Peacefully Unfolding

Sometimes, there are situations about which I cannot figure out how I feel until they are over.

I can have delayed reactions where my anxiety level skyrockets, and that never serves me well.

 

I wind up taking a break from everything, including yoga.

 

Anxiety never leads me in the right direction. And taking a break from yoga, however short, is always the wrong direction.

After one such break, I returned to my yoga class, and it went by in five minutes flat.

I had really missed being there.

And, at the end, as usual, my instructor imparted a few words of wisdom; words I wished I had not just heard but listened to earlier.

 

Think of a situation you were in about two weeks ago, and think of how you could have handled it better, he told the class. Maybe you could have handled it differently by letting the situation peacefully unfold.

 

Letting the situation peacefully unfold. Not a usual part of my repertoire. 

 

When I first started yoga, I really wanted to excel quickly: Reverse bind, Bird of Paradise, backbend, high split with no hands on the mat. I could not do any of this, though, and the practice was gradual.

 

The instruction was gradual, too. Sometimes, we would spend at least a month or more working on the same things – working toward a full expression of a pose.

 

At times, I am finally able to reach full expression, and at times, I cannot.

 

In yoga, I have learned to have patience as I work toward something.

I have been taught that I can get into a deeper expression of a pose by that peaceful unfolding about which my instructor spoke.

 

Trying to jump into final expression is nearly always impossible.

 

Letting things peacefully unfold is not really in my nature.

It is something I have had to work at, and this work really began when I became a mother 25 years ago.

When my children were very little, I was in charge.

 

However, as they grew, it quickly became apparent that I would have to make room for them as people in their own right, allowing for their own decisions and desires and not just what I thought was best.   

 

Letting things unfold often involves letting go, and this is a continuing exercise in my life today.

 

At least now, though, I can often look back to realize the best outcomes appear when things worked easily. These are usually situations in which I do not have to push too much to make things happen; situations in which I let things peacefully unfold.

 

Today, I can do a reverse bind, a Bird of Paradise, a backbend and a high split with no hands on the mat.  

 

There is still room for improvement in each of these poses, however, and there are so many more on which I continue to work or have yet to try.

 

It seems easier to physically allow for things to peacefully unfold. In some ways, it is easier to do this in the yoga studio rather than in life outside the studio.

 

The real effort is in the conscious decision to take this practice off the mat and work on finding the peace in those situations where I might otherwise find the angst.

My Feet

I never really gave my feet a passing thought. 

I have just taken them for granted, even with my father as a practicing podiatrist for nearly 40 years. 

But, yoga has changed that.

Now I know my feet are a precious commodity. 

It is not that I have ever really ignored my feet.

I keep them pedicured as a matter of course. And I decorate them with two toe rings, both representing something important to me.   

When my adult daughter was little, she briefly attended a private school and could not choose her wardrobe or wear jewelry.

On her last day, we bought a toe ring each, representing a sort of freedom of expression that she had not been able to enjoy.

We have worn them ever since. A decade later, from college, she mailed me a new toe ring, updating our freedom of expression and sending the message that she still knew to seek it.

A few years following, my son spent a college semester abroad in Australia.

Far from home and knowing no one, he settled in fast, making another home away from home.

During a visit with him, we stopped at an outdoor flea market where a jeweler fit me with a second toe ring.

To me, it represented courage and an openness to new possibilities, both of which my son demonstrated by taking such a journey.

More recently, though, I realized my feet were not so much pretty as they were precious when I found myself standing on them for 12 hours straight for three days in a row, working in the wrong shoes.

Each evening, my feet cried with new blisters, and it actually hurt to walk.

All I could think was that I would be out of commission for yoga.

On the first day of working like this, I wore beautiful new shoes.

They had a platform and did not seem to have too much of an incline, and I thought I would be fine.

It was not until about the sixth hour in them that I realized my new shoes had a time limit.

Another six hours, and I hobbled into the house after driving home barefoot.

