365 Days of Yoga - Day 2

Long class tonight with Stacey (whom I LOVE)...she's an actress and singer as well as a yoga teacher and I feel some kind of unspoken bond with her because of it. She is also both fierce and open-hearted--a combination I find incredibly likeable and not an easy balance to strike (in my own life at least...it seems it's usually one or the other).

The room was packed, everyone eager to get their post-new-year sweat on, and I found myself way in the front corner of the class. Not bad--I never mind having a wall to one side of me, and the closer to the windows the better. Though lately I find that I gravitate more toward the middle of the class--I like seeing the synchronicity of movement of the yogis to all sides. But tonight it was just me and wall and window and a woman to my weft. Heh heh.

The class was pretty vigorous...it was an upper level and Stacey is not one to shy away from the hard stuff. We were doing a lot of twists and arm balances and, um, the one where your big toe is in your hand? Pat a goose asana? Just kidding. I'm trying to learn the Sanskrit but it's slow going, and I feel shy about giving it a try and massacring the name. (Sometimes I feel this way when we're chanting--singing out the chants like some pop-star from the back of the class knowing that I have NO IDEA what word I'm chanting--just faking my way through it like I've just graduated from Sanskrit school.) Anyhow. We were doing that, and some standing marichyasana...the one where your arms are bound around a knee that is jammed up into your armpit. (Not "jammed", Lia, that's not very yogic). Ahem. The one where your arms are bound around the knee that is moving toward your armpit--reaching for your armpit--longing for your armpit...

Anyways, apparently some of the people in the class who weren't familiar with the pose were kind of dropping out during the sequence and just kind of standing there...(I didn't see this, as I was up in the front corner, jamming my knee into my armpit...) but at one point Stacey stopped all of us and explained that if there was some frustration going on, or some discouragement, that maybe she could address it...

She explained that the point of yoga is never the pose--or the finished product of the pose. She said that the reason things get continually more difficult is that as soon as we know how to do something--as soon as we have mastered something, some pose or some sequence--then we can do it and still think about all the crazy stuff we always think about. As soon as we've mastered it, we can do it in our sleep. And the whole point, she said, is not to be able to do the poses in our sleep--but to allow the poses to wake us up. So, she said, you do the pose as you can do it--you do it so that it is waking you up--you do it so that it requires your whole effort and focus, so your mind can't go running off in all directions as it normally does. You try not to just get frustrated and give up. Even if all you can do is put your hand on your knee while you stand on the other leg, then that's what you do.

I thought about all the things in life I can do while asleep--that I do, do while asleep--and about how much I'd like to wake up--how much I'd like to find more things that wake me up, and wondered if the point here, in my life, is the same as in my practice--to challenge and deepen my practice, my life, so that it never becomes a sleepwalk, but is a constant shaking of my sleeping shoulders to wake up.