On the Deep, Dark Forest of 2nd Series

A few weeks ago, my teacher gave me the last few headstands of 2nd Series. She said to me before dropping me back that day, "So? You've finished!" And I remember distinctly the anti-climax. Nothing like disappointment. Nothing like that at all. Rather, a concavity of memory. It was the flood of remembering how long it had been since I had begun 2nd Series—4 years—and how when I first began I felt the weight of the pressure to progress. Much has changed in the last four years. My longing to hear the words of my then-teacher asking me to do Pashasana, my embarking on 2nd in the winter after my first child was born and in the last few months of our nursing, a slow-moving parade of new teachers and shalas, the challenges of conceiving my second child, the backing away and then moving toward the series, my second pregnancy and the delicious dreaminess of Kapotasana, the birth of my son, the return to Primary, the starting over of 2nd Series one pose at a time, and nursing through 16 months. The reconnection to the first several poses in the first several months after birth, and then progress through the second half of 2nd Series this past winter and spring. In a flash, before I dropped back, my mind went to those memories and re-felt the energy of the holding tight and letting go. Will to step back, will to start over, will to find determination to progress. And in that deep bowl of remembering, the gathering of memories and energy was a tangle.

In a very short amount of time, 2nd Series stopped being an adventurous race to the finish and more a deep, dark forest. Contributing further to the tangle of reflection that occurred to me upon being given the last of the headstands were the stumbles over the roots in my own body, the backtracking, the darkness of dreams that often accompanies those outrageous backbends, the remorse of charging back in after the birth of my first child, the graciousness of knowing not to do the same with my second, the bursts of energy and tears and anxiety that would whoosh through the spaces I had opened, the post-practice tussle with the ego, the worry about Kapotasana upon awakening and the fear of Karandavasana that would later follow, the visual repeated images of darkness followed by clearing throughout the practice, and the mystical ways in which the whole practice has changed my body. My relationship to fueling it. My dance of engaging, releasing, plugging in and letting go, navigating around the blossom of the pregnant body and gently gliding back into the postpartum practice while continuing to nurse before, after, and around the practice.

Seems like a lot of drama around a physical practice.

But it's not drama when every step in that forest is somehow echoed throughout the rest of one's life. Each tentative, determined, egoic, anxious, blissful, angry, curious, adventurous, sorrowful, wondering, humble step through the breath and from asana to asana is a mirror of the steps we take throughout the rest of the big day. Because even though we have the big day plotted out in our iCals and our Outlooks, even though we've established a gorgeous routine of naps and lunches and bath times and potty training and school days and trips to the park and this-is-how-we-pack-the-stroller, even though we have assembled the stones on our professional path and booked doctor appointments and stocked our cupboards with "good food" and maxed the contributions to our retirement accounts, the big day is still a deep, dark forest.

And so when my teacher, in her loving and kind way, lauded my reaching the end of 2nd Series, I reached back into the last six years since I'd begun to practice Ashtanga at all, and I felt the complexity of that journey like so many knots. And some part of me was astounded. And proud. No doubt. And another part of me felt so viscerally content not to start 3rd Series. And hoped it would be a long way away. And another part of me looked with my mind's eye down at the mat, and at the current task of dropping back, and sensed being fully present on that mat, in that moment, in those drop backs. And I was purely happy to be right in the tangle of that deep, dark forest, with all of its unknowns. And happy to be in the care of my teacher, and of all of the brilliant teachers without whom I would not be standing there in that moment. And relieved that the moment was, indeed, an anti-climax. A gentle settling in, a sinking into graciousness, an appreciation of the profound work of the practice, a humble not-knowing, and a deep knowing more.