I Got Your Back...

You learn things when you start practicing yoga, about yourself, that you might never have known otherwise, like that you have a super flexi back, or that your hips are really open, or that you have good balance, or that you have the tightest hamstrings around...things which just, you know, don't tend to come up in the course of your life otherwise. (Unless you've given birth.  Or you're just...naughty.)

You also learn things like, "gee, I'm so disconnected from that part of my body that I can't even FEEL it. Even when I try really hard--gee, that's funny. It feels like that part of my body is made of flesh-rock."

(I don't know what "flesh-rock" is, but I am definitely in favor of someone starting a flesh-rock band. Please sing songs about yoga.)

Anyhoo, that is how I have felt (up until very recently) about my back-body.

In Anusara Yoga (the style I'm currently practicing) they talk a lot about the back-body. They say things like, "puff up your kidneys," or "move your waistline back," or "move from behind the heart"...people, seriously...the first time I heard "puff up your kidneys" I was like, wait...WHAT? My kidneys? A. I don't even know where my kidneys ARE and B. I don't really see, even if I did know where they were, how on earth I would ever "puff them up".

And so for a long time I just let these particular instructions go, as I was busy focusing on other things (like how to "move my thigh-bone back" and "inner-spiral my upper-legs"), and that's how the practice works, anyhow...you focus on the thing that holds the most juice for you at the moment, you work it into the whole of your practice, and as SOON as you've mastered it (and teachers seem to have a radar for this...) there is some brand new thing to work on.

That happened to me yesterday, actually...I was in class feeling like, "aw yeah, I've got this back-body think MASTAH-ed", and then, out of the blue, my teacher was like laser-focused on my shins.

Shins!

Ugh...that will be a post in a few weeks, I'm sure...

Anyhoo...I have had this series of breakthroughs regarding the back-body over the last several months...my kidneys and I have been getting to know each other and are now on quite good terms. As are the backs of my ribs and heart...we've been partying. And I have discovered that the back-body is like this magical land of loveliness. Who knew?

Now, a tiny bit of yoga-osophy...the back-body, at least according to the lore I've heard from my teachers, is considered the seat of the Universal Self. This is in opposition to the Individual Self which is housed, you guessed it, in the FRONT of the body. This makes sense right? Think about leading with your chin, or sticking your chest out or jutting your pelvis forward...all very self-oriented gestures, all signs of a person who is seeking out the personal, whereas the BACK body...well, shoot, what's back there? I mean, seriously, WHAT is BACK there?!  It's unknown, it's mysterious, it's unseen...and if you think about engaging BACKWARD there is an immediate association with falling, with sinking in, with...letting go.

(Theme! theme, theme theme!! Ding, ding, ding! That's the Shanti-Town recurring-theme bell...!)

So for me, I am a very front-oriented person. I'm ambitious, I've got a lot of striving and yearning in my make-up, and I have had to teach myself, over the past 4 years of practice, to not stick out my ribs and chest and chin. This is also something I've had to work on as an actress.  My boyfriend and favorite audition coach can always tell when I'm uncertain of what I'm doing because I start "chin acting" (Jutting my chin forward and up, and thereby totally disconnecting my HEAD from the rest of my body.)  And while those parts of me are often wonderful and lively and productive, there is a kind of disconnect that happens between what is going on in front of me, and what is going on behind.

Long story short (or medium-length at least), when I engage with my back-body, I have to REEEEEEEEEEEElaaaaaax.

Try it, right now, while you're reading this...just send your attention for a minute to your back body, and send even a single breath into the backs of your shoulders, the back of your neck, the back of your waist. Do it gently, with softness, just sort of filling up the balloon of the back. Notice a difference? Feel yourself having a bit of sigh and sinking into your seat and your self a little more? It's good back there! It's juicy!

Not to mention, how a repeated disregard for the back body can lead to a host of problems...as it's so much easier to slam bam crunch the back when you never spend any time there. It becomes just the invisible whipping-boy for the front-body instead of having it's own life and expression.

And my newly found connection to this back-body-wonderland has had a huge impact on my practice...it allows me to sink in more deeply to the poses as their happening, and each time I check in with my back-body it serves as a reminder to sit back, to slow down, to ease off...not because the other stuff is WRONG, not because it's wrong to strive or yearn or want or long for, but because those qualities have to be tempered with the other--the qualities of stillness and patience and trust. Because that's what's back there (at least for me) is the part of me which can settle in, which trusts that I'm held from behind, and that I do not have to work so hard absolutely all of the time.

It brings new meaning to the phrase "I got your back."

I do, Shanti-towners, I got your back. I also got my own.

xo
YogaLia

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