In my previous entry, I admitted how I haven't been in my physical practice of yoga. What motivated me to reveal that personal limitation was the idea that if I told everyone where I really was, if I presenced myself, then i'd have to do something about it. (I was feeling like I was letting everyone down, especially myself, by abandoning yoga.) Turns out as soon as I hit 'publish,' my energy shifted and I have found my physical practice again. On the surface, it looks almost nothing like what I was doing before. Jumping off the wagon, leaving yoga behind has changed my body. (Though having been so disconnected from my body before I started yoga, I cannot recall if this current state of degradation is as bad as it was before I started. I have to imagine it can't be because though I have been away, there is a memory of the practice held in my cells.) A few poses I was doing before now seem out of reach and some muscles were simply refusing to move as they had. As I begin moving in a yogic way again, it's as if I am awakening my cells, awakening each muscle fiber slowly and with intention. I have been practicing making connections from one sore place on my body to another and as such, have begun to make a map of my habitual daily movements. I can feel how my legs are twisted from the tightness in my pelvis. I can feel how my lower and mid-back pull the muscles from my neck and shoulders into a tension to help support the imbalance in the pelvis. (See, even when you're body is way out of balance and you feel there is no one who could possibly help you, your body is still supporting you!)
Just moments ago, after chopping wood, walking across the pasture to help clean up some brush, I realized something important. It may be the something that I was hoping for throughout this non-yogic peroid. The revelation that was sure to come about why I was experiencing this lack in my life, why it was difficult for me to stay connected with something that brought me so much joy! Sure, I made an extreme change in my life, but the biggest difference wasn't changing scenes from East to West, from city to farm. It wasn't going from years of single-hood to living with my partner into his 12x24 foot home. It was that I completely changed what I was habitually doing with my body. Back east, I taught yoga. I lived and breathed yoga so when I wasn't teaching or with clients, I was still thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it. Most of my day was spent in some form of yogic movement in or out of the classroom and truly, I had a fair amount of downtime readily available as I chose to take. As soon as I moved here, days after my actual arrival, I was gathering dead trees for firewood and moving bales of hay. Instead of intentional yogic movement, instead of 'practice,' I was now moving my body all day long in a rural-farm kinda way. At the end of the day, I was too tired to 'practice.' I was sore and couldn't move the way I was used to. In the morning, waking with the sun to begin work all over again, I chose sleep over 'practice.'. When I had a break, I was eating and there was no 'letting your food digest' time if you wanted to 'practice.' There seemed to only be space for maintenance stretches. For me that was shoulder stretches (remember that shoulder flow i'd warm up with in class) with supine hamstring and hip stretches. Shortly after or sometimes while being supine, i'd move to 'sleep-ine.' Anyway, my focus back east was: how do I do this yoga thing? My focus now is: How do I do this living thing?
I hope that doesn't, in any way, sound pretentious. There seems to be a big difference between the two though I suspect that, somehow, each is contained within the other in a yin/yang way.
Soon I will be starting a series of primitive skills classes. I'll be learning how to make fire, make tools from stone, how to prepare wild foods, and how to outfit myself in buckskin clothing. As this series will take me away from the farm there will be more time to practice these new ways of movement and living I've been exploring, ways that are more in line with what we were designed for and capable of (does anyone still believe we were designed to sit in chairs all day long from the time we started kindergarten?!). I also suspect, or perhaps simply hope, that focusing on movement in this new way will have me doing handstands and scorpion pose SANSKRIT, in no time. Whether I achieve these poses or not, I'm excited about being consciously aware of this evolution of my practice and my body. I'd like to share this journey with you as I explore what all of this means. If you have any thoughts or ideas to share, i'd love to start a dialogue.
Namaste.
