Tittibhasana

One of my beloved teachers gave me the Tittibhasana series about two years ago.

I remember the heavy difficulty of these poses: the pain in the inner thighs and groin, the lack of access to the low belly, the sound of the noise in my mind as I reached to bind without success. I jokingly told my teacher that it was "sooooo hard." And he responded, with some humor, that I was "in the gauntlet" of the series now. I used a mat towel to bind as I moved through through these poses day after day. I dreaded them as my breath sped up in the panic of what seemed like too much. The weightlessness of Pincha Mayurasana was a great relief after 10 steps up and back, after the intense squeeze of Tittibhasana C.

In order to bring more focus to conceiving our second child, I stopped doing Tittibhasana to free the low belly.

Since having my baby boy, my current teacher has been giving me poses back, one by one. Last week: Tittibhasana, after many, many months. And there it is now, waiting for me: the bind. Fingers find one another, a closed circuit of energy. A giant hug of this little body that has become so greatly swollen in pregnancy and birthed two babies. The breath is measured and strong as the spine reaches down and around, and the gaze follows to the nose as the body lifts low belly and rounds around. Tittibhasana: a little bird, a firefly. Some delicacy in the name of the pose, but the path laid before it reveals a power in the womb that has fiercely and devotedly brought my children into the world and left behind it a sweet lightness. And now to find the bind in this pose: a reverent embrace. The walk, a nimble series of steps, with breath. The closing fold of Tittibhasana C an honoring: of them, of the power of the body, of the humility of our Knowing and unknowing.