"Just Primary"

For the last couple of weeks I've been working to create a softness in my practice, lift out of the pelvis in order to extend my forward bends, draw my focus toward my legs to free my lower back in backbends, and journey deeper into Second Series. I've also temporarily taken out the jumpback in order to bring a softness back to the low belly, I've been jumping through with straight legs (instead of crossed), and I've been mindful of finding my breath in handstand. This work has been both challenging and freeing. It involves focus and letting go; attention and release.

Today, the hips, shoulders and wrists were sore. This is interesting, considering that I have been softening them lately... Nevertheless, practice felt like a hard paddle upriver. As I moved through Primary, I decided in the Marichyasana series that it would be just Primary today, no Second.

"Just Primary." Just?

This qualifier perplexes me, for it was not too long ago — not long ago at all (2 years is a blip in what I hope will be a lifetime and an afterlifetime of practice) — when I was just learning Primary. I was not quite through Primary when I was given my first pose in Second (not unusual). Indeed, though I know there are depths of Primary still to plumb, there is a "home" to it now. A release, a letting go, a lack of anxiety where before there was so much more. But, now and perhaps forever, some poses in Primary continue to significantly challenge me. I mean, they all do...but some still feel new in my body, though I have practiced them over and over: letting the hamstrings go in Padangustasana and Padahastasana, drawing the hip back in Parvritta Parsvakonasana, lowering the hip in Marichyasana C and D, extending upward into Urdhva Mukha Paschimottanasana, dropbacks. Primary series continues to blow my mind, humble me, and wring my body inside out. I hope it always will.

* * *

My daughter took two steps last night. I was sitting cross-legged, she was standing all by herself about a foot away from me, and we made a kind of immediate and silent agreement that she would come to me by walking. I didn't even ask for it. It just happened. All her... I sat there and marveled at her with my eyes flooding. I couldn't believe it. I looked at her and said, "Sweetheart!" And the words wouldn't come to my lips, but my face said, "How did you get here? When did the bravery come to you? What inspired that step?" And she looked back at me with no anxiety — only the contentment of something so perfectly timed.

People have asked me, "Is she sitting up yet?" and "Is she crawling yet?" and "Is she walking yet?" And I have responded by trying to describe where she is without saying "not yet." Without saying, "she's 'just' ______."

I feel like I want to help her to take more steps. We hold her hands as she walks...and she sometimes even takes one hand to walk. I feel it like I imagine my teachers must feel when they see that we can 'almost' bind, almost grab, almost bend aaaaalll the waaaaay baaaaack. Like I feel with my own writing students, with my own yoga students: a flicker of potential is so exciting. I feel that same anticipation with her: two steps! Surely there's more where that came from!

But my child is a mystery... She talked for a while, and then stopped for a while. She rolled over for a while, and then she took a break from it. She can crawl furiously, but she often chooses to sit. She sometimes asks to be picked up and transported. She can pull herself up to stand, and sometimes she looks for my hand to help her. She stands and holds on to the coffee table, and contemplates reaching for the couch a foot away — and I can see her saying, "No, I don't think I'll try that right now." It depends on the time of day, on her mood, on her sense of purpose. I marvel at her ability to see the action, to know her body and her strength, and to measure her will in that moment. I am mystified by her comfort with moving forward and backward, then forward again.

It reminds me of some of the best advice I was given by one of my teachers: Ashtanga is forward backward, backward forward.

My daughter is a yogi at heart.

And so, without diving deeper into the well for more, I wonder whether she can just take a step or two for a while. I wonder whether we won't see the steps at all for a while. Or whether she will just start running. Either way, these first steps are her primary series. And, yet again, she inspires me to remember the grace and precious lessons in going home to the Primary.