Hitting vasisthasana...

(a quick shout-out to the flicker page I keep stealing these awesome Mr. Pretzel photos from.... So awesome.)

I'm having a bit of a Mary Dana love-fest at the moment, as she keeps blowing my mind with her Sutra-liciousness and kick-ass sequencing. I wish she had a website to which I would direct everyone...I'll just say you can find her at Laughing Lotus where she will teach classes you can sing to...

Okay, so, as I've said previously here in Shanti-Town, I clean mornings at the yoga studio once a week, and they can often be a little difficult for my brain. Meaning: I tend to go on little mental journeys best left un-taken. And always after I am done cleaning I reward myself with an early morning class, which can, depending on how tight a ball I've managed to wind myself into while scrubbing toilets, be much needed and sometimes as mind-heavy as the rest of the morning. Most often I take the AM classes with the lovely Mary Dana, who spares no amount of Navasana or Utkatasana or crazy arm-balancey-ness, despite the early AM hours. For which I love her (though my body sometimes does not).

Yesterday morning, MD was in fine form, and she started the class by talking about struggle. She talked about embracing struggle, about making friends with struggle and using it to open you instead of moving away from it. Yes, fine. Good. Heard it. Know it's right. Have no idea how to do it. At least, not with the really difficult stuff. Every time I'm having a hard time and I tell myself I have to "embrace" my struggle, I just end up digging my hands into it and rubbing it all over my face. Which is not, I don't think, the same thing.

So, as I'm sitting there with my eyes closed, dutifully moving into child's pose and on to all-fours, she says to the class, "So right now, maybe your struggle is to overcome fatigue. So, see what you can do with that. See if you can open up to that. Breathe into that."

And I think, "huh." I hadn't thought of that--that my body is fatigued in these early morning classes. I felt around. It is. Of course it is. And it suddenly made sense to me why I struggle more with worry and round-and-round thoughts in these AM classes--maybe my body IS tired and in my effort to avoid that feeling of fatigue I am retreating into my mind. Alright, I thought, I'll work with this. My struggle is to overcome fatigue. I am going to embrace that struggle.

First thing, I started to tune in to the sensations of fatigue--the muddiness in my joints, the heavy feeling in my calves and arms, the weight and gracelessness of my limbs and back. I started to examine all the machinations of that feeling, and to really let the poses work those areas. Fatigue was my point of focus and every pose was about speaking to, communicating with and ultimately relieving that feeling of fatigue. Two things happened because of this newly focused effort:

1. My mind quieted.

2. I had an awesome practice.

Because I had such a specific and body-oriented point of focus, the class became very personal and I felt myself really working moment-t0-moment within it. I found that my fatigue dissipated very quickly and a deep connection to the workings of my body during the practice took it's place. And because of that, I finally stuck a real Vasisthasana (toe in hand people, toe in hand!) in a way that I never, ever have.

This pose has always proved problematic for me, as I have tight hamstrings and even tighter groins. It has taken a long time for me to find truly straight legs in a lot of poses that require it and I am still just inching my way towards Hanuman and Wide Angle Seated Forward Bend. So most often when I have tried for the toe-in-hand variation of Side Plank (Vasisthasana), I have been woefully contorted, my leg bent and my spine all out of alignment. But because I was moving moment to moment in this practice, when we moved into Vasisthasana I found that my leg (and I) just opened up right into it. I found for the first time the quality of big exuberant opening in the pose. Like flying.

And as we wrapped up class, oh so fatigue-free, I felt like I finally understood a little better what it means to embrace one's struggle. It means, I think, not to think and think and think on struggle. Not to grudgingly tell myself that I'm going to play nice and be friends with struggle. Not to pretend that struggle isn't there and paste a smile on my face (while I'm busy struggling all the same) and not to cave in the face of struggle--like, say, deciding I'm fatigued and there's nothing I can do about it so I'll just suffer through my class--but it is to acknowledge that there IS struggle, and then to engage in a conscious effort to RELIEVE the struggle. Not to add to it by judging or badmouthing it, but to gently mediate and resolve. I am fatigued, I am struggling with fatigue--I am pulling away from my body and into my mind--how can I work with this? How can I USE what I am doing/thinking/feeling, to address and relieve this fatigue?

And contained within this approach is an acknowledgment and HONORING of the struggle, because I'm not saying oh screw you, fatigue! You're always fatigued! Stop being so fatigued! And I'm not saying, poor little fatigued me. I'll never feel awake again. My muscles have failed me and I'm less of a person because of it. No, I'm saying--okay, there's a struggle happening here. I can not alter the fact of fatigue, but I can try to work with it. To USE it to open and feel and move forward.

