Possible Impossibility

I wish that Blogger had a drawing feature so that I could make a little stick figure of the crazy thing I was attempting to do in class today. Many crazy things, actually. Things so out of my reach all I could do was prop myself up and gaze at the ladies on the other side of the room who seemed to float from one complicated position to the next. It's not all the time that I feel schlubby and inept in a yoga class, but today, I felt it. Big time.

Impossible Pose #1: Double bakasana. Okay, bakasana, for those who don't know, is Crow Pose. Basically your hands are on the floor and your knees are balanced on your bent arms, like this:

Not so bad, right? An intermediate pose, probably? Well, and I don't even know where this comes from exactly, but imagine spinning that little stick figure guy over so he's on his back, in bridge, his head and shoulders on the ground, his pelvis and butt up in the air, his elbows bearing his weight on the ground and his two feet in each of his two hands, so that basically he is balancing on his shoulders and elbows, with his knees bent bent bent and his feet pressing up against his bum and resting in his hands. This is double bakasana.

Can you even picture this?!

I could get one foot in my hand but couldn't even BEGIN to lift my other foot off the ground.

Impossible Pose #2: 4 minute handstand. That's all I have to say about that. You think 4 minutes doesn't sound like a very long time? Try it, mo fo! Seriously. It's not pretty.

Impossible Pose #3: I don't even know what to call this...the teacher called it "headstand droppings" or something like that, but I will try to describe it to you. The first thing we did was Urdhva Dhanurasana with headstand arms, which looks like this:

Which, I can do pretty well, because I have a really flexible back (though it's a bit rough on me shoulders)...but folks, this was just the WARM UP pose.

Next thing was, we were to get into headstand, sirasana A...which looks like this:

And then, from headstand, to DROP BACKWARDS into the above urdhva dhanurasana. Which I managed to do, but made the teacher come stand by me first (because I'm five years old, apparently), AND THEN (nope, not finished yet), from the urdhva with headstand arms we were supposed to "pump and jump", meaning pump with our heart and jump with our legs, back into headstand.

Now, this--ugh--my attempt at this was totally laughable. The teacher tried to spot me and she put her hands on my hips, asked me to pump forward with my heart, and began counting, "1...2..." and I knew when she got to 3 I was supposed to attempt to jump back up into headstand, but my legs pretended that english was not their first language. "Oh, you have to jump harder than that!" she said, and not one to turn down a challenge (even though I could barely tell what was up and what was down and was a little bit afraid I might break my neck in the process) I tried it again, flailing my legs up into the air, and somehow...landed back in headstand. "That's great," she said, "you popped in like 9 places."

Yeah, great.

I sat up to recover and looked across the room to watch a super incredible floaty boneless yogi, as she moved like a bird might move through the sky, from headstand to urdhva to headstand to headstand variations, to urdhva, back and forth back and forth, hopping with the ease of a little girl hopping over a puddle...and then turned to watch another woman, across from her, whose back seemed to bend in 600 different places as she did the same, back and forth, back and forth...

One girl caught me looking at her, with my mouth agape, and all I wanted to do was shout across the room to her, "how did your practice GET like that?!" I mean, my god. A practice so beautiful it makes me kind of choked up just thinking about it...

Sigh.

Of course my small mind (mini me) is sort of sniping in the background, like some petulant teenager leaning against a brick wall, cigarette hanging from her lips..."I bet she's a dancer. She's probably been doing it forever, it's probably all she does. How are her arm balances, I wonder? Has she seen my biceps...they rock."

And there were other things...hanuman (the bane of my existence!), twisted half-moon, pigeon pigeon pigeon...and by the end of class I thought, my god, this has been a class entirely composed of all the stuff I'm not very good at (except pigeon, I rock me the pigeon). And as much as I hate that...all the struggling and the feeling that my belly is just endlessly in my way...I was also really pleased with it. I have SO far to go, I thought. And it was a relief...the thought that it was all never-ending, was a total relief.

Which got me thinking about other things. It got me thinking about my work as an actress, and how hard it can be for me when I am not able, or not as good as, or totally in the dark about what some super-technical thing is supposed to look like--how I lambast myself, tell myself in a whole myriad of ways that I am hopeless and that my inability is just proof of that hopelessness. I started thinking about what a different feeling that is from this feeling in my yoga practice of an endless unfolding...about how I rarely beat myself up for not being farther along than I am, and how I am EXCITED to move toward the next thing and the next. I could use that, as an actress.

