The Twisties
Most of us first heard about the Twisties a few years ago when gymnast and super-human, Simone Biles dropped out of a gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Olympics because she had developed a case of The Twisties, an affliction in which a gymnast, hurtling through space and time suddenly loses orientation, can’t tell which way is up, where her body is in space or where and how she is going to land. Just the thought of being in that situation is scary.
Medium Hollister Rand did a Facebook live broadcast in which she talked about the spiritual “Twisties,” using the condition as a metaphor for what so many of us are feeling at the moment. Most people I know are dealing with some disorienting, disruptive or transitional energy in their lives. Looking out on the world, it often feels like everything is upside down, that danger is around every corner and that the numerous crises across all sectors of society threaten the notion of that we live in, or even can live in a civil society. Sometimes I just sit and think, “What is happening and what is the way forward?!” I think of Michael and his unrelenting back pain for the last month and how it takes over and colors everything, sometimes, oftentimes, hampering the ability to even think clearly. And I wonder if we, collectively, are experiencing a similar condition, if not physically than psychically for sure: unrelenting pain, stress, disorientation, and/or dread at the pace of change in our world--too fast, sometimes, and too slow at other times.
When Simone Biles had the Twisties, she withdrew from competition, stopped training, just stopped. There was little else she could do. She waited until she felt she could get back out there, not knowing if she would ever be able to get back out there. There’s so much grace and strength in that, the ability to surrender to what is in front of you and the circumstance you find yourself in. Hollister, in her talk, offered some tips to deal with spiritual twisties, including grounding, connecting with community, being silent, and of course, being out in nature, all things that support and nurture our humanity and our sense of being a part of a larger whole.
Lately I’ve been remembering something I used to do with the kids when they were little, and my husband was on a business trip. The kids, of course, were always up early, sometimes as the sun was coming up or before. And when the weather was mild, I would make them raisin toast and hot chocolate, and we would go out onto the front porch, just outside the front door, I would put down some blankets and we would wrap ourselves up in more blankets and drink hot cocoa and have our raisin toast. I told them we were going to “watch the morning” Most times it was before people were leaving for work or school, before they were taking the dogs for walks. It was just quiet. Watching the morning, we would listen to the quiet and just hang out there, noticing the quick movements of birds, or how the light was changing as the sun moved up in the sky. It was a lovely way to just watch the transition from dawn to daylight, from restfulness to activity, to just witness it, really, without commentary. We did that until they had had enough, and we went inside to get dressed and start our day. I remember those short times as being some of the most peaceful and most beautiful.
And as I, like so many, find myself feeling like I am in these disorienting and chaotic transition times, I find myself yearning for quiet peacefulness and feeling like it’s time to start watching the morning again, with or without hot chocolate and raisin toast. As we cycle through the seasons, just watching the morning light change can soothe my soul.
Sometimes the only way forward is to stop for a bit.