She's baaaaaaack....

The amazing Tara Judelle (pictured here) is back from her 3 month stint in Bali, where I'm not sure exactly what she did besides teach yoga, but I like to imagine that she did some riding of dolphins and levitating, as she is just that kind of gal.

Tara is the one who got me all revved up about the organ body...and had me spouting phrases like, "hyoid bone" and "zyphoid process"...and her departure for Bali created an unwelcome chasm in my organ name beef-up project (I don't really have a project like that, but I was really digging learning all about my insides)...but never fear, Shanti-Towners, she has returned and you can bet that this humble yoga blog will be chock-full of fun facts about the clavicular notch and the sacral dome (made that one up) from here on out!

Expect to be thrilled by anatomical superstars the likes of:

the Pineal Gland!!

the Dens!!

and the return of...the Hyoid Bone!!

(hold your cheers and stomping of feet...)

All of these characters I will get to, right quick, but want to contextualize first and tell you that ms. Tara has returned from Bali all a-fire with the following philosophical treatises:

1. That the microcosm IS the macrocosm (and vice-versa). Another way to think of this might be "inside is outside", or "the universal is the individual", or "you are what you eat". (Um...that last one maybe not so much.) But, basically what she's saying is that we, as individuals, contain within us all the workings of the universe in small-scale. War out there, means war in here...etc. etc.. I LOVE this, this is my favorite way of looking at the world, and has been for years...I think it makes the whole elaborate dance seem just, sigh, magical. Or terrifying (depending on my mood).

2. That our specific consciousness/personality has a purpose.  i.e. that there is a point to waking up, and that point, ultimately, is SERVICE. Albeit, service filtered through our individual wants/needs and quirks, but service all the same.  This, also, I am in total agreement with. I would love to say that this too is something I have felt for years, but quite honestly, this is a new (and unexpected) part of my world-view. Not that I haven't always been a fan of service, I have...just for other people. In fact, I used to be a bit incredulous about other people even having a desire to be of service. Do people really DESIRE to do that?! It used to seem to me like something that people OUGHT to want to do, but never did I really believe that it was something that anyone ACTUALLY wanted to do. (Geez, what kind of obnoxious 20-something am I?!)...Well, some mysterious and totally unplanned change has taken place in me over the last year or so and suddenly I am reduced to tears everytime I read or hear or think about anyone doing any kind of service, and I am overwhelmed by a desire to do the same...to have my life be of some purpose to someone other than myself. (This does not so much go hand-in-hand with the ol acting career, but more on that some other time...).

And, finally...

3. That all of this is URGENT. She is actually stressing this last one a lot, and sometimes it makes me feel inspired, and sometimes it just makes me feel really stressed out...as if I don't have enough little voices in my head telling me that everything needs to happen RIGHT AWAY! Anyhow, I get what she means...the time is now, no more excuses, dooooooooo it.

And so our learning of the organ body has been subsumed by these other, broader, principles, each new part of the body now being accessed in order to add to and support this larger idea that I would like to sum up here as:

WAKE UP! NOW! OR ELSE!!

tee hee. no pressure.

(Addendum: As the length of this post is already spiraling out of control, I am going to hold off on the anatomy lesson until later...so those of you who were on pins and needles waiting for me to explain all about the pineal gland and why it's going to change your f-ing life, you'll have to hold on just a little bit longer.)

Let me just say that I am delighted to have ms. Judelle back in my life. She is a hard-core yoga philosopher, with excellent long limbs and a very contemplative way about her that I just love, and the twice-weekly extra-long "The Practice" classes that I take from her feel like an excellently well-priced master class. So, hooray, Tara! Welcome back!!

Next Week in Shanti-Town: Pineal Gland...drool-maker or soul-shaker? You be the judge.

More on the Organ Body...

(p.s. doesn't this look like a tree? and a dancing gumby? sigh...)


I told you I'd be back for more...

