The 6th Breath

It's been 18 months since my last post. I have spent it in biochemistry, cellular biology, and microbiology, and in the first year of nursing school. In drinking in my family. In reading about meditation and imperfection. In stretching my brain and heart. This has been metamorphic.

I have not been to the shala in about a year. I could not have imagined such a thing a year ago. Nursing classes are almost every day, and they begin early. If I went to the shala, I would have to leave before seeing my children in the morning. When my older child was first born 7 years ago, I believed that I was being "bad" by not going to the shala, and I left in the early part of the morning each day to be there for practice. Missing her. I will not miss my children in the morning now—indeed, it seems ludicrous to me now how I used to do that missing.

Without a doubt, I was initially and have been for years drawn to the practice of Ashtanga because of its structure. The sequence, the count, the every-day-ness, the schedule of no-practice days. I have found, however, that the exploration of and around these boundaries has been the real yoga of practice (I think that's the secret that you don't find out for quite some time). These boundaries have been a constant (re)negotiation—with work, pregnancy, illness, relationship, parenting.

After many years of dedicated attendance at the shala, I am in a new world of self-practice. These days, I am on my mat in the early morning while Curious George plays in the background and my partner scurries back and forth with breakfast items and getting the children ready for school. I breathe the air that my children are in with each breath. From my mat I fix a pony tail, give snuggles, laugh at the jokes they laugh at, untie knots, settle arguments, give gentle reminders, and kiss bellies before they leave for school. The little ones adjust me as needed—my older child has learned the assertion and softness of a Baddha Konasana adjustment. I have done Supta Vajrasana with a child sitting on each knee.  The boundary between the mat and my mothering is a blur.

I miss my dear teachers—their wise words and hands, their understanding, their encouraging presence. Trying to make them proud, trying to remind them about how invaluable they are. But the sequences are burned in my mind, and so I have taken up the challenge of negotiating this space of self-practice on my own. Mysore-style practice is self-led, but to practice alone is a different passage of practice than that which is done in the shala. As the one witness, I am free of that extrinsic pressure, such that I have noticed—sharply—the ways in which I used to seek it out to validate my progress. In the first several weeks of home practice, I did not know what to do without those tethers of my fellow Ashtangis beside me and the teacher weaving through us. I imagined that it was all still there. I felt the aloneness discreetly, the aching transition from bed to mat without the walk to the shala to soften my joints, the coolness of my home compared to the warmth of the shala, the silence of my one breath.

Over time, however, I began to hear the chorus of all of the teachers I have had, with a conductor—my own voice. I worry less about watchful eyes and find Dwi Pada Sirsasana less nerve-wracking and more deeply in my belly, and the peace of Karandavasana on the slow, smooth way down. The voice draws my attention to places in the big toe, the sole of the foot, the pelvis, the top of the back, the cavernous hip joint.

And this:
Self-practice has led me into the experiences that wait beyond the 5 breaths. How powerful is the struggle and the relief of the 5 breaths—it is part of the structure that scaffolds the practice, a lattice upon which to hang the endeavor to find calm and patience in asana, a secure and quantifiable approach toward deepening the practice. It was not until this exploration of self-practice, however, that I began to step over the edge of the 5th breath to see what the 6th, the 7th breaths would reveal. And the body always says yes, and it always says thank you. It is never not impressive to feel the body's response to that transcendence. It is more than holding a pose for a longer time. It is a will to open further in time. Remaining in asana beyond the 5 breaths can illuminate a dynamism of asana—the body fills with life, it can feel raw and uncultivated, it can let go of some of its holding on, and it can light up another part of who we are.

For me, this pursuit toward understanding and caring for the human body in nursing and midwifery is also an exploration into the realm of the 6th breath, 7th breath, 8th breath. Each day I step out and onto campus or into hospital, I am walking beyond the boundaries I have been negotiating for decades—it is raw and mind-boggling, it is unsettling, it is inspiring and life-giving. It is terrifying, and yet it lights up another part of who I am. But I have to open further in time to experience it, and it is this act of stretching my awareness toward this new knowledge, this new role in my world, that helps me to understand the spiritual space that I inhabit and cultivate, breathe through the anxiety of insecurity that we share, and feel the awesome vulnerability of humanness. They call nursing a "practice."

I get that.