Perspective

These last couple of weeks, my focus in practice is on softening my face, from the top of my forehead, past the jaw (the toughest part) to the bottom of my neck. I have been quite impressed by the impact this softening has on the rest of the practice. And so much of this softening has come from breathing in all the way into my heart, and all the way to the bottom of the exhalation.

This softening, which my readers know I have been deeply thinking about for the last year, has been a slowly permeating wave throughout my practice. And I am so surprised by it because I thought it would never happen. Amid the critique of my teachers who kept telling me to soften the shoulders, soften my back, release my hips, I could not see how it was possible. Folding forward to Uttanasana and Padangusthasana sent off alarms throughout my body, jumping back seemed to require so much exertion that my shoulder muscles barricaded around the joints, and handstand and Pincha Mayurasana brought up fear that actually seemed to freeze the muscle memory in the mind.

But in my practice these last couple of months, I have found myself softly relaxed, sort of floating with/on/through the breath.

I think this is part of the "all" that Guruji said was coming. This release of tension and anxiety into softness. It takes progression and practice...over and over and over, as one of my teachers once suggested when she explained how the practice is backward-forward, forward-backward. Moreover, this slow release has become part of a larger letting go. In work, in parenting, in trying/not trying to control the mysteries of nature, in relating to my teachers. For the few months in the late fall/early winter when I really let go and settled back into restorative yoga for a while, my mind had to come with me, or it just wouldn't have worked. And it had an impact that still resonates. Turning the dial of exertion way, way back now allows me to see how unfortunate it would be to leave that softness behind and grind through primary and second series sucking muscle to bone, drying out the joints, fearing the disappointment of my teacher, losing my purpose in the practice, and losing my breath. I have passed through all of those places, and may again. But I feel very, very lucky to see how it doesn't have to be that way. Forward, backward... Backward, forward.

It's so completely opposite how I would have been able to imagine it—that the practice can grow stronger and softer at the same time. I remember a fellow Ashtangi once asking me, "Does it get less painful?" At the time, I wasn't sure how to respond to her. I may have muttered, "Yes, I think it does."

But I now see that it does. Indeed, it gets more comfortable. I never thought I would ache to be back in Kapotasana, to feel my breathe reach all the way up to the top of the lungs. But there you have it.