The hour was late, but I still tried to pamper my feet before sleep.

All I could think was that I had two more days of working like this before returning to yoga, and I could not imagine doing so.

That night, my feet got the full spa treatment at home. I bathed them. I put cream on them. I rested them. 

The next day, I lowered my fashion standards and changed up my shoes.

I put on what I considered not my best look, a more conservative pair of shoes with a lower heel.

Turns out, these shoes had a longer shelf life but still did not protect my feet from their fate.

I went home that night with new blisters.

Again, they got the full spa treatment.

Finally, on the last of these three days, I just slipped on my comfy, water-stained TOMS, a pair of shoes that have seen better days and are usually only reserved for trips to the yoga studio.

But, on this day, they went out in full form.

And that night, my feet were sore but not too sad.

And the next day, I was pleased to realize they felt fine enough for morning yoga. 

The first half of the practice is a flow, all of which involve standing poses.

We take many, many steps through some lunges, Warrior I and Warrior II, Standing Split and Dancer, Chair Pose and Extended Side Angle, Reverse Side Angle and more.

The rest of the practice takes place while seated, on our backs and on our stomachs.

I am sure there are other parts of me that I take for granted and probably should not.

And, even though yoga has taught me to appreciate my well-being on all levels, I had never really thought about how dependent I am on being physically able.

That morning before yoga, I awoke and swung my feet over the side of the bed.

The bed is tall, and I am not, and my feet do not reach the ground. My painted toes with their rings hung overboard briefly before I touched down with no pain.

That morning, I felt grateful for not only all the steps yoga has taught me, but also for the simple fact that I could take them.

Movement

From one day to the next, I look forward to yoga.

It has been more than a year since I first stepped into the studio, and I never tire of it.

I like preparing to go. I like being there. I like the workout.

And, in turn, I like whatever it is I am doing afterwards. 

The after effects of each class stay with me until the next class, and so I go as often as I can. 

It is a good place, and it puts me in a good space. 

I cannot exactly pinpoint what it is about yoga that clicks with me, but something about it definitely does.

And, it is not something new in me to which it connects but rather something seemingly age old.

In yesterday morning’s class, we were in a flow, moving amongst many different poses.

We flowed from Warrior II to High Lunge to Warrior I. We swept our arms down and back and raised them up again. We leaned back and spread our arms open and then swept them down again.

The music played, my body flowed and my mind did, too, back to when I was six or seven or eight years old in ballet class.

We moved into Standing Split and then brought our feet together for a forward fold. We lifted halfway and folded again and then flowed into Warrior II once more. We straightened our front leg and flowed into Triangle pose.

My body reached forward and my mind reached back, and I so vividly remembered myself in my black leotard and pink tights doing The Fun Step.

This happened at the end of ballet class when the teacher would map out a pattern of steps across the room and change up the music.

We would skip and hop, one at a time, traveling from one corner to the next on a diagonal.

I loved it.

I remember always looking down to see my feet but not being able to find them because my little girl’s stomach blocked the view of my toes!

We flowed back to Warrior II and then sailed right into Half Moon. I bent my back leg and grabbed my ankle for a sideways backbend.

As a little girl, I never wanted to go to ballet.

It was scheduled on Saturday mornings when I was allowed to watch TV, and I did not want to do anything but watch H.R. Puff and Stuff.

But, I was always happy at the end of class when the good music played, and we flowed freely with The Fun Step.

After class, I would always hang back to watch the older girls dancing jazz, wishing to be one of them, dancing more freely and always to better music.

Ultimately, my mother caved, and I left the ballet scene only to wish in my teenage years that I had not.

I filled in the gap with other dance classes and dance squads throughout my middle and high school years. In college, I fulfilled my physical education requirement with a dance class, too.

We moved through our Vinyasa and repeated the flow on the other side, moving from one big motion to the next.

There has always been something about movement and music that works for me, and somehow, yoga brings me back to it.

The music and the movement take my body and mind through a moving meditation, and this is what keeps me coming back.

