Motivation: Yoga is something one can do that doesn’t require strapping your breasts into an industrial strength jog bra when PMS rears its swollen head.
It’s 6am. The room is dark and warm. Walking into practice is like burrowing into the sound buried in a sea shell, as the Ujiai breath technique of the students as they begin their sun salutations sounds like the ocean. Every morning I place my mat right next to Tracy. Our friendship exists largely in our daily proximity -- breathing and twisting into all sorts of postures side by side. She’s farther along in the Second Series than I, which means she spends more time with both of her legs behind her head. We will be next to one another for two hours. And while I will stuff my leg behind my neck, and drop into backbends, and bind my hands around my torso this way and that, I’ll tell you what my actual practice consists of. Regardless of the warm room, the burning candles, and the rumbling of a roomful of heavy breathers, where it’s really firey is on the inside.
This is the material of my yoga practice: I feel a lot. I feel a lot a lot of the time. I have a lot of energy, which gives me a lot of time to do stuff and then feel a lot about it. It appears one of my life's passions has been the following: I seem to like to worry, then criticize myself, then worry some more. Occasionally I think a couple of really solid thoughts, then I worry some more, then I worry about worrying...then I judge myself for being a worrier who worries too much. Then I worry about how I judge myself about worrying that I worry too much. Then I worry that I judge that I worry about worrying. Then I just worry. Then I get sad that I wasted so much time worrying. Then I get sad that I feel so sad. Then I am disgusted that I felt so sad about worrying. Then I fantasize about a couple of things about myself and then about a couple of other people. Then I work for a while and have a couple of really good thoughts. Then I notice I'm hungry. And then I start thinking about death and how we are all going to die sooner than we'd like. Then I think about how I hope I or any one I know doesn't have cancer. Then I have a bunch of thoughts about how I wish my mother had a partner. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I pick the callous on my thumb.[emp12]
And here's a scary thought. They gave a person like me a bachelor’s degree. And a master’s. And a job. And a driver’s license. And I'm allowed to vote. Run for office. Run the PTA.
Then I step on my mat. And you know what happens? It’s magic.
I start to worry.
Why does my forward bend suck so hard? Could someone look and see if there's like crazy glue in my back? Or is it because I'm holding my grief there? Is that grief that's making me look like the hunchback of Notre Dame? And Tracy to the right of me of course. She doesn't look like a hunchback. She's a goddess. And look at that tattoo. God that's sexy. Should I get a tattoo? What if I don't like it later? Am I rooting my feet evenly on the floor? God I'm fat. I wish I was already in savasana. Wait, no I like this part. That feels good when my body feels more elastic. Oh rats, I hate Warrior II. Was that five breaths? I’m not sure. Let's call it five breaths. Maybe that was four...what's wrong with me that I care if it’s four or five. Why am I in a rush? Oh god. The guy to my left is making some weird noise. What IS that NOISE? Seriously what in the WORLD is that noise?
Now what's the difference between that and any other part of my day? It is a commitment to myself, working with my nervous system, my particular random combination of genetic material, to witness being a person. Being a person who wants to be successful at this stuff called living. And by success here I don't mean putting big numbers on the scoreboard, or being picked first for the million different versions of adult kickball out here in the world. By success I mean being comfortable in my own skin—which also means comfortable with the discomfort. Yoga teaches me to be the person who can recognize those thoughts about whether I should I paint my toenails or not. Or why won't he talk more to me? All those thoughts are just one part of the passing show.
You hear a lot of people out there talk about how "relaxing" yoga is. But that's not how I would describe it. It reminds me of learning to hike off trail. Like bushwhacking, the internal terrain can be confusing, with dense vegetation, where you find yourself stuck in the trees, where even a good map is of no use to you. And sometimes there are objective hazards that you have very little control over—rock fall, big rivers, avalanche.
With experience, the terrain doesn't get any less complex -- there are still thick patches, and you are guaranteed to lose the clear ridgeline and bottom out landing in some thorny rosehip bush cursing like a sailor. But over time you can move more smoothly through that same messy terrain.
As I can see looking at the details of my life, the terrain hasn't gotten any less hazardous, but a practice like yoga provides an opportunity to lay down new clearer pathways. Now I don't know if any hard research has been done about this, but here's my assumption: yoga practice actually helps lay down new neuronal pathways—where our minds (not just our bodies) become stronger, more adaptive and better suited for life’s demands.
Because, lets face it: whether life is more like a bushwhack, a kickball game, or high stakes poker, each has the potential to both exhilarate you or knock the mula right out of your bunda. It could go either way. But yoga helps me keep my eye on the ball, crawl out of the bushes, and deal.
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