Standing Up

Yesterday my drop-backs were a disaster. Well, that is only partly true. Dropping back was the strongest ever; standing up was a disaster. In fact, I stumbled almost every time. And yet, I remember thinking during my practice that the primary series was beginning to feel less difficult, like it was part of me; I remember learning when I first started practicing that Ashtanga is meant to be a practice that one begins each day like brushing one's teeth. I am mostly there. The practice runs through me and I through it. And when my teacher helped me to drop back I placed my hands closer to my feet than ever; I could see his feet. So why the disastrous back bends? I don't know. I know enough to know that it was probably representative of something else...

No practice today. Two full moons in a month is rare. Tonight is a blue moon... I was able to find much-needed sleep this morning.

The last several days I have been immersing myself in the pre-tenure portfolio. I'm not sure, but it could be that my struggle to stand up from backbend was related to this process of trying to articulate who I am and what I've done over these last several years. The portfolio is a contrived project, but it's not all that. Flickers of realization come and go, but the most powerful happened today. In compiling my service portfolio, I called upon previous experiences in my previous tenure-track job. Among the list of publications, teaching innovations, and service accomplishments, no single experience stood out like my work on domestic partner benefits at my previous institution. As I read through my narration of these efforts, I felt a wave of melancholy: part sadness, part relief, part heaviness in the heart. The school now offers these benefits. In all of my inner questioning about my career choice, this activism has made me most proud. It is tangible, meaningful, raw...

Through this lens, I saw the real in the last four and a half years. The moments of pure connection with students, the rhetoric that comes from the heart and not the hope for accolades or a line on the CV, the genuine feeling of pushing an institution forward. As I read through my portfolio materials, I latched on to the whole reason why I do this professor thing: human kindness, curiosity, sensitivity, carving a new path around the politics that does illuminate the romance of reading and theorizing and applying ideas that work. It is not always possible to see this sense of purpose because the air gets cloudy with bureaucratic static and political tension.

In practice, vinyasa is meant to wipe the slate clean between asanas. I once overheard one of my teachers explaining vinyasa: one becomes so strong with bandhas and breath that one could move from intensive forward bend to backbend, from seated to handstand, from open to twisted, without the feeling of clogged energy in between. I realize as I write that this professional portfolio process is a kind of vinyasa, and that I need to punctuate my professional life with a vinyasa that helps me to clear the muck that confuses my sense of purpose and reveals the pure motivation behind this choice. My mentor calls this kind of renewal "choosing the job back." Vinyasa will help me to move from task to task in this academic life without clinging, without ego-latching.

I wonder whether an intensified focus on vinyasa will help me to find the energy, the strength in my legs to stand up once I've dropped back. Wiping the slate clean helps not only to let go of where we've been, but also to let go of where we expect to be going.

Stand slowly: belly, then heart, then brain comes up last.