More "Gifts of Paying Attention"

(This phrase, "gifts of paying attention," as I have noted in a past blog, comes from the song lyrics of my friend Hugh McGowan.)

It's been some time since last I wrote because the last two weeks have been largely devoted to grading. A few times per term the grading sends a giant tidal wave over everything, and I really do feel like I go under water for a while...deep into my students' papers, into their progress as writers and thinkers, into my reflections upon how much and how well (if...) I've taught them. And then I emerge as the workload falls away back to a more manageable state. This time around I felt the anxiety of my work colliding with the precious time I spend with my family... I realized — yet again — how much my daughter has made me value my time, energy, and passion differently. But instead of shutting down in the midst of the anxiety, I noticed two differences: an instinct to be more 'real' with my students, and an instinct to breathe through it. Two new instincts that I am happy to have now...and I thank yoga.

I also thank yoga for the ways in which it invites me to see the smaller, less appreciated micromovements of the body, as well as the smaller, less appreciated micromemories that are slowly drifting to the surface of my mind as I watch my daughter grow.

Two new observations:

1. For years my lumbar and sacrum have been engaged in a painful battle in almost all forms of backbending. Dropbacks and Kapotasana have made this battle rage. But...in these last several months of listening and softening, I have realized most profoundly that I have been Chaturanga-ing (for years) with feet together. Last week, I separated my feet to hips' distance, and it was instant liberation for the low back. Upward Dogs were surges of opening the heart. That same practice, I moved from standing into Second, and I couldn't believe the freedom in Kapotasana. The legs found grounding, the heart opened, and the low back could breathe... I am still in awe of how simply this has all come about.

2. I watch the smallest of movements in my daughter, and in these movements I find memories. Yesterday I watched her navigate a hand through a sleeve, and I recalled learning to do the same thing. I see her slither and wiggle in the tub as she gains more and more confidence, and I remember when a bath was a big-deal part of my day as a child. I hear her awaken in the morning, sitting up in the pitch black of our house, and working her way through a kind of calisthenics of speech — "Ba-bump [pumpkin], Outside, All Done, Dada, Mama, Aya [water], Up" — and I remember the uncluttered stillness of when I was small and awake and wondering.

And this is all to say that, even though I find myself running into the debris of grown-up things and messily handling times when I wish I had more control or less to do or more room just to breathe and love, the glowing bits of simply being are still there under it all.