365 Days of Yoga - Day 13

I woke up at 6:30am and in the dark scooched on my yoga pants and sports bra, grabbed my tennis shoes and my key card and snuck out as quietly as possible, so as not to wake my still sleeping roommate. The hallway was dim and the whole place was filled with that pre-dawn feeling. You know what I'm talking about? It's supposed to be a magical hour...that time before the sun rises. The ayurvedically-inclined will tell you that these hours are the most potent for meditation. I always think about Rumi and about this poem, when I am up before the sunrise:

The breeze at dawn
has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask
for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth
across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

Ugh! I love that! So...that is what I think of in these hours. Because it does feel that way...as if some passageway might just be hanging open somewhere. Maybe it's just the impending light. Or how everyone is hushed and puffy from sleep. Whatever it is...I love it.

For the morning I took the "moderate" level class, which was chock-full of core work and pranayama, and man...if I thought pranayama was great in the afternoon, it is even better in the morning. My god...the amount of space in my body I am NOT using upon waking is pretty shocking. Why aren't we taught these things? To get up and right away get into our body--to breathe and to stretch and to check in with all those things--our openness, our tightness, our shallowness of breath. Why is that we are taught as americans that you wait until the very last second to wake up, pound a cup of coffee, shower with your eyes half closed and then dash off into the day? That can not be good for us. Just this simple simple thing of waking early, breathing, stretching, breathing some more--I could feel the difference it was having on my mind and my body. No wonder everyone claims not to be a morning person--the typical american morning sucks.

It's good. Is what I'm saying. For me--the waking early and rolling into yoga class--is really good.

After class was breakfast (with a tofu scramble to write home about), then I took an Ayurveda workshop, which was great--I've been wanting to learn more about Ayurveda and this was just a solid 2 hour overview of the major concepts. (I was actually, ahem, so taken by the workshop and by the woman who led it that I scheduled a consultation with her for later that afternoon. Even though I promised myself I wouldn't spend any money! I wanted to know my doshas, damnit!). And after the Ayurveda workshop was a "positional therapy" workshop (too complicated to explain here), then lunch (yum!!), then my ayurvedic consultation, and then...(drumroll please) the photoshoot!

So, overall, the photoshoot was totally great. Beautiful studio, great photographer, great snack table...great great great. All the Kripalu people were smart and supportive and amazing and it was a blast to get my picture taken. At one point, while looking at the pictures with them I started laughing and said out loud...

"Man, this is so great! My two favorite things: yoga, and people paying attention to me!"

What was interesting, though, was how much stuff came up for me in the shoot that was so much like what comes up for me as an actor: I felt intimidated by the models who were more advanced yogis, and even though I was getting all kinds of praise, all I focused on was the negative---they cut that one pose, I'm not doing as much as the other girls, etc. etc..

It didn't help much that the model before me was this GAWgeous 18 year old ballerina who apparently has no bones in her body, as she could grab her perfect legs and put them just about anywhere with little sign of exertion. I completely abandoned my warm-up as I watched her nearly bend over backwards in a side split and pull her leg up right behind her head as if she were picking up a glass of water. "That's okay" I had to remind myself, "I am not...that. And that's okay."

When my turn came I was feeling a little bit like a stuffed sausage in my tight white outfit and nervous about whether I would be able to do what was asked. Of course...the very first pose--no salami (I'll stop with the sausage talk now). No way no how, my body's not even built that way. Which would have been fine and understandable except...maaaaaybe I sort of implied that I COULD do that pose...um. But I THOUGHT I could! I really did! When they sent the little form with the pictures of the poses and asked us to rate our comfort level I looked at that one and thought I could TOTALLY do that! Except. Apparently I can't. So. Okay. Cool.

So, then we got into some poses I could do...and things were going swimmingly, and then into a pose that I LOVE and that I consider myself really quite good at, and we were working it and working and the amazing gorgeous brilliant shoot director was giving me adjustments and I really felt like I was getting it, you know? But...it was late in the day and they were short on time and I wasn't (gulp) "up high enough or rotated enough" (argh!) so they cut it and moved me on to some sitting poses. At which point they got all excited because they'd not yet had any straight on poses and they could not have been happier with what I was doing, but me? All I could think was...I couldn't do it. I couldn't do what they wanted. I couldn't do it.

Actors out there...any of that sound familiar?

It's an amazing thing, that all of my "stuff" is apparently not dependent on circumstance, but is carried with me from environment to environment. And I know it's a blessing from me to see and experience, because the more that happens, the clearer it is that all of that stuff--all the doubt and recrimination--that it's all just a mind trip, and that there is a possible definition of worth and success that is outside all this stuff. It's so easy to feel like the crazy profession that I'm in (acting) is the only one so full of competition and drive and pivoting for position, but in fact, that stuff is all internal. If you feel overlooked in your work, you are going to feel overlooked, no matter what kind of work you are doing. You can change the work and change the work and maybe find relief for a while, but ultimately the thing you are struggling with will out.