The Basement

I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed. ~ The Monster, Eminem featuring Rihanna

I used to be afraid of the basement.

When I was little, we had a beautiful basement. Its paneled walls enclosed a living room, a toy room, game tables and even a grand piano. A sliding glass door opened onto a patio and into a big backyard.

As children during the day we’d happily play for hours down there, but at night it was a different story. I was convinced that Dracula and Frankenstein had set up home under the basement steps and in the back toy room, too. Inevitably, we’d leave something behind, and in the evenings I’d be sent to retrieve whatever it was. I remember many times peering fearfully down the stairs while building up my courage for a frantic dash down and back.


Of course I grew out of these fears. But once I was grown and married with children of my own, somehow they reappeared.

We had a basement that was monstrously large. There was an exercise room, a guest room, a fireplace, two bathrooms and a huge play area. Another sliding door opened onto a patio that led into a big backyard. During the day my children and I would happily play for hours down there; but at night it was the same old story. As when I was young, inevitably, we’d leave something behind from our day of play, and many evenings would find me once again fearfully peering down another set of basement steps, poised to retrieve a Teddy bear, a retainer or a favorite blanket. As an adult I was the same little girl, building up her courage for the same frantic dash down and back.

.

My childhood fears are easy to figure. They were the typical ones that most children have, like fears of the dark or the boogeyman. But the fears of my later years were never really as clear. Maybe they might have come into focus for me had I gathered more courage to look, but back then I blurred what was too painful to see, and I think that’s how a new boogeyman started haunting me.

Our sight is a precious commodity. It’s one of our five senses, and for many of us it’s an integral part of how we experience our lives. So important is our sight that we spend a lifetime seeking a steady gaze, making annual trips to the eye doctor in order to fine-tune the lenses through which we see the world.

But there’s also something else, other than a trip to the eye doctor, that can allow us to see more clearly, and it’s called our sixth sense, or our intuition. It’s what we sense when our other senses are not in play, and if we don’t pay attention, even our sight can get in the way. If we’re not careful, we can lose our steady gaze and deny the things we see. And, when this happens, the truth disappears, and it can make us feel crazy.

That's how things become scary, and I’m thinking this might be what happened to me.

A steady gaze is no small matter. It’s what keeps us balanced. In yoga, there’s even a name for it. It’s called the drishti, or focal point. When we practice, our energy follows our gaze, and so every yoga pose comes with instructions on where to look. It’s how we secure ourselves, so that we can lift our bodies off the ground and also turn ourselves upside down. In fact, rarely do we close our eyes at yoga, and when we do it’s always to purposefully challenge our balance.

The other night our practice focused almost exclusively on arm balances, and so there were a lot of instructions about the drishti. We were working on some funky variations, and so where we set our sights was all the more important.

“Look ahead!” the instructor said. “Your energy will follow your eyes.”

I pressed my left hand into the mat with both knees perched high on the back of my left arm. Then I pressed my right forearm into the mat, too, and leaned my chest forward. I lifted my feet off the ground and tucked my heart into my back.

“Look ahead!” the instructor repeated. “If you look down, that’s where you’ll go!”

I didn’t want to fall, and so I locked my gaze at the top of my mat and made like a three-legged table. I lifted my right palm to my chin and balanced on my left hand, my right elbow and my gaze. A three-legged table never falls.

On the drive home after class I found my gaze wandering toward the sky. It was a cold winter night, and two bright stars had caught my eye. They were so close together that it looked as if they might touch, and I wondered if my eyes might be deceiving me. I glanced at them again and again, doing numerous double takes all the way home.

I didn’t know it then but later on I would learn that I hadn’t been seeing things at all. That night, the sky had some funky variations among its constellations, the kind that hadn’t appeared for years! The stars I had seen weren’t actually stars; they were Jupiter and Venus, two planets aligned so closely together that to the naked eye they appeared as one. And apparently I wasn’t the only one to have ever seen this sight. I learned that reports of this sighting dated all the way back to biblical times, accounting for what many believe to be the Star of Bethlehem!  

