All is belly

Guruji has said, "Practice, and all is coming." I know these words to be true, for all has been coming since I began my yoga practice in 2003, and certainly since I began my Ashtanga practice in the summer of 2008. All is coming.

Also, all is belly. It could not be more perfect that the Yoga Chikitsa ("yoga therapy") of the Primary Series is to cleanse and to heal, and that the belly is the focus of that cleansing and healing. My belly has been the furnace of my body for my whole life; my brain and heart have trickled down into my belly, where they simmer. My belly has been in knots for years and years: listening for the next departure, abstaining, holding in, catching my breath in a shallow reserve. Most recently, however, it has been a garden for nurturing and change: the nerves, the hunger, the will, the jumping forward and back, and, yes, the baby. All has been coming to the belly. It is opening, cleansing, and healing.

I have been practicing the Primary Series of Ashtanga yoga since the summer of 2008, and 9 months of that time I spent growing my daughter. Almost every day I practiced while she grew. My beloved teacher, Karen, helped me to take out and modify asanas and insert Second Series where it would help me most: ustrasana, supta vajrasana. I backbended and inverted and forwardbended day after day, and my child flowed with me in her watery cocoon and woke up during savasana while I rested. When my daughter was being born, I felt every single moment, and I breathed from the bottom of my belly to the very top of my lungs as we worked to help her out. And after I rested my body for a few weeks, I returned to my practice to find asanas that were inaccessible before. Something released in the belly when she left it; and she left a space for me to grow stronger and to breathe.

She is here now, my daughter, and she is hilarious and peaceful. I am practicing most days now, I am re-immersing myself in the devotion of my beloved second home, Yoga Squared, and I am listening to my new teacher, David. I am listening to him, to my daughter, to the ancient history of my partner and me, and to my mothers a bit more lately. I am an English professor, a yoga teacher, an Ashtangi, a mother, a partner, a friend, a (grand)daughter, and I am only just learning how to be any of these things, and all at once. In this listening, I am finding out that I am much more important than I thought I was, and much less important than I feared I was.

I hope this blog shows someone else that she or he is not alone. I hope it soothes someone else's belly.