Remembering Our Wild Selves

Our lives today rarely give us the opportunity to feel truly embodied. Yoga invites us to remember this connection, but only when we step completely out of our comfort zones do we remember the vastness of life, and our place within that vastness. We are not merely the curators of our email inboxes, the project managers of our households, or the social secretaries of our families. We are warm-blooded mammals, pulsing with life and deeply connected to the ecosystem of our vast and stunning planet. We are vital bodies moving through space on the surface of a small planet hurtling through an infinite sky. We are hearts and lungs and muscles and impulses and dreams. We are sources of raucous laughter, deep sighs, and comforting embraces.

We are also fleeting, and thus far better served wringing buckets of joy and experience from each day and spreading all that goodness around as much as possible.

The Courage to Dive Deep

Among the new divers, some worked incredibly hard to overcome intense anxiety to make the experience possible. This was my own journey learning to dive many years ago, and I have profound respect for that courage. It's deeply moving to witness them reach the other side of that challenge and share in their overwhelming awe and delight that comes from floating deep in the sea, swimming alongside its incredible inhabitants. Scuba diving is just one way we can put ourselves into the unknown, into the very arms of Mother Nature, stepping across the threshold of fear to experience something new and amazing.

Swimming Through Liquid Starlight

For myself, I had the mind-blowing experience of swimming through the ocean in darkness, the movement of my body lit by sparkles of bioluminescence and the soft, watery glow of a nearly full moon. I've been on night dives before, but this was the first time I was able to be there truly without fear. This finally allowed me to open to the vastness of the dark water and an unimaginable sense of peace I hadn't experienced before.

I've backed out of more night dives than I've joined, and those I have completed were very tense, contracted experiences. My vision would narrow to the beam of my flashlight on the seafloor, focused entirely on that small patch of illuminated sand and coral, and on not freaking out. On those earlier night dives, I would cling fiercely to my intentional breathing practice just to hold myself beyond the brink of panic.

This time, with a mind opened and softened from days of yoga and deep mindfulness and finally released from fear's grip, it was a completely different experience. We even turned our flashlights off for a few moments and just swam into the iridescent darkness. And it was truly magical.

Where does fear prevent you from experiencing something you yearn for? What might you discover if you let yourself step beyond that boundary? What if you felt the fear—and did it anyway? It might actually make your vacation last longer.

The Neuroscience of Expanded Time

Allowing ourselves to experience new and challenging things can literally make time feel slower. As Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman explains, "The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain records, and the faster time seems to pass."

The opposite also holds true: when we have new experiences, we build new neural circuits. We take in fresh information, and our sense of time's passage slows down. This is why vacations feel longer than weeks spent at home, why childhood summers seemed endless, and why parenting feels so bittersweet; the days are long and often repetitive, but the years feel impossibly short.

When experiencing something novel, our brains work harder to record all those fresh inputs. The more inputs, the denser our memories become, and looking back, this increased density makes time feel expanded. There's an emotional layer at work too: during intense experiences, the amygdala, our brain's emotional memory center, fires up, releasing stress hormones that enhance memory formation. Time feels like it slows dramatically because our brain is hyper-attentively recording every detail for survival.

Interestingly, theta brain waves active during intense emotional experiences are also prominent during deep meditative states. This may explain why meditation enhances emotional processing and memory formation in similarly profound ways.

The Chemistry of Flow and Wonder

Flow states, experienced when you're fully immersed in something enjoyable, also warp our experience of time. When our brain is deeply focused and engaged, we lose track of time in the best way. During flow states with familiar enjoyable activities, increased production of serotonin (the "happy" chemical) makes time feel like it's flying by.

But when we're doing something both fun and novel such as a rollercoaster ride or seeing your favorite band live for the first time, dopamine (the "reward" and attention chemical) comes online and can actually slow down our perception of time. Our brain wants to savor and remember these rewards so it can find them again.

Isn't that amazing? Your brain's chemistry is actively reshaping your experience of time.

Rewriting Our Relationship with the World

By engaging in novel experiences and opening ourselves to interacting with the world in new ways, we create fresh pathways for understanding. Instead of relying on predefined labels, we literally change our definition of ourselves in relation to the world beyond.

The ocean at night is no longer equated with "scary", it becomes magical and inviting. Fear transforms into wonder. The unknown becomes a doorway rather than a wall.

What new experience is calling to you? What if this could be the moment you step across that threshold—not despite the fear, but because of the magic waiting on the other side?