More "Gifts of Paying Attention"

(This phrase, "gifts of paying attention," as I have noted in a past blog, comes from the song lyrics of my friend Hugh McGowan.)

It's been some time since last I wrote because the last two weeks have been largely devoted to grading. A few times per term the grading sends a giant tidal wave over everything, and I really do feel like I go under water for a while...deep into my students' papers, into their progress as writers and thinkers, into my reflections upon how much and how well (if...) I've taught them. And then I emerge as the workload falls away back to a more manageable state. This time around I felt the anxiety of my work colliding with the precious time I spend with my family... I realized — yet again — how much my daughter has made me value my time, energy, and passion differently. But instead of shutting down in the midst of the anxiety, I noticed two differences: an instinct to be more 'real' with my students, and an instinct to breathe through it. Two new instincts that I am happy to have now...and I thank yoga.

I also thank yoga for the ways in which it invites me to see the smaller, less appreciated micromovements of the body, as well as the smaller, less appreciated micromemories that are slowly drifting to the surface of my mind as I watch my daughter grow.

Two new observations:

1. For years my lumbar and sacrum have been engaged in a painful battle in almost all forms of backbending. Dropbacks and Kapotasana have made this battle rage. But...in these last several months of listening and softening, I have realized most profoundly that I have been Chaturanga-ing (for years) with feet together. Last week, I separated my feet to hips' distance, and it was instant liberation for the low back. Upward Dogs were surges of opening the heart. That same practice, I moved from standing into Second, and I couldn't believe the freedom in Kapotasana. The legs found grounding, the heart opened, and the low back could breathe... I am still in awe of how simply this has all come about.

2. I watch the smallest of movements in my daughter, and in these movements I find memories. Yesterday I watched her navigate a hand through a sleeve, and I recalled learning to do the same thing. I see her slither and wiggle in the tub as she gains more and more confidence, and I remember when a bath was a big-deal part of my day as a child. I hear her awaken in the morning, sitting up in the pitch black of our house, and working her way through a kind of calisthenics of speech — "Ba-bump [pumpkin], Outside, All Done, Dada, Mama, Aya [water], Up" — and I remember the uncluttered stillness of when I was small and awake and wondering.

And this is all to say that, even though I find myself running into the debris of grown-up things and messily handling times when I wish I had more control or less to do or more room just to breathe and love, the glowing bits of simply being are still there under it all.

Asana in the Tiny Places

Asanas — taken in a full glance, or a full deep inhale or exhale, or even (sigh) in the mind-full relationship to every single one — seem like grand gestures. The most beautiful practices weave one asana into the next: seamless, fluid, soft.

But each asana is a symphony: many, many pieces connect to create the movement. And, with practice after practice after practice we learn to connect the teeny tiny gestures of the body into the wholeness of the pose. And breath surrounds all...becomes all.

I feel my way into this connectedness every time I practice. But I delight in the realizations of how critical are the tiny gestures.

For example, I have most recently discovered how important are the tiny tips of the fingers in Upward Dog. It is blowing my mind a little bit.

Teacher Teaching the Self

After the last three months of trying with great intention to soften and open and balance my practice to prepare the body for childbearing, and after three months of watching the perfectionistic tendencies of the ego tempt me out of soft places and back into hard, jaw-clenching efforts to hug muscle to bone...I am learning to teach myself as I would my students, to mother myself as I do my child. This has not been easy.

One of my sweet yoga friends sent this link to us this week:

http://www.iyogalife.com/ashtanga/

The text is a witty write-up about what Ashtanga is, what it asks of the body, and who is most likely to do it. One of the claims the text makes is that the practice seems most appealing to "anyone with three letters after their name, even if they’re OCD."

I have for a long time wondered whether Ashtanga lures a certain someone in, and I have written before about how the practice can be the perfect practice for the perfectionist, if she is willing to let it lure her and then crack her open.

I have three letters after my name — Ph.D. But I also have RYT after my name. The former title asks me to instruct students to think more; the latter asks me to instruct them to think less. And yet, in the university classroom, I emphasize freedom of mind — we think more so that we will have more choices. And, indeed, when I teach yoga, the perfectionist is nowhere to be found. My teaching is gentle, soft, insistent upon the release of ego. By the time my students are in Savasana, some are even asleep.

I am beginning to hear what I have been telling my students. And as the thousands of moments with my child have accumulated, I am ever so slowly learning to mother myself with a far gentler hand than I have experienced before. Forgiving, curious, kind, able to see the many facets of being and accept where they merge and collide.

This is all to say that the teaching and the doing and the thinking about the teaching and doing are beginning to unify. I am imagining a vast foggy field when all of these components come together in all of their mysteriousness and slowly approach one another like a kind of tribal circle of understanding. Their feet hover because the concept of turning one's teaching on oneself is so hard to anchor to the Earth.

It's slow. It's why we hear so much about how people don't change — the forces driving us to move quickly inhibit the slowness needed to hear what you're saying when you say it to others. I lovingly urge my students to meditate in each pose, to let the brain fall into the heart, to find Balasana if the flow become too intense, to modify when the body asks for it. I lovingly listen to my daughter's needs for water, sleep, food, comfort, conversation, a walk outside. But I have struggled to hear these words and turn them upon myself.

I am struggling less and less and less with that. And I am an Ashtangi.