I have to first give a little shout-out of gratitude to the amazing Tara Judelle, my teacher, who has been leading me and several others deep into this study of the organ body. Other than being a pretty glorious teacher, she has a mind and a focus that is so rigorous it makes me feel a little shy, just to be in the room with her. She's like a pioneer in the back-country of yoga right now and I am just happy to be hitched to her wagon (is that a mixed-metaphor? Did pioneers drive wagons through the back country? I really don't know...).

And as an apt preface I will say that my knowledge of the geography of my inner body is much like my knowledge of geography in general and that is...very, very poor.

I can best Sarah Palin, I'm sure, but the intricacies of my knowledge of the earth's arrangement stop at the very basics. I know the continents, the oceans, the general location of the countries within, but if anyone starts getting too specific I just kind of have to shut up. So as not to embarrass myself.

Same goes for American history, actually.

And my sense of direction....

But, that's all another story. I only preface my talk of the organ body this way to excuse any "revelations" I might have that are or may seem totally dully obvious to my more educated readers. Many of the people I am going on this little organ journey with are much more sensitively attuned than I am. Tara can actually FEEL and communicate with organs as mysterious as her gall bladder. I am just happy to have actually learned WHERE my kidneys are and to finally, finally, finally, after god knows how many acting classes and 16 straight weeks of Linklater training last year to finally FINALLY understand how my diaphragm works! I kid you not, that sucker has always been a total aggravation to me. Wait, what, it's like a parachute? Beneath my lungs there is a parachute that goes up and down in the wrong direction? You may as well have told me that the parachute is operated by a circle of little school children, waving it up and down...the image would have made as much sense.

So, while I am not yet able to communicate with (or even locate) my gallbladder, I am thorougly and happily amazed with what I HAVE been able to locate. My kidneys! My heart! My lungs and the little aveoli inside them, which, when counted as total surface area of the lung would make it equal to the size of a tennis court!! WHHHHAAAAAAAA?! And my brain! (Yes, the brain is an organ), and...my stomach! And my liver (kind of). In all honestly, sometimes I am just glad to be able to feel anything in there other than just a sort of general lump of space.

True confession: I think prior to this class I most often visualized the space my organs inhabit as just that...space. Seriously. Empty space. I mean, I knew I had a heart and lungs and all that, but...I don't know, I just never really thought about it.

I don't say all this so that I can ramp up into some kind of weird gross anatomy lesson, or even just to talk about the anatomy of the body as it relates to yoga and movement, but to instead talk about the way in which the idea of being "in your body" can deepen. So that, instead of walking around feeling like I am skin and bones encompassing an empty cavity where my soul resides (this is embarrassing, isn't it?) I can INSTEAD begin to think of myself as this entire collection of organs and muscles and bones that EACH and every one house my larger self...so that I'm not just a container to be filled and emptied but an entire universe of pieces ALL filled.

I won't even talk about how the organs hold memories and feelings, or how I have begun to notice where my body bears down in times of stress to cut off the flow of energy from one organ to the other, or how the organs all reach all throughout the body with veins and arteries, how the heart has arteries that end in your feet and in your hands and your head which means the heart is not just located in your chest but in your ENTIRE BODY, how the organs, like the poses, have not just practical use but also a symbolic use as well...how we might be controlled or cut off from one organ or another which is also the perfect representation of what we are cut off from in our lives...

It goes and goes people!

We have, right inside of us, RIGHT NOW, this incredible factory--a landscape of organs--and it is moving and pulsing and communicating, and sometimes, when I'm deep in there, trying to send a morse-code message to my liver or one of my two funny kidneys I realize that when I am living there, when I am breathing into all these spaces and listening for the echo-call of delight in return, there is no room for any of the things which keep me seperated from myself to begin with.

Organ Body Bright

For the last few weeks, in one of my quickly-becoming-a-favorite classes at Still, we have been guided (by the complex-thinker/former-filmmaker/kick-ass-yoga-teacher Tara Judelle) through the Organ Body.

I have been both longing to write this post and avoiding this post with all my might, since said beginning of said journey through the organs.