When I got home I stopped outside the front door and turned to look at the sky once more, but I could no longer spot the pair. And so I went inside and put my keys in the bowl on the front chest that sits right above the basement steps. In this house, the basement has a living area, a guest room, a storage room and a bathroom. As in my previous homes, there’s also a sliding door that opens onto a patio and into a backyard.

I looked downstairs. The lights were off and it was dark down there.

But I didn’t feel afraid at all. Things are different here, because I no longer live with fears. They went away on the day I chose to see what had always been right in front of me. That’s when I knew to look for space, and that’s how I came to find this place.

And now my boogeyman is gone. I can’t find him in this home, and so this basement has always been one that I can roam. On any night I can leisurely walk down the steps and retrieve anything I might have left.

And now, these days, when I look around, the view is always sharp and clear. I look up at night to see the stars, and I feel so safe in here. And this is how I want for things to stay, because it was just too hard the other way.

This home is where I made a table of three, with just my son and daughter and me. It’s where I set my gaze ahead, and my energy followed, just as the instructor said.

Anne is the author of  Unfold Your Mat, Unfold Yourself​ and is published on Huffington Post and Elephant Journal. Connect with Anne on her blog, Facebook and Twitter.​​

Space

“I’ll rise up, in spite of the ache. I’ll rise up, and I’ll do it a thousand times again.” ~ Rise Up, Andra Day

My daughter had a tragic loss that's left a gaping space. And so I’m spending time beside her, as she struggles to find her place.

In yoga, I hear so much about space. We’re supposed to make space, clear space and even hold space. When I first started practicing, I didn’t understand. But soon the practice grabbed a hold of me, and, like a key, it opened up a space inside. And it’s in this space where all my incremental shifts take place.

My daughter’s world has shifted. She’s lost her love. Without warning, the man who was always there was suddenly nowhere. And even though she knows he’s gone, she can’t help but try to find him. She searches for him and yearns for him and wants to talk to him.

“He’s at my fingertips!” she cries, incredulously. “He’s at the tip of my tongue!”

In her grief she looks around and shows me all their special spots in town. She points out a restaurant, a park, a store, and she tells me what they ate and said and more. We walk and talk and laugh and cry, and she begs to understand the reasons.

She has big questions. She asks if they were right to share a sacred space, or whether they had tempted fate. She didn’t know a storm was rolling in and asks me why she couldn’t save him.

Her questions, I tell her, are too big for answers. They are of matters Divine, and so we don’t get to know why in this lifetime. Our task now, I say, is to believe in the Light, even though we are in the dark. 

And then I tell her that they did everything right, and that it's important to have faith and know that she’s safe, and to be patient as she waits for her incremental shifts to take place.  

We’ve been told that grief is like a river. Water finds its way, no matter what’s in the way. This is why there is a lot of work ahead; the tears that flow need a place to go. And so I practice for us both, to fortify my faith and to hold my daughter’s space.

And at night I ask the Light to help her on her way.

There’s really no instruction on how best to hold another person’s space. It’s something that takes practice, and it’s likely easier to do if it’s been done for you. And so I considered myself lucky one day after class, when I got the chance to let someone hold mine. And, since that's not something I would ordinarily do, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that I didn’t get it right the first time. 

I met a man who could actually hold people up in the air. And even though we’d never met, I let him lift me up on his feet. But right away I braced myself instead of leaning in, and that’s when he stopped and offered what turned out to be some lifelong instruction. 

“Relax,” he said, as I dangled above, and he wiggled my arms to loosen me up.

“It’s time to let someone help you. You’ve done too much on your own.”

His words skipped along the surface of the river, and, just like that, I let go and let him guide me upside down and all around.

From high up in the air I listened as he told me what to do and pulled me this way and that. I even closed my eyes. With just his hands and feet, he held my inside space and made some room for yet another shift to take place.

“Thanks for jumping on my feet and trusting,” he later said to me.

Trust is also a practice that acts like a key. It opens up space for more accessibility. I saw this happen with my daughter. She had chosen a man who had chosen her, too, and this had made her heart expand. 

