Restoration and Marianne Dashwood

These last few days I have been doing restorative yoga in place of traditional practice to try and regulate some of the post-pregnancy imbalances in the body. I will be doing this for the next week or so, until I can feel in my body an internal softness, an openness. My restorative practice involves Surya Namaskara; followed by a combination of restorative and Yin postures that aim to deepen and open the hips, upper back, shoulders, hamstrings; and then followed by Yoga Mudra (without folding forward) and Padmasana. I close with a supported Savasana.

Though this is a more passive practice, and though it generates less heat (though I am consistently amazed by how much heat Yoga Mudra creates), there is an intensity to it. Folding forward in Upavishta Konasana and holding it for 2-3 minutes instead of 5 breaths creates a completely different wave of energy in the body. I emerge from this practice with a high that is comforting and warm. And I see and feel the effects of taking restoration. I miss my practice...but I am giving myself permission to restore.

Thankfully, because my teacher is generous and wise about the evolving needs of the body, my teacher allows me to do this practice at the shala while most of the other students are making their way through the Primary, Second and Third series. This generosity is the spirit of the shala — even though we practice as traditionally as possible here, any student with an injury, sickness, pregnancy, fatigue can take the time needed to restore. Ashtanga is a lifetime practice, after all.

And so, as I lie in Supta Baddha Konasana, I can feel the body heat and breathing swirling all around me. The sound of Ujjayi, of bodies falling to the floor out of handstand or Pincha Mayurasana, the little sips of air before a body jumps up into handstand or Bakasana...

Yesterday I lay there and listened and felt. In particular, I tapped in to the female energy in the room, marveling at the magnificent strength of the women at the shala, and I thought about Austen's Marianne Dashwood. She is fiesty, improper, strong in many ways. But physically, as the book tells us, her well being gives way to her heart. She has few boundaries in her passion, she falls and almost breaks an ankle from sheer bliss, and she nearly dies of a broken heart. And yet the narrative — the culture itself — makes space for her to fall helplessly into the arms of her rescuer, or to the days spent in bed with a fever she contracts from consequences of heartbreak. She is a combination of beautiful will, and a feminine creature of her time. She negotiates the dominant standards with her own desire to jump out of her skin.

In this shala, strength, passion, love, determination...all look quite different these days. We would not have seen Marianne jumping up into handstand, or breathing her way into Kapotasana. Her clothes would layer over the delicateness of her body, while the women at our shala, including myself, leave the body — carved from so many practices — only lightly layered and open to sweat.

But Marianne would have wanted to practice Ashtanga, I think. And, at the same time, if she were to get hurt or overly tired, she would rest. Marianne would restore, and her world would let her.

As I lay there, I tried to imagine myself in Austen's day. Needing softness, having permission to go very, very gently. I imagined Margaret Dashwood — who takes after her sister so much — saying in the film, as Marianne drags her out into the summer rain, "I'm not supposed to run..." And part of me giggled. And part of me said to myself, "Right now, I'm not supposed to run."