Since childhood, I have experienced an unusual pattern where strong physical exertion is followed by being nonfunctional for about a day (and no, this is not the usual tiredness that comes after exercise.) I usually have no choice but to go to bed and sleep it out.
It is workable in the sense that it has a predictable pattern: It only happens when I exert myself at 80-90% (or beyond) of what I am capable of, independent of what shape I am in. This means that I have been able to mostly avoid it by doing gentler forms of exercise like hiking, biking and swimming, and avoiding the forms of exercise where I more easily go into over-exertion, such as running.
But even if I am mindful of this, I now and then go over the invisible boundary and reap the consequences, and yesterday was one of those days. I chopped firewood Monday night, and must have gotten a little too enthusiastic about it.
That same night, there was a sense of something physically off, and nothing I did – water, food, self-breemas – seemed to correct it. And waking up the morning after, all of the usual symptoms of over-exertion were there. (Although since this has not happened for a while, I didn’t make the connection until much later in the day when it started to clear up.)
It is as if the body-mind wants to shut down, a sense of stagnation throughout, and a feeling that everything is off and wrong. At the mind level, there is a strong sense of dullness and I go easier into contractions, such as irritability and grumpiness over things not going my way (the good part about that is that I not only get to see parts of my shadow more clearly, but also experience it from the inside, becoming it.) At the physical level, my body wants to shut down and sleep, and when I do, it is almost as if going into a coma. I usually shift out of it within 8-12 hours, typically after a nap, and I often feel stronger and clearer afterwards than I did before it happened (maybe due to the rest.)
This time, I noticed two dreams I though were interesting, especially as they seem to reflect entering into and moving out of the collapse phase.
Dream Tuesday morning: I am in a house that is not quite home
I am in a house which is very close to home, in the neighborhood of home, but not quite home. And there are many slightly odd things happening there, including problems with communication. I try to call someone, but the phone doesn’t work. I talk with people, and there is miscommunication. Everything seems a little off, and nothing I do seems to change it.
Dream Tuesday evening: someone tells me it has cleared
Towards the end of a nap, I am dreaming that someone tells me that there has been a shift into being healed. Waking up, I did experience a noticeable shift and felt much better, as if the fog had cleared, although some things were still being worked out.
Dreams faithfully reflecting what is going on
The house dream reflects entering into the pattern, of being close to home (same body-mind) but not quite at home (not functioning in a familiar way, or according to my – ideal – self-image.) And the healing dream reflects shifting out of it.
Maybe the most interesting part of this to me is that I didn’t seem to need the dreams to tell me about these shifts… both were abundantly clear in my waking state. But the dreams even then did their job faithfully and sincerely, reflecting what is going on in this body-mind.
If anything, seeing this makes me appreciate their work even more.