And I thought about my life, my quest for development of some kind or another, and how often I can do the same--how I can hone in on all the ways in which I am failing and write myself off as some kind of lost cause, forgetting that this same principle holds true: I will never get it done. Even when I get to the point where I am balancing only on my head in headstand, there is still going to be someone who can balance on her head AND have her legs in lotus. (For example).

I love you, dear readers, and I wanted to remind you of this...that it will never end. It will only grow and grow and grow. You will put water in the bucket and the bucket will grow. You get me? So go out there and just do, even if you think you suck, because you will get to where you want to go, I promise (and as soon as you get there...you'll have a new destination in mind.)

All my love,

YogaLia

M.E.L.T.D.O.W.N.

Okay, it's not as dramatic as all that...

But let me just say that after three weeks of hunting for cars, two weeks of family visits (I love you, my dear family, all of you, and it's amazing and rejuvenating to be with you, but all that rejuvenation can also be a little...exhausting, if you know what I mean), one week of meeting (or trying to meet) with headshot photographers, going on four weeks of many of my nearest and dearest being out of town, not to mention working all weekend, every weekend, not to mention trying to finish editing a short project and trying to set up meetings for the creation of another project, not to mention having newly signed with an agent and trying to...well...be ready for that, not to mention my forehead breaking out into nearly-invisible yet still aggravating totally never before experienced acne, not to mention my healing shoulder and the pure scheduling nightmare it has become to try and get to yoga when sharing one car AND trying to get to meetings AND driving all over kingdom-com to look at cars, AND having the brakes go out (sort of) on Ernie (our beloved Saab) so having to drive back and forth to our mechanic in Culver City, not to mention trying to find time to see people, buy groceries, do laundry, solve the ant problem in our apartment, write, meditate, send emails, remember people's birthdays and all the other day-to-day life stuff that happens and happens and happens...after ALL that...yesterday, I had a bit of a meltdown.

I won't go in to it, except to say it definitely involved my sobbing like a little girl, a lot of unnecessary yelling, and a post-meltdown-hangover which lasted well into the afternoon.

And this morning we replaced the battery in our car and a little light went off for me (not in the car, mind you, in my head)...

First of all, I am really blessed to have a man in my life whom I consider wise beyond belief, and who is capable of reminding me (even in the midst of his OWN aggravation) that the trick is not (as I often think it is) to eliminate stress from one's life...the trick is actually to integrate stress.

Integrate stress? What the hell does that mean?

Well, for me it means not feeling like I have done something wrong and am being punished by the universe in the form of rescheduled meetings, faulty power windows, ants in the kitchen sink and any number of other things, but instead to look at those things as challenges, and therefore opportunities to expand.

Not, I'm never going to be able to get any creative work done because I have to look for a car, BUT...

How can I get creative work done AND look for a car, OR...

How can I use the looking for a car as fuel for my creative work, OR...

(the possibilities are endless.)

So, my challenge to myself these days is, how do I allow for all the various odds and ends: the family, the "stuff" maintenance, the love-life, the health-care, the fun, the job-job AND the creative work...how do I allow that it's a lot, that sometimes it feels like too much, that there's more sometimes of the stuff I don't want to be doing and less of the stuff I do want to be doing...how do I allow for all of that without throwing up my hands (or my keys. heh, heh), falling onto the floor and sobbing all over myself?

Do I have to drain my battery totally until one morning I go to start up and nothing happens? Or can I conserve my energy so that the charge I have still propels me forward?

And if not, can I just calmly call AAA and get a jump-start, drive my unshowered butt down to the AutoZone, get a new battery, and start all over again? Without. The. Drama.

?

Ah geez, this is what happens when all you do is look at cars. Everything is a vehicle metaphor...(the other morning my dear P. asked me if I wanted to walk down with him and get some gas. "Some coffee, you mean?" I said. "Yeah," he said, "what did I say?" I told him to step away from the craigslist, immediately, before he blew his spark-plugs.)

So, to my Dear Readers...if you are overwhelmed, even in the least little bit, know that you are not alone, that we are all crazy jugglers, and that I completely endorse your avoiding a melt-down of the above variety by saying yes to it all, and knowing that even though you don't feel like there is enough of you to go around...THERE IS.

More than you know.

xoxo

YogaLia