hard to explain what happens in those few minutes, but what I can tell you is that I’ve cried and laughed and that I almost always experience some sort of electric energy release.
A few classes back, Taryn made a comment about what peace feels like and it stuck with me. She said that the first time she felt peace, it felt like emptiness. Sometimes it takes me awhile to process someone else’s thoughts, but this one resonated immediately. When I shared it with my boyfriend, the use of “emptiness” didn’t sit right with him. To him it had a negative connotation, whereas for me it had a liberating quality to it.
When I think about peace, I visualize a vast, open space, void of activities and movement and thoughts and things. And like Taryn, I also feel that an initial encounter with that empty space can feel uneasy, especially when the world keeps telling us to fill it — to fill it with productivity and passion projects and podcasts and as much as we possibly can.
Which brings me to the paradox that is language. What if our modern, at least American, understanding of “full” is sometimes “empty,” and “empty” is sometimes “full”?
If you were to visualize it, what does peace look like for you? Is it empty, is it full? Is it both, or neither? :)