Belly...

I have been silent with my words these last few weeks, hushed by the challenge of writing about any of this heart|brain|belly connection without acknowledging here, with words, the tiny baby growing inside the belly now.

It still seems like a dream.

Every morning I practice, the baby and I flow and breathe together, and my mind has still not completely taken in the reality of being pregnant again, let alone the reality of having a second child. I have not forgotten the pain of delivery, but I had forgotten what it was like to have a baby in the belly. And yet, each step of this pregnancy illuminates a room I think I've been in before—or, at least, one like it. Maybe.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was practicing only Primary series, with some Second put in by my teacher. Now, having practiced Second Series for two years, the body is softer and it opens more readily, even as it becomes slightly heavier each day. I leave practice with a bliss that is like pure water, and the two of us move through the rest of the day doing what we do. One is so very busy growing, and the other is so very busy...growing. These past couple of days I have felt "bubbles," little moments of saying hello.

I remember this feeling with my first child—of being parallel, attached but not getting in one another's way, respectfully letting one another be. With little moments of, "Hey, whatcha doin'?" I would rub the belly, she would kick me. I felt like I had known her long before I had lived.

But this baby is a great mystery to me...in the middle of a distant memory and a distant future, I find in the present a vast space of calm. The baby has no certain identity right now, no nickname...just presence, and an increasing pull on my heart. I worried in the early days that we had not "connected," but I can see now how easily my first pregnancy and I connected because I had been preparing for "First Child," for Mother, for pregnancy-at-all. Now, Second Baby is a real unknown, an endless space of openness and wondering. Even in all of our months of trying, I grasped to feel the reality of pregnancy, to offer my first child a deep blessing. I could not have imagined the serenity of this kind of unknowing.

Practice could not be more precious now, as the soft, openness of the body helps me to breathe into the tiniest corners, letting this little one know that I am here.

Finding Hilarity

My wish for this new year is to sift through, decomplicate, open more exquisite spaces to breathe. But most of all, my wish is to be able to continually laugh at myself, at all that is around me. Laugh gently, kindly, and with love. And I hope that the laughter shows me the way to the soft, sweet arms of my dear ones, safe from the weight of worrying that I (that so many of us) have been carrying for many years.

This morning, I was talking with my teacher about muscle memory and the unlearning required to keep my feet parallel while dropping back. I was telling him how I will have to train my mind to think about it differently. "That's really all we're doing in this practice," he said. And we both laughed.

I think we laughed because the prospect of unlearning and relearning is huge and hilarious. The endeavor is so big, and yet so simple that one cannot help but to giggle at the whole thing: the every-morning journey to the shala, to the mat; the steady breathing through 90+ minutes of asana; the hilarity and grace and strength and stumbling of some of these poses; the utter lack of regret when the practice is over. The "whole thing" is the dedication to practice and all that it entails. Peace of mind is a seemingly impossible goal, and yet we strive for it daily....and that's really funny. Will we get there? Who knows...but we keep trying, and laughing at ourselves, and reminding one another that we're not alone. Thanks to the sweet, sweet Om that we can do that.

One of my girlfriends regularly looks at me with something like concern about how hard I work. There's a kind of pity in her eyes, and she has told me that she is concerned about my lack of rest, my diligence, my seeming inability to let go (whatever that looks like to her, to me). Indeed, there are ways to be concerned about all of us... But I want to say to her, as I explain calmly that learning to relax and rest is a years-long process for me, "But look! I can see the hilarity of it! Look at me laughing at myself!" Being able to take ourselves less seriously is a step. For me, it's huge.