Let me preface this by saying 1) this is probably just one of many posts on this subject and 2) i am reluctant to write because before beginning this little dive into inner-space I knew exactly jack-squat about the shape, placement and purpose of my organs (save the stuff everyone knows, like my heart beats and my lungs inflate and my diaphragm does...something) and now at the close of week 3 of study I know approximately jack about the organs. Which, I have decided, is the next step up from jack-squat. Progress!

However, I am convinced that my jack-knowing self may possibly be a welcome tour-guide for those of you out there who also feel a bit--unacquainted with the insides of their torso.

The premise of the classes, for those who are still stuck on what the hell the Organ Body has been that (and hopefully my teacher will forgive me for possibly butchering her sentiments)--it is possible to:

1) become intimately acquainted with the organs, and

2) to then be able to MOVE--to generate movement--from the organs.

I know, right!?

At the close of the first class I was convinced that the only organ I was becoming more intimately acquainted with was my frustration organ (located, I believe, right between the ears?)...as my apparently woeful elementary and high-school anatomy education reared it's ugly head.

What the heck is a Zyphoid Process?!

Who actually KNOWS where their kidneys are? (Not to mention spleen, liver, pancreas, gall-bladder, etc.)

People, I kid you not, I did not even know that the heart actually sits between the lungs (like a cookie buried in a couple couch cushions)...I'm not sure where I thought it was.... I think I had just never thought about it at all.

And this was the thing that began to slowly Bloooooooow My Miiiiiiiind. I had Never. Thought. About it.

Any of you who have taken a yoga class or a meditation class or read an Eckhart Tolle book know that there is such a thing as an "inner body". This is something that is referenced all the time in yoga philosophy (perhaps with different names), but it is also a bit of a pop-new-age-spiritual-culture phenomenon. Your "gut", your "inner voice", your "heart center", your "spirit"...whatever it is that is contained WITHIN the magical spaces between your skin....this is your inner body.

I have done a lot of thinking about this space. I have meditated on this space. I have attempted to "check in" with this space in times of trouble. Over the course of my practice, I would say I have begun to consider myself a person with a pretty strong connection to that inner space...and certainly to my own heart. My god, it's actually one of the things which DEFINES how I think about myself, I am "big hearted", I am "heart driven", I "wear my heart on my sleeve", and yet always (always always always) in these conceptualizations about my Inner Self, I have never (never never never) stopped to ask myself what the actual physical construction of that space might be.

I guess I have always just pictured it as some bright amorphous blob.

("I shall be guided, not by my mind, but by my bright amorphous blob." That seems trustworthy...)

And so, to be asked to put a name and a face to this space...to be asked to feel these various parts, either from the outside with my hands or ribs, or from the inside with my sensory perception, really made my head spin.

Because what began as an amorphous blob...my Zyphoid what?...quickly began to fill in. My lungs--they're enormous! My liver...it feels different than my stomach or my kidneys...my kidneys! Crazy moveable kidneys...who knew!

And on, and on....

This is, I think, the sort of "teaser" blog post for this chapter of study, because something vital (no pun intended) will be left out if I try to cover all that I've learned in the past few weeks in this one post. But there is an image I am going to leave you with:

It was last week that we began really talking about the heart. Now, beginning to feel and think about my heart as an actual organ instead of just generally the space of my chest was powerful--what a vulnerable machine--all pink-fleshed and pulsating right there in my chest cavity. Yikes! That's about as far as I can go before I get the heebie-jeebies..... But, what was possibly more profound and definitely more beautiful, is the idea that the heart is tucked between the two lungs, because...

If the heart is tucked between the two lungs, it means it has an intimate relationship to my breath...

If the heart is tucked between the two lungs it means it is quite literally protected and housed by my breath...

If the heart is tucked between the two lungs, I could imagine how slow rythmic breathing could soothe and caress the heart, while sharp erratic breathing could be an instant sign to the heart to speed up and be aware. Not because the breath (as I may have imagined before) travels down some tube whcih then alerts the other systems to speed up or slow down (like a snorkel?!), but because the heart and lungs are literally feeling each other. Communicating with each other...

Sigh! Ain't that beautiful?



xo
YogaLia