day 8

I know I'm committed to this yoga practice. I didn't get the kind of sleep I need and I still got up and braved the 8am class.
I'm a person who cherishes her sleep. deeply. So, it is a big deal when I choose to crawl out of a snug cocoon of dreams and warm blankets to drive 20 minutes to stand in a 100 degree room and challenge my body, mind and spirit to a test of strength, flexibility, compassion, patience and pure determination.
It feels good.
I feel powerful showing up for myself this way. This is who I am. I don't know who's been occupying my body for the last little while and shriveling it down to pain and fatigue, but I am back home and cleaning house.
It's taking it's time but, I'm willing to show up.
Little by little I can feel the tiniest of spaces opening up. Little by little the bracing is softening.
It is an unlikely complement to my work with Somatic Experiencing, where everything is about slowing down, titrating, less is more, gentleness, etc.
Bikram is the polar opposite of this. In class, even, the teacher spoke of judging a competition! I didn't know such a thing existed. Yoga as a competitive sport?
At first, I cringed and all my self righteous judgement came in and declared that I was right all along...Bikram yoga is a yoga practice that has strayed from the tenets of a non-competitive, non-judgemental and compassionate form. How can this be yoga? How can this be a good place to be?
Then, I thought of sports, athletics, things like the Olympics and the standards of excellence within physical competitions. I thought of things like diving and swimming, for some reason.
I thought of the idea of competition.
There is something we all accept readily about people engaging in competitive sports. We applaud and marvel and are inspired by the exquisite mileposts that athletes attain. There is something in doing this or witnessing this, that reminds us of possibility. endless possibility. We can be anything we want to be. there's proof. someone has come before us and done something remarkable. We come up close to it when we engage in or watch competitions.
So why not yoga? It is a discipline that tempers muscle, sinew and bone and there is a constant edge to grow to.
Why wouldn't yoga be included in the category of rigorous, athletic discipline?
Then, I think about things like dancing. the arts. Disciplines that are also involved in the rigors of physical perseverance and commitment. A journey of blood, sweat and tears. Not unlike competitive sports but without the gold medals, the live television broadcasts and the merchandise.
But wait, there are dance competitions.....which I also have judgements about....
anyway...it's a topic that's floating around for me. nothing too serious. just some thoughts.
what I realize in this, though, is the opportunity to see where I get so rigid in my thinking and beliefs and how that translates into my body and how it holds me back from participating in my life in a much richer way. So, who cares if one person wants to compete with yoga and another person regards it as a deeply spiritual practice of non-competition?
Maybe it can be both.
Maybe it doesn't matter except within my own experience.
Right now I'm not interested in getting big applause for how awesome I look in standing bow or for how long I can hold standing head to knee pose. There definitely was a time in my life when this mattered to me, whether I was willing to admit it or not.
But, truly, TODAY, and I can really only speak to today...it was just me in the room with me. I was proud of myself for the small distances I've grown since Day 1. I was really okay with the fact that my half locust barely gets off the ground. It was more a provocation of a curiosity of how disorganized, less strong and less integrated my back body is compared to my front. It was an analytical question, at times, asking what is happening in my pelvis with torsion so that my right side is shortened and my left iliac crest rides higher? Why is my right leg support so much stronger and clearer while my left leg wobbles and feels so fuzzy and incoherent? Why is my left hamstring so resistant to lengthening while my right leg is slowly getting longer?
These were the questions. But, it is refreshing to have no self criticism. I'm so grateful that there is no militant dictator inside of me throttling me at every breath. I'm surprisingly quiet in my mind. wow.
This is my yoga.
And,another thing....
today on the way to class I heard a story on NPR about the private citizens who have been participating in self immolation in protest of the Chinese occupation of their country and the murder of their culture.
Somewhere near the beginning of class I thought to dedicate my practice, as is done in Buddhist mediation, to the people of Tibet and to all people who don't have the strength they need to face their particular challenges. As I was challenged with the postures, I would hold them in my mind and say "this is for you. let me be strong and show up and meet this challenge with the best of my strength, effort and heart." It opened everything up.
I have no idea what the postures looked like. But, from the inside, my heart was on and there was a purpose for my moment.
This is my yoga.

day 7. good teachers.

8am came early but, I am determined to show up for this practice. It gets harder the busier my day gets. I’m just in the first week so I want to just rest and relax afterwards, all day...until the next class; devote my life to yoga, water, food, sleep and enjoyment of flowing with whatever I want to do next. For now that doesn’t pay my bills so I’ll have to find my balance.

That’s what it’s all about anyway.

8am came earlier today than it did yesterday, so I arrived just in time to secure a spot...in the front, away from all sources of fresh air. awesome. here we go.

it took a while for my consciousness to show up. it toddled in somewhere around head to knee posture. until then, I was sort of on autopilot.

now that I have a fixed picture of a japanese ham sandwich, I was able to hold the image in my mind and pull myself towards it. The first one is quite challenging for me because my left hamstring injury is really not so eager to unfold or let me have even an inch so I am folded over with my chest to my thighs and seriously bent knees while my hands are just barely holding towards my heels. Between the hamstring and the disc herniation in my back, it’s one posture that starts the day of right with a huge dose of patience, humility and compassion. it is what it is. not what it was.

but, by the second round there is considerably more space and this assures me I’m on the right track. with what it is. not what it was. I can do this.

standing head to knee is slowly progressing, too. my left knee standing is coming closer into the lamppost they speak about but, it still caves in. so, here, on day 7, I continue to simply hold my right foot in my hand, work on the left leg straight and just feel the impulse to kick my right heel and see in my mind’s eye where i’m going someday.

the other side is growing more quickly.  even with the hamstring injury, there is more organization in my right leg and side and so, there is more space for me to move in.

