Mala

Eight months after the birth of my second baby, I am re-discovering Second Series. My teacher is re-giving me the poses. It is like a second life inside of this practice, and it is blowing my mind.

At a recent workshop, by teacher Angelique Sandas talked saliently about the practice as a japa mala: each asana is a bead, and we follow these beads around and around, coming back to each one, but never in the same way. It's a perfect analogy—indeed, we have seen the words in Guruji's articulation of the practice. Through the lens of this analogy I daily consider another wise point that my teacher makes about how even inside of this very challenging practice the practitioner must challenge herself so that the practice can continue to give back. Indeed, over several years of daily practice, we can find ourselves in a place of ease. Ease is good, yes? Of course, yes. But if that sacred marriage between effort and ease begins to fall out of balance, if as we become stronger and more flexible and the effort becomes less and less, we must seek out new ways to draw benefits from the practice. And thus, as we go round and round the mala, we find adventurous elements tucked into each asana that we had never before discovered.

Now, starting Second Series all over again, I am discovering new obstacles, much illumination, moment after moment of awe. My teacher believes in the beautiful, complex process of the practice, of the mindful doling out of poses only when the practitioner seems ready, of the weeks and weeks of pause in the sequence. In many ways, progress is up to her: she follows her own mystical instincts, and I give her my trust. She relies on the power of the practitioner's deep engagement in each stage of the sequence to open space in a pose before moving on. I am practicing up to Dwi Pada Sirsasana, and I feel viscerally the challenge of the hip openings, of the spine growing, of the muscles in my back learning to speak kindly to my legs, to my shoulders, to my chest as everything works to lengthen and open and balance. And how challenging to pause here, not only because of the effort required to do these asana, but also because backbending comes right after. My body longs for Yoganidrasana, for Pincha Mayurasana...but I hold here, at Dwi Pada, coming to rest and breathe and be okay in this intense bend in the body. After this, I come to rest, breathe, and be okay in backbending and in dropping back. Then, new this week, my teacher assists me in dropping back, guiding hands to ankles.

I have spent some moments in this space: I am 38, I have two children, and I take my ankles in backbend. Rock on. But I cannot stay there long because I cannot completely understand it beyond how fired up it makes my ego, and the ego is so easily impacted (isn't it?). And even 5 days into that deep backbending, I see much more clearly into the space around the ego: the Self that transcends all of it is practically impossible to understand intellectually because peace is more felt in the soul than processed in the brain. Humility is the fairy dust that falls all around the ego, gently dissolving it like sugar in a glass of water. Wonder is the magic of this practice and the rest for the heart and mind that comes with it. And so, like in those asana where we stay for weeks and months, and rest, breathe, and be okay, wonder sits with us and we don't have to move beyond it.

That is the brilliance of coming round and round again through the mala, that extraordinary chance to wonder, to know ourselves beyond the bounds of understanding.