Toxicity and the Many Sides of Me

I am a toxic person. There. I said it. But not like that- not how you’re thinking! I’m a real shirt off my back and cook a meal for ya’ kinda gal. I love baby animals, Christmas movies and baking brownies on Saturdays because you only live once.

But I am far from anyone’s popular perception of a traditional yoga practitioner. In fact, it’s been years since I practiced. When I first considered writing a blog for Bottoms Up! Yoga, I knew that, for all intents and purposes, I am completely unqualified to teach anyone a thing about Yoga.

I love a challenge, and so it got my wheels turning…what am I certified in? Nothing by technicality, though I was once a fairly successful Indie writer. Personally, I’m kind and polite but I love the dark and dirty side of life.

I just finished a novel on antihero college-age serial killers. There’s horror, industrial and metal music. The smell of gasoline and a strong IPA after a good set at the gym. Okay, a few IPA’s, but that’s just me. I’d think some would call me un-Yogi at first glance.

Perhaps, I am certified in myself, which is always my prerogative.

I like to think of my Yoga practice, my Reiki practice, and my writing practice as all intricately intertwined, each led by my brain and body and gathering power from my thoughts and actions. I’ve experienced a lot of negative things in life that I’m still dealing with.

Sometimes I feel like there’s an evil little movie reel following me around, filling my life with anxiety and personal demons. Hell, sometimes I even name them, give them a character in one of my books. Because that’s my practice, my life practice, no matter what art form it’s taking. I have to conquer them, turn around and say “Hey buddy, I am the IPA-loving scum around these parts.”

That’s a part of me. One part of me. That other persona of mine- the one that loves the baby animals and all- just turned on a soothing music playlist on YouTube because I can be a torrid ball of stress with too many deadlines, too many ongoing projects, and an addiction to white noise and soft blankets. More often than not, I just want to draw the curtains, drown in sleeping music and bottled waters, and just forget about it all and never leave the house again.

When lockdown hit in 2020, I remember thinking “I’m already used to this.” But it wasn’t like I could escape all the horrors going on outside. I’m on social media. I watch the news. As a writer, that kind of comes with the territory.

Rather than making me feel like hiding in bed, all that negativity did something else to me; it made me want to get up and move. I hadn’t trained so hard in years as I did in quarantine. Because it made me feel like I was making some kind of change, even if it was just in my personal strength. That lifting those weights, performing those stretches and meditating to those binaural beats could give me a personal slice of that negativity to turn into something the world was in need of.

Another clear head in the chaos. I suppose us toxically motivated people have our place, too. Maybe that’s my future Yogi at work.

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