I feel the impulse of the left heel kick and, even though my left knee is significantly bent, I’m in the right form. where I am with what it. not what was. I can do this.

other places are feeling the smallest and subtlest of spaces. 

The postures where I have the most physical challenges are:

half locust, locust, standing head to knee, the other standing head to knee where you tuck your chin and roll forward with arms in namaskar....

these are my good teachers so, I will bring them apples and ride my bike past their houses.

I tolerated the heat without needing to rest, there wasn’t any funky smell distracting me, I smiled, I didn’t beat myself up once, I didn’t project my angers or frustrations on anyone else, I didn’t compare myself to anyone else, I had compassion and acceptance with where I am and I felt gratitude. THAT’S a kickass yoga practice if you ask me.

day 6. what the heck is a japanese ham sandwich?

day 6 and my energy is returning. something rises in me that reminds me of my old me; the me in me that knows how to get on the field and stand in the face of dragons. when there wasn't really a choice, something more me than me just got to it and kept me moving.

i am finding myself again in an unlikely way.

the room is thick, hot and smells like rotten beans. it's the only complaint i had today. this feels like progress.


today i could remind myself to smile.
i would smile and then things got lighter and easier.
every day so far i have been able to touch my gratitude for being here, being in this body, moving, sweating, stretching, standing and growing.
i can feel my years have settled me into someone wiser and more solid.
decades ago, when i first met this practice, i was fierce and full of possibility. the physical challenge was the game. i could dive into an asana and stay and, therefore, completely bypass the journey in a lot of ways.
now my body remembers, but needs more humility and patience. with this, comes the deep rippling of gratitude.
Injury is a gift in this way. Pain is a gift in this way.
when movement and growth come through that kind of briar patch, the experience is rich with joy.
I celebrate my body. I honor my limitations. I trust my pace. I decide and dedicate myself to open and become strong and flexible and balanced.
I dance my life.
I am here.

day 2. spine.

the second day brings things closer to the surface.
yesterday was a beginning.
and, with beginnings comes a buoyancy, an optimism, a take on the world kind of attitude.
today, there is a little more effort that rides alongside.

at the start of this challenge, I rise.

torpor and malaise are wrung from my bones in a steady river of sweat.
i'm giving up the old ways and returning to my roots.
at the center of my every cell is a dance.
when i breathe, I give music to it.

reaching back into the spaces, allowing my eyes to rest on the soft wall,
a treasure is touched,
a gift disguised as grit;
the thing that needing saving the most,
the thing to hide above all else.
when the house is burning, this will be the thing to carry out.
so safely tucked away,
then forgotten.

and, so the world becomes the loss and validation of what went missing.
what was sent so deep into the bones begins to pulse, like a vacancy.
a life turns empty.
eyes go blind.

with this renewed archaeology, a city is unearthed with confusion and only vague memory.
the task aligns with the discovery of an ancient language, a culture of solid purpose and a recognized daimon unfolding.

bring it from the coils of dark earth up to the surface of day,
then witness what alchemy has been gestating, waiting for this sudden moment.

luna mer to shade of zaadz

there is so much bright sun.
my skin peels back and everything under it is raw.
how beautiful to be under the boughs, feeling the pulse of a simple moment sliding into the next.

i once got a postcard from you,
swimming in the warm australian waters, and you told me:
to abandon everything you know, for a while,
to find yourself.

we wrote, back and forth,
in a canopy of anonymity.
but, who needs a name when all the real treasures nest so squarely on a poem?
the conversations were private worlds crafted into eloquent riddles; images of emptied pools, shore struck ships and cafes where you sat without being seen.

i arrived at a special delight to discover your comments adeptly bearing the weights of my soul. to be met without meeting, to be known without knowing. and the dance
was a playful challenge to continue,
to write, to speak, to sing,
to show myself
over and over.
because you were there with a cigar in your mouth,
laughing
and shaking your head and sometimes,
quietly clapping.

i'm rusty now and strange to my own tangled alphabet.
in a stash of forget me nots, i found you again, smirking and running out of view.
your voice, shouting from the hidden forest, told me:
"you know you don't have to hit a home run on all those curve balls, don't you? Just tip the ball to the side into foul and you might buy yourself a bit of time."

what time have you bought and where do you wander?
and, I wonder sometimes if you found your place by the sea.
Are you the crackle of the fire, the smoke of a prayer
or the guttural joy of a garden?

a mystery like this assures me.
In things seen and unseen, is all.
Through the plagues of isolation and bereavement, the skies are still dusted with amazing light.
songs emerge and no breath goes unnoticed.
"we are spun from the stars," someone said. and, what lives inside is us as vast as infinite space.
we go on going and ride the pitches that come our way.

you tell me again, "life isn't about security, it's about what you discover,
but, remember to step back from the plate from time to time."