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OREGON’S LGBTO NEWSMAGAZINE
It starts before my alarm goes off. My eyes
open, focus on the wall where the morning sun
streams in the window. My thoughts begin
coming, rapid-fire— -fuck, it's too early to be
awake. I'm sore as hell and don't want to move.
Why didn't anyone warn me how brutal yoga
school could be? A steady stream of thoughts
chug into my mind, one after another at in
creasing speed. What am I doing in New York,
anyway? What classes are today? Is it the weekend
yet? My cell phone alarm sounds its fake roost
er sounds to herald the new day. Fuck, I think,
hitting the snooze button. Freight Train Brain.
I walk out of my bedroom, step into the
bright kitchen of my ashram apartment. O ut
side, a small boat makes its way down the
Erie Canal, past train tracks and a sign wel
coming the reader to North Tonawanda, Ni
agara County—2,656 miles from home, I note
sadly. What's even going on in Portland? I won
der, run through a thousand possibilities in
my mind—Timbers hooligans rioting, gays
wandering the rainy waterfront for Pride, Mt.
Tabor erupting.
My roommate Serena steps out of her bed
room in a purple lululemon top and a sleepy
grin. “Morning, sunshine,” she says, walking
into the kitchen with the purposeful swagger
of a professional wrestler—appropriate, con
sidering her time spent as a WWE Diva.
“Morning, darling. W hat’s the lineup for
today?”
She pours sweetener into a cup of coffee.
“Nine a.m. practice, followed by yoga pos
JULY 1. 2011
Freight Train Brain
BY NICK MATTOS
it goes without saying that if you’ve
ever thought about how badly you
wanted a drink and then realized it
was iO a.m., you probably know a
thing or two about Freight Train Brain.
ture clinic, then a Bhagavad Gita lecture,
then a technical posture clinic, then another
practice session, and then meditation. Oh,
and then we study the postures that we cover
tomorrow.”
“Damn,” I say, rubbing my eyes while I scan
through my iTunes library. “It’s like we’re in
yoga boot camp.”
“Even worse,” she says. “In boot camp, you
just have to work out a bunch. We work out a
bunch and then spend hours studying the
theory behind it. Just don’t think about it.”
“Easier said than done,” I reply, clicking
on a song.
“Don’t want to think too much, it makes me
think too much, keeps my mind on my mind,”
Henry Rollins growls, speaking the truth. “It
overloads me. I want to disconnect myself.”
iL JS
thing or two about Freight Train Brain.
I set down my bag and kick my shoes off at
the door of the yoga studio, set them in a
jumbled pile with the other students’ foot
wear. I rush to the practice room and throw
the door open, get hit in the face with a hu
mid wall of heat. The Bikram yoga room is
equal parts laboratory and torture chamber—
105-degree heat, mirrors reflecting your
sweaty face back at you unapologetically. I f
you can find peace here, I think to myself , al
ready starting to sweat,finding it in the rest of
your life is a snap.
I lie face up on my mat like the rest of the
students, eyes closed, thoughts stampeding.
Okay, fine, I declare inwardly as an experi
ment, I call a truce. No rituals, no fixations, no
numbness. You race, I state to my mind, and
I'll watch.
My chest rises and falls, beads of sweat
forming. Outside, a train passes by, its whistle
calling out for attention, rumbling past the
building. I feel the floor vibrate with its pass
ing, let it shake my body and be present in my
ears without attaching to it, without aversion.
The train passes away, the room stills—I
breathe, watch, smile. The instructor walks,
into the room. “Good morning, everyone,” she
says, the students sitting up to face her in uni
son. “Welcome to yoga.” JG
The Yoga Sutras—the texts upon which
the practice of yoga is based—are concerned
primarily with practices and philosophies
that lead to “the cessation of the whirlings of
the mind.” When I first read this line, I
gasped, stunned by the accuracy of the
phrasing—the concise way it explained what
was happening when my thoughts fired
through my head as though shot by a semi
automatic weapon. I’m someone with a mind
wired for whirling, someone who, like Roll
ins, gets overloaded to the point where I just
want to disconnect myself.
The elevator door slides open and I jump
inside, a yoga mat in one hand and a bag of
anatomy textbooks in the other. The thoughts
keep racing— What i f I got stuck in the eleva
tor? I check that my phone is in my pocket,
check again. I, like many of those with minds
prone to whirling, tend to think of lots of
means to temporarily disconnect ourselves—
anxious rituals, obsessive fixations and good
ol’ fashioned chemical-induced numbness. It
goes without saying that if you’ve ever thought By the time you read this, N ick M attos will be
about how badly you wanted a drink and then a certified Bikram yoga instructor. Send Henry
realized it was 10 a.m., you probably know a Rollins bootlegs to nickmattos@justout.com.
20 AUGUST 2011
7 pm - 2 am
$40 A D V A N C E
FOR Tld|
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•
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709 SE 122ND AVE.
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503.257.8617
2 LOCAT,ONS
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20625 SW T.V. HWY
ALOHA, OR. 97006
503.356.5624