The good music plays, and I sail freely between the poses as I follow the instructions that make up the flows of the first part of the class.

It is like doing The Fun Step all over again, only this time I can see my toes.

Overboard

Last Friday, I went overboard. 

Faced a fear and lived to tell!

I consider my yoga mat a safe haven.

Like a Kindergartener who pulls out a mat during rest period, I am content to arrive at yoga, take my mat from the shelf, unroll it, and step to it.

My mat is longer than my body and less than a yard wide. And, best of all, it is purple, my favorite color since Kindergarten days.

The yoga practice takes place 100 percent on the mat. One yogi, one mat. Some classes can be so crowded that a person might be only inches from a neighbor, but each one’s mat honors a personal space.

The yoga mat is home to every student and to every asana.

Asana is a word that has come to mean posture or pose, although the original meaning of this Sanskrit word is seat.

Originally, an asana denoted a position held at length for purposes of meditation. Today, the word has come to mean much more.

It is more than a position, more than a stretch, more than a balance.

Each asana serves as a means to open up the body’s energy channels, soothing not just physical maladies, but mental and spiritual ones, too.

There are all sorts of asanas.

Standing ones such as Utkatasana (Chair Pose), Garudasana (Eagle Pose) and Trikonasana (Triangle Pose). Ones that exercise the core like Bakasana (Crow or Crane Pose). There are even restorative asanas which include Balasana (Child’s Pose) and Savasana (Corpse Pose). And so many more.

The one in which I went overboard is from the set of inversion asanas, including the one that almost did me in: Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand).

Months ago, I set a new goal for myself: Handstand in the middle of the room.

Usually, I would only practice this asana near the wall which would serve as my security blanket should I begin to fall into a back bend while upside down.

If I begin to tilt while inverted, my toes can tap the wall, allowing me to realign myself, straightening my back and finding my balance.

To try for this asana mid-room, there is a part of the flow sequence where instead of remaining in a standing split, the foot on the ground can press down to go up, trying to find a few pop ups here and there before finally achieving Handstand.

I had spent a couple months trying the pop up during this sequence.

I was much more timid in mid-room than near the wall.

Safe on my mat but without the security of the wall, I would place my hands to the earth, put one foot in the air and push off with the one on the ground.

Already a month or so had passed since what I determined was a fluke when I found the balance mid-room and surprised myself in Handstand!

Since then, I had been unable to replicate that accomplishment and, in fact, in the following weeks, had played it safe in standing split without trying the pop up at all.

The other morning, I decided to give it a go. Without too much thought, I placed my hands down, lifted my right leg, pushed off with the left and slowly, but surely, found myself inverted for a nanosecond.

Mid-room!

It was brief and nothing like a couple months ago, but I felt it!

I got so excited that I popped right out of it and stood upright.

It was over fast, but it had delivered enough confidence that stayed with me until the next time. 

The next time turned out to be the following Friday when I went overboard.

I arrived at class equipped with the remnants of confidence from the other morning, some coffee under my belt and a good night’s sleep.

When the time came to give it a go, I kicked right up. 

Then, what followed seemed to transpire pretty much in slow motion.

I would say I found the balance, inverted in Handstand mid-room, but really I do not think that was the case.

I had what seemed like an internal discussion while upside down.

I’m up! I think I’m balanced! Maybe not! I don’t think so! How long have I lasted? Am I bending backwards?

In reality, probably no more than a split second had passed before my legs tipped backwards, my body followed, and I called out unabashedly, OVERBOARD!

My feet absorbed most of the fall before my head followed and the rest of me landed with a splat on the ground.

Not pretty!

I turned onto my stomach and hugged my mat while answering my fellow yogis’ concerns that I was okay, declaring that I might need another month before mustering the courage to try this asana again.

With that, I collected myself and rejoined the rest of the practice.

Safe on my mat, I realized I was no worse for the wear, and even had the fleeting thought that a month might be too long to wait to try again.