"Just Primary"

For the last couple of weeks I've been working to create a softness in my practice, lift out of the pelvis in order to extend my forward bends, draw my focus toward my legs to free my lower back in backbends, and journey deeper into Second Series. I've also temporarily taken out the jumpback in order to bring a softness back to the low belly, I've been jumping through with straight legs (instead of crossed), and I've been mindful of finding my breath in handstand. This work has been both challenging and freeing. It involves focus and letting go; attention and release.

Today, the hips, shoulders and wrists were sore. This is interesting, considering that I have been softening them lately... Nevertheless, practice felt like a hard paddle upriver. As I moved through Primary, I decided in the Marichyasana series that it would be just Primary today, no Second.

"Just Primary." Just?

This qualifier perplexes me, for it was not too long ago — not long ago at all (2 years is a blip in what I hope will be a lifetime and an afterlifetime of practice) — when I was just learning Primary. I was not quite through Primary when I was given my first pose in Second (not unusual). Indeed, though I know there are depths of Primary still to plumb, there is a "home" to it now. A release, a letting go, a lack of anxiety where before there was so much more. But, now and perhaps forever, some poses in Primary continue to significantly challenge me. I mean, they all do...but some still feel new in my body, though I have practiced them over and over: letting the hamstrings go in Padangustasana and Padahastasana, drawing the hip back in Parvritta Parsvakonasana, lowering the hip in Marichyasana C and D, extending upward into Urdhva Mukha Paschimottanasana, dropbacks. Primary series continues to blow my mind, humble me, and wring my body inside out. I hope it always will.

* * *

My daughter took two steps last night. I was sitting cross-legged, she was standing all by herself about a foot away from me, and we made a kind of immediate and silent agreement that she would come to me by walking. I didn't even ask for it. It just happened. All her... I sat there and marveled at her with my eyes flooding. I couldn't believe it. I looked at her and said, "Sweetheart!" And the words wouldn't come to my lips, but my face said, "How did you get here? When did the bravery come to you? What inspired that step?" And she looked back at me with no anxiety — only the contentment of something so perfectly timed.

People have asked me, "Is she sitting up yet?" and "Is she crawling yet?" and "Is she walking yet?" And I have responded by trying to describe where she is without saying "not yet." Without saying, "she's 'just' ______."

I feel like I want to help her to take more steps. We hold her hands as she walks...and she sometimes even takes one hand to walk. I feel it like I imagine my teachers must feel when they see that we can 'almost' bind, almost grab, almost bend aaaaalll the waaaaay baaaaack. Like I feel with my own writing students, with my own yoga students: a flicker of potential is so exciting. I feel that same anticipation with her: two steps! Surely there's more where that came from!

But my child is a mystery... She talked for a while, and then stopped for a while. She rolled over for a while, and then she took a break from it. She can crawl furiously, but she often chooses to sit. She sometimes asks to be picked up and transported. She can pull herself up to stand, and sometimes she looks for my hand to help her. She stands and holds on to the coffee table, and contemplates reaching for the couch a foot away — and I can see her saying, "No, I don't think I'll try that right now." It depends on the time of day, on her mood, on her sense of purpose. I marvel at her ability to see the action, to know her body and her strength, and to measure her will in that moment. I am mystified by her comfort with moving forward and backward, then forward again.

It reminds me of some of the best advice I was given by one of my teachers: Ashtanga is forward backward, backward forward.

My daughter is a yogi at heart.

And so, without diving deeper into the well for more, I wonder whether she can just take a step or two for a while. I wonder whether we won't see the steps at all for a while. Or whether she will just start running. Either way, these first steps are her primary series. And, yet again, she inspires me to remember the grace and precious lessons in going home to the Primary.

Recent Lessons in Yoga

The last several weeks have been devoted to yoga immersion. My teacher conducted a 100-hour Ashtanga study with several of us over the course of three weeks, and I have taken what I learned there into my practice and into my life. Also, my other teacher is now working with us while our primary teacher is away. Here is a short list of what I have learned recently:

1. So much of the flexibility in the spine comes from engaging the legs.

2. Yoga happens on the razor's edge of the marriage of opposites. For example, one can deepen one's practice by intensive study of the asanas and of the Sutras, but one must also let go of analysis in the practice; the way into a forward bend is to back bend first; muscles that we mean to extend must be protected by engaging the antagonist muscles. And, my personal favorite: much growth happens when the practitioner finds the balance between exertion and softness.

3. More on softening: ironically, the practice lightens and becomes less challenging when one softens. This softening goes for jump-backs and jump-throughs, twists, backbends... Softness doesn't mean lack of exertion. It means relaxing the muscles that aren't needed for the asana, and it means using the breath to infuse those muscles that are needed.

4. Jumping through with straight legs is awesome.

5. Not jumping back can quiet and soften the womb.

6. Backbending does not have to scare the crap out of me. I think it's scary because it strains my low back — but this strain is coming from incorrect backbending. Part of releasing from the fear (and the pain) means — wait for it — using the legs, and curling the upper back much, much, much more.