And then I watched as she carefully placed it in his hands. Slowly, she let surrender become part of her plan, and I saw her contentment grow. To me, it was as if she had flown on his feet in the air, and then closed her eyes and found balance there.

And now she's grieving deeply and has a lot of healing to do. Her space is empty without him. It’s hard for her to feel safe and have faith and to wait for her incremental shifts to take place. She frets that he’s not coming back, and she longs to know exactly where he is.

The days move on, and we continue to talk of things Divine, and I listen as she speaks her mind. And I remind her that she’s been left intact, that inside she still has her Light. In fact, I tell her that because of him, she’s even more of herself than before. And then, one day, as if to prove my point, her Light inside was recognized.

We were at a practice bursting with yogis in a bright and beautiful space. The instructor led a vigorous flow, while circling around the room. She gave instructions through a microphone, and she asked a lot of questions. But they weren’t the kind to be answered. They were only the kind to be asked.

“Why do some people get to live to the age of 96, while others move on too soon?"

We stared at one another. The question seemed to have come out of nowhere, and then the instructor seemed to come out of nowhere, too. She popped up in front of my daughter and faced her at the front of her mat, nose-to-nose in Mountain pose. And then she looked her in the eye.

“You think I can’t see the Divine in you?” she demanded into her microphone. “I see the Divine in you!”

For us it was a profound moment. And yet her words, like mine, fall short of comfort.

Still, each day, I watch as my daughter rises up and moves through her grief in the same graceful way as she moves through her flow. Somehow she manages to bring us all together, in spite of feeling alone. She rides the river with her head above water, while every day doing what’s next and while every minute missing him.

Soon it will be time for me to go home. It’s going to be very hard to leave. For I think that then I’ll have time to take it all in, and that’s when the big questions will rise up again. And then it'll be me who will have to have faith and know that I’m safe and wait for my incremental shifts to take place.

But in the end I think that’s okay. There’s healing to do, and asking is how we begin. 

Anne is the author of Unfold Your Mat, Unfold Yourself and is published on Huffington Post and Elephant Journal. Connect with Anne on her blog, Facebook and Twitter.

The Spill

I’m a pretty careful person.

 

I’m a planner and a thinker and an organizer.

I like things in their place, stacked and folded.

I’m not speaking necessarily of the parts of my life that can be seen, like my clothes and papers and such around the house. I’m more talking about the parts that can’t be seen.

The parts that are naturally kept under wraps, like most of us have.

I have friends that can talk about anything. And they do, often to me. I think that’s because they know I will make a neatly folded pile for them, too, set it aside and leave it undisturbed for safekeeping.

This is what I’ve done for myself over the past many years. 

It’s just that I didn’t really realize how tall my piles were getting and how many had sprouted. I didn’t know they were taking up so much space and resting at their teeter points.

This is how I stepped into yoga, thinking I was just there to exercise and believing there was more than enough time to keep folding and more than enough room to keep stacking.

But there’s something in yoga called a Mudra. It’s an energetic seal, a process that leaves no room for clutter. The practice awakens lots of energy and clears things out, and then that new space gets sealed in the body.  

A Mudra can be big or small. It can be performed with the entire body or even with just your hands.

I have to admit, though, that the result can sometimes be a mess. I think yoga just came into my life at a time when I didn’t know I was about to burst.

Unbeknownst to me, yoga caused a big spill!

It messed up my way of organizing things and forced me to sift through some ridiculously old stuff. Words have fallen out of my mouth, my own secrets no longer sealed, much to my surprise. The contents of my piles have been strewn and there’s no cleaning them up.

I’ve grappled with this state of affairs and have come to the conclusion that yoga is a practice of acceptance, and maybe that applies to the self, too. I’m thinking maybe I’m supposed to accept all the parts of those piles that were so neatly tucked away.

The mere fact that they spilled should tell me something; that living so undercover keeps others from knowing me, and keeps me from knowing myself.

It was a couple years into yoga before I learned about the Mudras. These seals are supposed to be healing.

Such seals can be made by just placing our hands to our foreheads or connecting two fingers. We lock and bind our bodies in many ways to do this, too.

