Despite the fact that last year alone we flew on over 30 flights, I hate flying. Although luckily not enough to make me stop wanting to see the world. So flying and I, or well, being in transit in general, well, we need to come to some sort of agreement. Because I’m not going to stop. The most difficult part of traveling for me is letting go of control. I don’t know if the flight will be on time, and if it’s not, sometimes we miss our connections or our plans at our destination. I don’t know how long all the lines we have to stand in will take and I can’t make them move faster. Customs lines after long overnight flights are the WORST and always seem to take hours.
When I was 17 and returning from a summer in Italy with an exchange family, I missed my connection home because the customs line took too long. Ever since, I have flashbacks of that day when we are waiting in those lines: I see myself, a haggard, crazy-eyed child running through the airport dragging all her luggage, half of which busted open during the run and spilled across the airport hallway and is now hastily patched together with a belt, reaching the gate just as the door is closing and being turned away by the unsympathetic gate attendants. I only had to wait 3 or 4 more hours to get on the next flight home, but it felt like the end of the world to me. I hadn’t seen my family in 8 weeks, my grandpa had passed away while I was gone, and all I wanted to do was get home. I felt so alone and helpless, but I realized there was nothing to do but clean up, change my sweaty clothes, re-pack my broken bag as best I could, and wait. I would get there eventually, and not all that much later I did.
But that “disaster” has stuck with me and lead to an overwhelming feeling of anxiety when situations in airports don’t go my way. I’m learning, and so is my husband, on how to cope (he plops me down in a corner and hands me fruit ninja on zen mode…..endless cutting of fruit with your finger as a blade…calms me every time…but let’s not analyze that shall we?). My difficultly with instant flexibility and resiliency, especially when I’m tired and hungry, which for me is synonymous with travel, has made for some pretty challenging moments for us and those trying to serve us. Now that we are traveling more than ever, I’ve decided it’s about time I found some consistent coping mechanisms.
Last year before we left for a trip to Europe a friend of mine shared Babar’s Yoga for Elephants with me. While it’s meant to teach yoga to children, it is also about staying calm in busy, crazy, challenging places and moments by doing yoga. I especially loved the delayed flight page where they are doing plow pose. While it might not always be practical to flip into plow pose in the middle of the gate area, there are plenty of other ways to incorporate yoga, or the idea of yoga into your travels. For instance, now, when I’m getting antsy standing in line and feel my anxiety starting up, I lift a leg into tree pose and feel myself relax, or I focus on my breath for a few minutes. It gives me something to do to take my mind off the wait or the unknown, and helps me get centered again.
The book also has some wonderful illustrations of Babar doing yoga while traveling. Since we were going to France at the time, I even got to recreate one of the poses (please excuse my terrible form in down-dog. I was trying to do it as fast as possible before the guards nearby got too suspicious).
Does traveling stress you out? Do you do it anyway? What do you do to cope?