7. The yamas are not meant to make the yogi feel guilty.

8. Emotion is not meant to be fought or ignored. It is meant to be listened to and respected and valued. Also, while respecting an emotion, it helps to recognize its opposite — to see that it is there, too.

9. Without the breath in the practice, you are wasting your time.

10. Dig on imbalance. Recognize impossibility and go with it.

11. Take Savasana seriously.

12. Honor your body's abilities and limitations by negotiating what is supposed to happen with what will happen in an asana. Find the balance there.

13. Yoga is both a sanctuary and a challenging revealer of who we are.

14. In our practice, we are in many ways understanding our animalistic instincts.

Firsts

The core joy of life with my daughter is seeing life all over again. Unclouded, clean, ethereal, curious. Each day with her I experience a first: the first time she wears jeans, first time she eats a grilled cheese sandwich (or any other of the dozens of new foods she's trying), first named object ("star"), first time playing in the fountain at the park, first time holding her sippy cup by herself, first time taking a nap with the other toddlers at school...and that's all been in the last two weeks.

These firsts are precious — they have an energy that is pure and exciting. It reminds me of the bliss I would feel when all of the emotions of my family members were aligned: a bike ride, late-night bowling, an adventure into the horrors of the cellar. Our unique wave patterns of feelings seemed to cancel one another out in those moments — and there was a shared sense of equilibrium. I watched it while I experienced it, and I remember being amazed by the calm and joy of it.

Similar, but so very different...in my daughter's development, every first presents a surprisingly quiet gulp of awe.

Today I had a proposal to write, exams to finish, grades to calculate...but what occupied my mind was my hope that my child would eat her grilled cheese at school. Her first 'real' school lunch. An experiment. And she ate the whole thing...the whole thing! Last year at this time she was only a few weeks old; then, I thought about sleep and nursing, the delicate state of my body, her tiny face and hands, her thin legs and hiccups, and the heartbreaking sound of her cry. I couldn't have dreamed that this first sandwich would bring me such happiness. Or that she would be standing and talking and wearing jeans like a little cutie pie.

My daughter inspires me to see my practice in a new way. In its efforts to calm the mind, the practice leads us back to when we were new to the world — bodies fluid and bendy, just discovering how to balance. My practice presents me with the gift of firsts...just recently, for example, I have for the first time been able to get my body into Supta Kurmasana all by myself. And there are those words, "all by myself." Like a child. My daughter practices standing, and I watch her test and feel the earth with toes and heels. Back and forth, her micro-movements give her more and more balance. In handstand, I do the same with fingers and the palms of my hands. We both are testing strength, and faith.

I tune in to the subtle frequency of the moment of firstness, appreciating its adventure and wisdom, and seeing even more clearly how wise she is becoming in body and mind. I am beginning to see wisdom in myself, too. It gives me comfort to admire her — I am honored to watch her grow into her life and learn not only how to mother her, but also how to mother myself.

No Plan

I was doing my usual thing — though less so these days...still, my usual thing — getting ready to drop back by thinking about it. I do a full-body think-over, I drop back, I stand up, I repeat.

My teacher sees me doing this.

"No plan," he says. "Don't plan. Just go."

Sigh. I go. Miss Molly, it is so much easier when the mind lets go.

"The only plan you should have," he says, "is to plan to enjoy it."

And my mind imploded a little bit here. Mostly because I saw the "razor's edge" he talks about so often. Indeed, there are a bajillion elements to think about in the practice: breath, alignment, drishti, bandhas, engaging, relaxing, softening, floating, and letting the mind fall into the heart. And then there is just the letting go of all of that. The trick is to know when to do what; even more tricky is to know how to do all at once and not at all.

Top of the Femur

I have seen my teacher slow down Surya Namaskara a couple of times in a couple of workshops, and every time it makes me a little bit crazy in my head. Good crazy...I think. But, truly, it messes up my mind.

"Roll over the tops of the femur bones," he says with a dreamy, lulling voice, as he dives forward, dividing his body in half. And we follow slowly. And as I follow, I feel like I'm rolling all the way back into my life, all the way into the middle of my own confusion and worry, right into the center of pain.

I should note here that I have much, much less pain in my heart than I used to have. And I think the lessening of pain over time has come from mentoring, beautiful friends, my amazing partner, my child, and my practice. In fact, I often try to go back to my pain, just to check up on it, just to revisit...and I am taken aback to find that I can have to look hard to find it. Like Waldo... It's sort of like Waldo.

But there is something haunted in the tops of my femur bones, for when I roll over them, I could cry. I never do... And it's not exactly from physical pain that it makes me cry. And I am humbled by how much easier it gets with every sun salutation. Nevertheless, it's so hard. I feel an undertow of something...and it lasts into Uttanasana, into Ardha Uttanasana, and catches me — just to make sure I'm paying attention — before I jump back. And once I'm in Chaturanga, it's gone. Like being at the bottom of a hill.

In the next sun salutation, it returns.

There's going to be some sort of showdown, I think, between Uddhyana Bandha and the top of the femur. I am optimistic that it will be a peaceful conflict, and I am fantastically imagining that Uddhyana lures what's haunting that space into its embrace, softens it, and melts away whatever Grinch lives there in that pinnacle of the body. I don't think it will be long from now.