I have heard again and again, in so many different forms and forums, that EVERYTHING is an opportunity. That, if you can change your perspective, all of those things in your life which cause you pain or which you struggle with can be the exact thing that leads you to greater opening, greater peace, and I really believe that's true. I am really bad at DOING it, but I really believe it's true. Joseph Campbell talks about how the things that threaten us in our lives are dragons, and that so often we run away when we see the dragon, but what we don't know is that the dragon is guarding the entrance to a cave, and in that cave is all our treasure.

1 struggle down, 6,000,000,000 to go.

Love to you all,

-YogaLia

Letting Be and Letting Go...

The other day before class Edward (who I love and adore and would follow anywhere to be taught yoga by!) asked us to share our own personal "sutras"--(as September was Sutra Month at the Lotus)--little anecdotes or sayings which we had found inspiring or helpful recently. Edward's was:

"If you're in control, you're probably not going fast enough" - Mario Andretti

Some others:

"Don't rely on miracles, expect them."

"No matter how it looks, everything is going well for me."

"Whatever it is, I'll take it."

The one that I offered up had actually been said by Favorite Teacher Mary Dana a few days prior. She was in the room when I called it out. It was: "In order to let something go, you first have to let it be."

Let me repeat that...

"In order to let something GO, you first have to let it BE."

Now, I don't know if this will resonate for y'all, but it knocked my little socks off. The number of things on my list of things which I must "let go" of, including (laugh if you will) the incessant prescription for how and why to let things go, is immense. And does not shorten easily, if you know what I mean. Perhaps this is because balling my fists together and screwing up my face and demanding that my brain LET GO is not the most efficient way in which to mentally houseclean.

Sometimes I think that my brain is one of those dogs that really only picks up its toys when there is the possibility of a tug-a-war. There's me, on one end of a chewed up old dog toy (much used, much much used) all covered in slobber, pulling like mad...and on the other is my dog-mind, loving nothing so much as the battle. Who will pull the hardest? Who will pull the longest? Who will pull whom across the floor? Who will bare their teeth first to scare the other into submission? It's a lose-lose situation of course, both of us just tired and slobbery by the end. And me feeling like an idiot for having expended so much energy on a game that easily could have been avoided. Because the thing I always remember (too late) is that if I had just put the toy down in the first place...if I had just let the dog (mind) have it, to do with what it will...soon it would have grown tired and bored of the poor decimated thing and it would have abandoned it on the floor with all its other chew toys.

So I suppose another sutra could be: "No matter how many times I say "LET GO!", it's actually my job to put down the chew toy." Or something like that.

This morning I ran into Favorite Teacher Mary Dana before class and she called out to me, "Lia! How's the letting be going?" I told her it was going alright, but that I found that I was too often instead demanding of myself that I let things go.

To which she replied, "Oh yeah, that's the best way to hang on to something forever."

Upside-Down

Inversion Workshop, 2:30-4:30pm, Mary Dana

(written before class)

Something has washed me this morning
and the building opposite also
is washed
in sun squares and winter wind

I fill notebooks and he reads the paper
we are tired
and impatient with each other
I tell him I hate it
when I feel like he's putting up with me
"No, I love it" he says
and we go back to our papers

Across from us I watch a mother
smiling down at her infant daughter
they just sit like that
across from each other
smiling

It has been called the bliss body
it has been called nirvana and samsara
it has been called the flow and the source
it has been called inspiration
and ecstasy and most often, love,
it has been called
and to some it lies at the center of the heart
and to some it lies in the center of the belly
and to some it is Chi and to some
the Holy Spirit and to some just firings
of several neurons and to some,
it is a mystery which needs no naming

I hunt and peck and hunt and peck
I devour texts and dive in
my body twisted into a hundred red shapes
hoping with each one
I will break the surface of the water
and submerge
and not, no, never
need to come up for air again
(where some bubbles rise
and pop
with small squeals of delight)

If I could fill a suitcase, I think,
with every impediment
drop it at a bus station and walk away...
But just the thought of counting
all the weights to be untied
only makes them seem heavier
more solid
and every knot grows infinitely
more knotted

But (bubbles breaking)
there is another way.
It is not to rid of, to fix, to alter, to repair--
not these constant messages
each one spelling:
Something. Is. Awry.

There is another way