It's Been a Long Month

Thank you so, so much, everyone who commented on my last post. I had no idea my reno is such a topic of interest! FWIW, I have every intention of torturing you with stories about it (and pics). Why keep that gift to myself? :-) And, gotta say, overwhelmed or no, I feel like a part of me is amputated when I don't write.

So many things have happened in the last month - too many to relate. Maybe it would be best to return with some fodder about knitting (light, and all, even if ripping back a sweater isn't fun). Alas, I've experienced death (my best friend's much loved and admired father), grief and adaptation. There's been pain and, I can't lie, fear.

But in those moments of fear (which, for me, are inextricably linked to physical pain) there's a lot to be learned. In fact, I may have learned more from pain than from anything else I've ever experienced. It takes no prisoners and it doesn't pander. Having said this, in no other context is Stockholm Syndrome more beneficial. One has to make friends with fear - the emotional manifestation of pain - to trust it. What you can't beat, join, and all that...

My most recent encounter with death (and they are all different even as they're all the same) has taught me that, in order to accept mortality - inevitable human decay and ending (that thing I fear most of all) - one has to be exposed. It stands to reason that the best way to accept the continuum of life is to see it from all sides. I realize this is banal to read. But to live it is profound. We must normalize pain, death, fear, loss. They are worthy and human. They give ballast to the things we seek out intently (love, prosperity, health, contentment).

Big thoughts aside, I am always informed by my yoga practice. The benefit of being an early adopter is that I have the opportunity to watch this faction age as I do. Really, I suspect this community's dialogue is going to help everyone, at any age, because we're all on this trajectory. But for me, a woman of a certain age, who sees the subtle erosion of athleticism in her practice, it's rather kind.

Often these days, when I practice - and when I practice through pain my sequence is an odd array of methodologies wrapped in the philosophy of pranic yoga - I remember a moment in my early years of teacher training. I was demonstrating chaturanga dandasana (push up) while my teacher expounded, interminably, on the pose. I stayed there seemingly forever. She smacked my arms and militaristically commanded me to rise, time after time, with attention to the energy in the pose. She advised us all that my attention was scattered. You should know that this asana has always been my nemesis - even at my most physically capable. I can hang out in high plank indefinitely. I can bring myself to the floor and hold the plane. But pushing back up, from the full pose, has always been some variation of miserable to impossible. Effectively I am stuck.

In my mid-40s, I do the pose with knees down. It's just sensible. Why the fuck would I contribute to pain to feed my ego? I need to retain strength, not to prove my prowess.

But here's what I posit: There are so many experiences you will never be able to contextualize until they're just memories.

Today, as I did full chaturanga in an effort to strength-train (and remembered my teacher training moment), I recognized for the zillionth time that my attention was not scattered - had not been scattered. I realized at the level of my bones and nerves that I've never been able to locate the graceful exit in this pose because my body can't find it. My body can find so many things - so many other poses, so much joy, so much depth, ecstasy - but it cannot find the ergonomic stasis required to lift out of that full pose elegantly (if at all) probably because I've got fucking osteophytes all over my spine, messing with the dynamism, and they've likely been there since my late teens. No fucking surprise I can't do it. It doesn't define me.

So here's where I'm going with this post. The next time you can't find something - closure or peace of mind or some stupid physical outcome that in no way defines you - remember that, someday, the fog will clear. You may still not find what you're looking for, but you'll know why it's lost to you and you'll accept it.

My teacher used to say that she didn't know what would happen when she could finally attain (mega-complicated) Pose X. She suspected she'd go up in an illuminated puff of smoke - illumination being the unsaid subtext. (In no small irony, she cut herself the slack she couldn't give to others.) I'm telling you there's no puff of smoke. There's just the emerging awareness that comes with experience.

So I welcome everything. I welcome life and joy and death and sorrow and pain and whatever each is there to tell me. Intermittent limitation is a gift, because it shows, in containment, what will eventually come. There's liberty in that, I propose. But then what do I know?