"A Certain Receptivity"

My teacher has me figured out.

Yesterday in practice I was working on my drop backs...sigh. Still stuck on standing up. I'm not sure where it went. When he came over to help me, I told him that my lower back was still wrenched in the process, and I suggested that maybe if I did x, y, and z, I would get it... He sort of laughed at me. Yes, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. He said, "Yes...and it also has to do with a certain receptivity." He dropped me back and talked me through a series of alignment steps. He explained that I could do all sorts of alignment — but how did it feel, he asked? Awkward, I said. And he explained that if it didn't feel quite right, I would need to see what did feel right. "You will have to wait and see," he said. Wait and see...a "certain receptivity."

Later, in Padmasana, I was sitting up very tall, arms extended out strongly, chest puffed. As I usually do. He came over and shook my shoulders and elbows..."See, in each posture, you must soften." And then he said the real doozy: "Be lazy." I laughed at him...be lazy. Right.

Oh.....right.

I've been working with my teacher since October, when I returned to Mysore after having my child. We have exchanged no more than 200 words in or out of practice. But he knows me. He sees right through all of the layers that make many people say to me, "You're hard to read," and he knows how hard I try. Too hard, most of the time. He knows that I tend to put more effort into doing something "right" than in allowing the thing to unfold and seeing how "right" feels to me.

I am comforted by this being known because I was onto this "softening." I had felt this transformation happening. In my previous post, I talked about letting go, going gently. My shoulders ache the most when I am working so hard to be strong with them; my back aches the most when I am tightening it and trying so hard to drop back and stand up correctly. It is powerful, this exchange of knowing: yes, the teacher opens up new channels we didn't know were there, takes us by surprise sometimes. But yoga is so truly a process of finding your way into yourself and staying there; this venturing is allowing me to see where the over-exertion is happening not just in my practice, but elsewhere in my life. I see points of frustration that seemed important and how I can let them go. I see the worries that orbit me, and I feel the pain of holding on too tightly to pain itself. "Intensity without anxiety," says Jill.

Even as I type...can I push the keys more gently and still see an e appear? An a? A ? Yes...