I lost it.
Pincha Mayurasana, aka forearm stand. My calling card. The pose that means more than the rest ’cause I ain’t a natural upside-downer. I’m not fond of straight lines or fear– I possess little of the former and oodles of the latter. Digging deeper, I suppose I’ve felt a bit illegit in yogi-land because I don’t rock every inversion or possess any tattoos. I mean can you even be on Instagram if you can’t cough up an upside-down underwear selfie captioned with a Rumi quote (or Hafiz. Rilke. Maya Angelou. Any Jesus disciple. Any literary figure. Any dead president. Anyone saying anything inspirational ever. That guy “Anonymous.” Donald Trump, even. It doesn’t fucking matter).
So when I finally got pincha (and by “got” I mean I learned it, then spent a year falling and rolling out of it until finally it began to feel like home, albeit one the Big Bad Wolf could blow down) I entered the league of extraordinary yogis. No longer was my backbend “it” to show I was “in”: Practicing ashtanga had taken me from full of shit to full of something real (and flashily upside-down).
Naturally, my Instagram account runneth over with forearm follies (with a side of backbend bonanza). Pincha (we’re on a pet name basis) and I went together like Taylor Swift goes with glittery hot pants flanked by a bevy of supermodel friends. Pincha was my asana peanut butter– It went with everything.
I’ve been studying once a week (give or take) with a wonderful teacher here in the SLC area (where I landed for the long haul) about 6 months ago. He watches the aftermath of pirates looting my pincha (what else could it be?) along with a quorum of other second series poses from my practice (i.e., pretty much everything that isn’t a backbend)…shapes that seem to have lost their sthira sukha and whatnot, like Dwi Pada (both feet behind head; sounds as ridiculous as it is):
“I remember when you were able to look straight forward” he says, watching my head not hold itself up of its own accord.
I resist the urge to call him a dick.
In fairness to me, at that moment, the world is full of four-letter words, my four-year-old has been awake every freaking night until 10 pm demanding anything and everything and her parents are up everyday before 6am and jesus christ my MOM shift is supposed to be over by 8pm and God was it not but two weeks ago that there was a blissful ten or eleven hour break while she slept and what is it like to sleep I cannot remember and why does this fancy pants hippie dippy preschool not start for another two weeks and this practice, even splitting it (get out your world’s smallest violin, if you haven’t already) is kicking my ass and I want to break stuff…
So I’m projecting. In fairness to him, he’s just trying to remind me that it’s in there, somewhere. Plus, he’s giving me so much gold– as always–so now I feel like a bitch.
Watching as I fail to launch in pincha, he offers me a kindness, telling me how at the end of a month with his teacher, he suddenly just could not do forearm stand. It’s comforting to hear especially since he’s one of those guys who could probably sleep in a handstand (on a cliff, next to a surfboard and accompanied by a lovely Hafiz quote).
It’s still not fair! This pincha pocketing, the latest installment of life beating me with its “lethal ephemerality.”* Three early miscarriages in two years! Doctors talking to me about my thirty-something years as if I am OLD? WTF, everything except chronological time says I’m feeling 22, 28 at most, and my energy levels vibrate on par with those of an 17-year-old boy (eh, maybe with this sleep deprivation, 19). Is everything a near-death experience now? What else is there to lose?
Only everything. Like my backbend? Perish the thought, but doesn’t it all come and go? Hey, it’s not about the poses, right? “Postures are stupid” (Thanks Zoe Ward)
When the senses contact sense objects, a person experiences cold or heat or pain. These experiences are fleeting; they come and go. Bear them patiently.
– BHAGAVAD GITA
Yeah, yeah.
There must be an upside to the intransigent transience of everything — like how it applies (right, right?) to what’s driving me mad: losing pincha, losing 4-year old sleep patterns for two weeks, this interminable stretch of no school, these doctors making me see myself as defective. This sh*t must change too. (Please?) Indeed, looking back on my young ashtanga life, the practice reveals a Ninja Warrior-eqsue course of obstacles (ranging from absurd asanas to diet to fear to balance everywhere in life) that morph into catalysts: use them wisely.
The teacher brings my final backbend really deep today; I’m catching almost above my knees. Hmm, for now, at least–
My backbend’s still kinda hot, though.**
~~~~~~~
* From the poem “Heaven Is a Heavy House: Axe, Drawknife, Auger, Crosscut Saw” by James Galvin. Here is a piece I’ve excerpted from it that I love:
There is a heaven
And you are alone in it—
Not even a voice
To talk to yourself in—
Just swerving memories
Of hope and fear
So lethally ephemeral—
**Thanks to 5 Seconds of Summer for giving me an inspirational song title– “She’s Kinda Hot Though”(Instagram caption, anyone) — to pilfer for this blog.