{"id":43535,"date":"2016-02-03T15:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T20:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wanderlust.com\/?p=43535"},"modified":"2016-02-04T14:22:08","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T19:22:08","slug":"connecting-power-disconnection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wanderlust.com\/de\/journal\/connecting-power-disconnection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Disconnection"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m Tatum. I\u2019m a storyteller and I love listening to the stories of others, too. So I\u2019m making a thing of it. In conjunction with my recently announced three-month MOVE SIT WRITE tour<\/a>, I\u2019m meeting with what I\u2019m calling Actual Humans of Yoga, (AHOY! for short) and asking them to tell me their stories. These stories are about growth, grief, triumph, loss, and pain. In other words, these are human stories. Through them, I hope to show you that your connection to other yogis is not founded in your favorite yoga pose, the color of your skin, your gender, your weight, your age, or your sexual orientation. Instead, it\u2019s your story and how you tell it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

To kick off this series, I\u2019d like to tell my story. This is a story about connection, or rather, disconnection and reconnection to self.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t make eye contact very well. I prefer to stare at people\u2019s mouths. This goes for everyone. From very best friends to loving family members to students in my workshops. When I tell stories, I perform them just to the left of the person I\u2019m talking to. People often look in the same direction to see what\u2019s over there and I have to explain myself. It\u2019s awkward. But I keep on doing it.<\/p>\n

iPhones were invented for people like me. I can safely \u201cconnect\u201d with people from a distance. By using social media and texting I can bare my soul from behind the glow of a screen and delete or ignore whatever I want.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the rub: As much as I avoid deep connection<\/a>, I\u2019m tragically attached to the approval of others. In a super unhealthy way. So when I put myself out there even a little bit and I get feedback that it\u2019s not quite right, my gut drops into my butt.<\/p>\n

In yogi terms: my third chakra implodes. The third chakra<\/a> governs your sense of self, your ego, your self esteem, and your sense of purpose. It\u2019s the same feeling you got when you realized you peed the sleeping bag at your first-ever sleepover birthday party. (That\u2019s never happened to me<\/i>, or anything, I\u2019ve just heard it\u2019s super terrible.)<\/p>\n

\"howard-thurman-quote\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until very recently that I fully understood this as a deep disconnection to self. I had one of those days where everything goes from bad to worse. I\u2019ll spare you the details to protect the innocent, but this day came on the tail end of months of anger, resentment, loneliness<\/a>, depression, and anxiety. Something in me broke that day and it hurt. Real bad.<\/p>\n

So instead of going to yoga, I did some casual binge drinking, I cried a lot and ordered enough sushi for delivery that the restaurant gave me enough cutlery for three people. Somewhere between a spicy tuna and a dynamite roll, I realized something:\u00a0I wasn\u2019t going to get the approval and love from others that I wasn\u2019t prepared to give to myself<\/a>. By walking around shielding my eyes, performing stories to ghost people and getting my jollies by pretending to be vulnerable online, I was sending a clear message:<\/p>\n

I am disconnected to myself and I am scared to reconnect because I\u2019m not sure I have anything worth connecting to.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Human beings are innately intuitive. We can sense when someone isn\u2019t showing up fully for themselves or for us and we do weird things when that happens. In my case, I chose to drink a lot of whiskey and eat large amounts of sushi to numb the pain of disconnection.<\/p>\n

Since that numbness isn\u2019t permanent, I decided to try something different: radical reconnection to self.<\/p>\n

I quit drinking (30 days sober as I write this!), left my day job, decided to go on tour teaching writing and meditation<\/a>, and, of course, start this series. By asking people to tell their stories, I have to hold a safe space for them to share openly. This means I have to make eye contact and share my stories with vulnerability. Gulp.<\/p>\n

This also means people may say things I don\u2019t like about what I\u2019m doing or how I\u2019m doing it. Double gulp. But it\u2019s going to be up to me to stay connected to myself and know that I\u2019m doing the best I can with the tools I have. That gut-to-butt-third-chakra-rumbly feeling will still be there, but I\u2019ll be able to handle it. And if I mess up, forgiveness is always there waiting for me.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

\"tatum-fjerstad-headshot\"<\/a>Tatum Fjerstad is professional napper who can\u2019t handle that Justin Timberlake loves another woman. When she\u2019s not imagining what her life would be like with JT, she is mostly a human being teaching other human beings how to be okay with being human. She does this through movement, meditation, and writing. Tatum is here to be helpful, honest, and make you laugh, obvi. To learn more about how she does this, follow her on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>,\u00a0or\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, and at\u00a0tatumfjerstad.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My next step: radical reconnection through storytelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":44467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1057],"tags":[1791,342,1676,318,51],"class_list":["post-43535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wisdom","tag-ahoy","tag-connection","tag-stories","tag-vulnerability","tag-yoga-practice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Power of Disconnection<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My next step: radical reconnection through storytelling.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wanderlust.com\/journal\/connecting-power-disconnection\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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