yes, I can’t

yes, I can't...

Lately, I’ve been doing things I can’t do.

In May, I fasted for eight days and went without coffee for 41 days. I did the Master Cleanse, where all you eat-drink is lemonade made of fresh lemon juice, Grade B maple syrup and cayenne pepper. That’s the fast. For the cleanse, you start the day with a huge drink of salt water that keeps your bowels functioning in the absence of solids. Drinking that down is most disgusting thing I have ever done. Don’t worry no details on that follow.

To prepare for the fast, I started weaning myself off of coffee, or so I thought. Apparently, I drink so much coffee that what I considered weaning was still taking in LOTS of caffeine. I had no idea what I was in for, when two days before fast day, I stopped altogether. I didn’t get the headaches. I got severe muscle aches from my waist to my knees. It was as if that part of my body was filled with liquid [I picture it as thermometer mercury] and when the liquid would pool somewhere, the pain would heat up]. I couldn’t find a position where I wasn’t in pain. For three days. I kept moving from position to position to avoid the worst of the pain, and being woken up out of my sleep by it, and laughing my ass off because it was so extreme that I would be screaming “OW” at the top of my lungs in my apartment—stunning that I didn’t have a clue about the impact of caffeine on my body, and funny how pissed off my body was at me for taking away caffeine it probably didn’t want in the first place.

[There's a whole thing to be explored regarding habits, mindlessness, and what becomes a comfort zone, but later — For now, let's stick with exploring doing things I can't do.]

I knew the pain was going to subside if I just stuck it out. So, for the first two days of the fast, I was completely absorbed in pain management and totally distracted from my feelings about not-eating. Fasting was effortless when your body was beating the shit out of you.

Eventually, I was just fasting. Not having a hard time with it [total surprise there]. Amazed at how quickly my sense of smell became so acute, also that I could actually be turned on by the white flour of pizza crust. Everywhere in NYC, someone is making and selling food. There is no escape. O and they’re brewing and selling coffee, too.

Didn’t matter. I was not going to quit before daybreak of day nine. I had planned this. Booked my calendar around it. I wanted to see what would happen, how I would feel. During and after. If it was hard to take, boring [and it was], sticky and required me to clean up the stickiness over and over, I was still doing it.

It was after all, just eight days. I don’t think I really got this before the fast, but: eight days is just not that long. I’m not recommending the fast here. I can tell you what I experienced and why I did it—you do, or don’t do what speaks to you. I don’t think it was necessarily healthy for my body to only take in lemonade [sugar, right?] for a week, but then, I didn’t think I would irrevocably damage myself, and I wanted to see if I could do—no, I wanted to know that I could do it. I was more interested in the cleanse side of it than the question of what was healthy eating for the moment. And again, no details will follow on that end.

It felt great to have completed it, and even better that it really wasn’t that big of a deal during. So, when a friend suggested I take the no-coffee deal to forty days, I said sure without giving it a thought. With a witness, you’re committed, right?

That one wasn’t as easy. By the last ten days, I was fantasizing about coffee. But – I stuck it out. And, daybreak of day 41 arrived without enough time for me to get a really good coffee, so I didn’t have my first cup until the next day. Highly unusual behavior for me: mindful, patient and focused on the moment at hand. Nice.

Doing things I can’t is changing me. It’s slowed me down. It’s got me paying attention to the experience and making choices that reflect what matters to me beyond the instant of gratification. I like that. And, I had a great cup of coffee on day 42.

One more—

This weekend, standing with my legs a little apart and arms at my sides, over the course of an hour, I slowly raised my arms sideways until they were clasped above my head, triceps behind my ears [at the half-hour mark] and then I slowly lowered them back down.

Try it. It hurts like hell. There was screaming involved.

Also laughing — especially when I go to the hands clasped over head position because until that moment, that arm position had been something too hard for me to do. In my yoga class [where things like this come up] I would always opt for arms overhead shoulder-width apart. Couldn’t do that other hands-clasped thing: my shoulders were too tight. No, I couldn’t do that. Until now.

Nice. New context: totally different experience.

And, now I know that if something sucks for an hour or less: I can totally do it.

What else can I do that I can’t do?

How about you?

Tagged: challenging yourself, practice

Posted in: experiments, personal development