It's a Path, It's a Path, It's a Path...

I realize the irony in using these terms in this blog on this subject, but I can think of no other: I'm pulling out the big guns.

In other words, I'm seeking the fifth gear of restoration.

Since my quest to open space around my practice began this summer, I have seen some softness emerge. I have discussed it here in this blog. I have treasured the small increments of improvement as I have witnessed opening in my shoulders, my back, my mind. I have seen small changes in the inner workings of the body.

But I know that I have still been holding on tightly to restraints, abstaining from dairy and micro-managing my diet; cutting away from a healthy night of sleep so that I can get to the shala early and then to my full-time job as a professor; opening my mind just enough to let the urgency of an injury slow my practice but then snapping it shut again once the injury healed. Taking out jump-backs, and then randomly putting them back in; modifying twists, and then twisting into Marichyasana D.

While I have been making efforts to make space for the body to do what it needs to do as a female body and as a mother, professor, yogi, friend, partner, I need to do more.

See...here again is the trap of Ashtanga. It is, in many ways, an ironic practice. It attracts many people, of course. But it does tend to attract those who are disciplined, rigid, compulsive, perfectionistic, purist. All qualities that I have possessed for as long as I can remember being.

In a doctor's appointment just before Thanksgiving, I sat describing my lifestyle to the doctor, who paused to look at me, with some kindness in his eyes, and asked, "How do you do all of that?"

It wasn't really a compliment. And I didn't take it as one. Rather, and perhaps for the first time ever, I wondered with a moment of unique clarity: Do I do too much? Wait...do I seriously do too much?

In an extended conversation with my mentor recently, she asked me: "What has constrained you?" And in detailing the above to her I realized that, though I have paused to process the transformative learning that has happened to me because of this practice here in this blog, I have forgotten during the practice — the actual practicing — what it is all for.

The irony of the practice — the part that many of us are slow and maybe even resistant to accept — is that, even as it attracts so many of us who for so long have tried to gain outward approval, perfection, purity, an immersion in the practice can lead to a dark, lonely place that reveals to us just how long, and how sadly, we have been missing the peace of accepting uncertainty, allowing brokenness to be invaluable and brilliant in its own ways. Whatever brings us to that darkness — an injury, trying to conceive a child, a disruption in our homes or professional lives — we might expect to see that the practice is yet another outlet for us to seek perfection, but instead find (with a profound teacher) that the practice is there to nurture us exactly as we are now. Imperfect, unsteady. Graceful on some days, and falling over on others.

I have known the counter-intuitive truth to less-is-more, to the fact that progress in the practice actually comes from opening and softening spaces in the mind and body...I have known it intellectually. I have written about it here. I have taught it to my own yoga students and seen them open and soften in their own asanas. I have taught it to my university students and seen their ideas creatively unfold as they seek to find something new to add to old conversations. I have extended it to my daughter with every word and gesture of affection.

But I have not quite understood it in myself.

And I see as I write how recursive this documenting of heart, brain, and belly is. Practice, understand, write. Go back. Inquire. Practice. Live life. Write. Understand more. Practice, live life, understand less. And then more.

Then less.

And then more.