Let’s seal the practice, our instructor says when it comes time for the end. 

I used to just hear that, but now I get that. 

And, after so long, I finally understand what it means for the practice to create space. All that energy stirring things up, sweeping away whatever it is that no longer serves us. 

And then we get to harness that new energy in that newly opened space by sealing it in with a Mudra. 

For me, though, the difficult part is to let the wind blow inside and to not see the aftermath as any kind of wreckage.  

Because when we practice, whatever is uncovered is only us, and we are all deserving of love and care and healing. 

This is what the practice honors. This is what the Mudra seals. And this is what that new space is for.

Humbled

Last night was my first time back on the mat in a month.

My wrist had been healing, and I did my best to stay motivated, trying to walk and run and stretch. But, by the end, I really was just spending my time waiting to come back.  

On the day I was cleared to practice, I thought I’d be so excited, but as the day wore on, I got more and more out of sorts. By the time I got home from work, I was not sure I’d even go.  

 

I knew at the end of my month’s rest, I would lose a little strength and flexibility; however, I did not think I would also lose a little confidence. 

I couldn’t believe I was considering giving myself another week at home.  

I had to start again, literally. So, I jumped in the shower as if the day was just beginning, and did all the things I do to get ready in the morning, even though it was night. 

Feeling better, I packed up my mat and hopped in the car, driving to my favorite spot, a beautiful yoga studio downtown with a big, open practice room. 

I parked the car, walked ‘round the corner and there on the city sidewalk stood my yoga buddies! 

I was so thrilled to see them, these people who have come to mean so much to me. Their hoots, hollers and hugs welcomed me warmly and boosted my confidence enough to make my way with them to the studio. 

As we sat in the lounge, the others asked if I knew that I would have to hold back. No arm balances. No crow. No jump backs.  

What’s left for me to do? I asked, knowing I had to start slowly but only now realizing how much. They had a quick answer for me: 

The rest of your practice!  

I come to this class for the bhandas and balances, so this advice gave me pause.  

But, they quickly told me how injuries can force a focus on other parts of the practice and even demonstrated some modifications. One of the girls told me an injury helped her learn to go from seated position to handstand. Another told me how an injury improved her forearm stands.  

Their collective support and encouragement gave my confidence another needed boost, and we walked inside and placed our mats in this most special and spacious room. The high ceiling fans circulated a warm breeze that had made its way in through the open French doors. 

The practice began, and we moved with the breeze. We moved and we moved and we moved. 

It was as if I was dining on a long overdue meal. I wanted to gobble up whatever was next. I wanted to clean my plate, and I realized how mistaken I was to think that I’d be left hungry without the arm balances.  

Each and every pose was work, and when it came time for Crane, I instead sat in a squat with my knees together in front of me. Turns out, my heels can’t even touch the ground! Maybe they never could? A new challenge served up. 

When it was time to jump back, I simply stepped back, happy to be able to have any weight on my wrists in the first place. A big helping of gratitude. 

And I waited out the Side Crows in a forward fold, my head no longer as close to my knees as before. A bite of humble pie. 

We flowed through Warrior Is and IIs, Side Angles, Half Moons and Triangles, and we reversed them, too. The sweat started early, and I savored each movement, my muscles getting a taste of what they had missed. 

Then the instructor brought us to Humble Warrior. With Warrior I feet, I bound my hands behind me and leaned forward, lifting them up and over my back. 

And with my head bowed to the mat, I felt such a rush of emotion that I had to catch my breath, as if I had eaten too fast. I was overcome with everything the evening had brought me.  

I was back in my seat at this abundant banquet where everything is in reach: My practice and my mat. The instructor and the room. My friends and their energy, support and camaraderie. 

As usual, the practice was over in the blink of an eye. But, I was sated. 

On the way out, a fellow yogi asked how I felt, and I told her I felt everything! My muscles ached as if the practice was brand new. 

But she explained it so much better and knew exactly what I meant. 

You mean it hurt so good! 

Exactly! I said, knowing I had only whet my appetite and would be hungry again soon.