I really really really really really really want to get to the end of the ashtanga second series. I mean, really, really, really…
Really.
I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposed to say “yoga is so much more than THAT” and it’s all about going “beyond the asana” and it’s “not about the pose” and how “real yoga” is this, that, and the other and definitely not about putting your leg behind your head and how horrible it is we’ve reduced yoga to this cirque de soleil theatrics ’cause yoga is so much more than fill-in-the-blank.
Such statements pair nicely with a flashy sexy arm balance pic of a girl on a beach, in a bikini– don’t ya think?
Look, I get where this is coming from: we’re a little obsessed with flashy physical feats and maybe that trickles into thinking the best teachers are such magic-making selfie-machines and since in general we’re obsessed with youth and beauty (it’s not just me, right?) let’s add a hot body, sexy tattoos and an unshakable smile to that teacher qualification list, kay?
I get you feeling pushed into a box.
But since when did asana become dirty? When did it become filthier that all the f-bombs littered throughout my silly blogs? When did walking off your mat sweaty and tired become the yogic equivalent of the walk of shame? Sometimes I wonder if we’ve conflated distaste over Instagram asana photos (a separate topic) with distaste for the practice of asana itself.
So let’s get physical: Some of the poses I’ve been taught are not normal– like putting both legs behind my head or bending backwards and grabbing my own shins. It’s pretty f-cking weird. And body-oriented– muscles, bones and all that jazz, the jumping and sweating and (f-ck it) swearing on my mat for 90 minutes give or take six days a week (say what?)… just doing crazy choreography that outlines each move I make down to the minutiae of how many breaths I take. I love it. I live for it.
Do me a favor: don’t diss it.
‘Cause while I find it odd to join this chorus, it‘s true that the sum of this activity proves greater than the physical acts themselves. My own experience, as long as we’re talking boxes, is this: it feels incredibly claustrophobic when others relegate the practice I’m doing on my mat to this one debased, scurrilously gymnastic note.
My experience so far in receiving each new asana (I try to do ashtanga and that’s how it works) is something like opening a jar, but not any of this world. In the novel Night Circus a gifted boy captures sensations, experiences, 360 degree sensory immersions — like a brush of your shoulder, a beach in Morocco, a favorite childhood hiding place– into jars. From my mat I’ve opened jars that have ripped open the seams of what I think I know– there’s the engaging with my fear of forearm stand-jar, the “getting back on my mat after clocking my head when learning to drop back”-jar and the “first crash land into karandavasana” jar.
Watching everyone in the mysore room the past few years is another jar altogether — these spaces remind me that the growth and learning don’t stop just because you’re older, injured, pregnant or anything. You be you (thanks David Keil).
Then there are the broader lessons that come from making room for a daily practice in this life, fitting it in, making it work, achieving things that can –if I let them — echo into my life, like a practice of smiles on the mat opening me to the world. As David Garrigues says, it is all about the “set up.” Patterns in how I behave on the mat, versus off the mat, haunt me. I see how my work on this caused me to ignore that and then my wrists are hurting; nothing happens in isolation. So then I look at the harder days with my kid and think, how have I set this up? I look at the world and think what do I want to create here– how can I set this up? And sometimes I think, Dear God, what am I setting up?
On this small rectangle of space I’ve seen all these scattered pieces of me reunite: freak, lover, fighter, dancer, wannabe music video star. Maybe the greatest jar of all is the one all this practice asks me to open and see myself in. #yogaruinsyourlife
But it’s just this vomit-worthy vinyasa? I’m just some circus performer back-bending to oblivion but hey, it’s kinda hot though?
Perhaps the real yogis out there will say these patterns I’m observing and learning from, these profound jars of experience, are just the tip of the ol’ yoga iceberg.
I’ll take it.
Hell, I’m happy to have found my way to this iceberg at all, a lineage that speaks to me, teachers to help me move through it.
And since when did doing yoga or meditating or whatnot make me so holy I can dismiss circus performers, gymnasts and dancers as mere mortals, lost lambs, the unspirtual damned? Jeez, if I were a trapeze artist I’d be miffed.
I don’t want the fact of my regular physical practice to lull me into complacency (maybe some days it does). But have I given you a clue that maybe working asana is more than what it appears to be? I’m the resident expert non-expert, so all I can offer is: Find a teacher. Find a practice that works you and works for you.
So back to the all important yet routinely dissed poses: I really want to nail second series. So sock it to me, scary headstands: Terrify me. Take me down. School me.
You can confine your asana to a box, but why? Oh, keep your asana in captivity if you must and god love ya, keep on dissing me.
I’ll be here on my mat, finding liberty.