Sunday Funnies

Yoga of Heartbreak

It said that yoga begins the moment you want to leave the posture that is also true of relationships. If you love someone but there is struggle and even pain it’s just like being in a difficult yoga pose, you have 2 choices: you can get out of there, back to the safety and comfort of child’s pose, or a friends couch or a bottle of wine. Or you can stay and work, you can listen to your body and learn how to adjust your self so that the strain eases some but you also keep going deeper into the asana or deeper into the love between you and your partner.

I’ve been doing yoga for a few years now and there are still many asana I haven’t mastered, in fact full pigeon I think is something I will only experience in my dreams (yes I dream about yoga poses). But I still work towards opening my body because I know that it’s not getting into that picture perfect magazine cover expression of the pose, it’s about all the work that I do on the way there. It’s accepting my practice each day for what it is. And each day brings its own challenges. Just like a relationship. To love someone so fully that you accept exactly where you are each day for what it is, celebrating the moments that where so precious and looking forward to the moments not yet created. So there you are on your mat all warmed up and energized as you begin to move into that asana when you hit the edge, you are questioning whether or not to go further. Should you draw back and do a few more preparatory poses, did you exert all your effort already and can’t push any more or do you push too far and fall out of the practice all together. The metaphor should be self explanatory. This is where your yoga begins, the working it out part, the stick to, the good faith effort because you know deep down that this yoga stuff is good for you just like you know this relationship is good for you. But then sometimes it’s not.

What if a relationship or an asana just isn’t for you? What if you’ve been working for something but it remains unavailable to you. This is also where yoga begins. Yoga is also acceptance. Sometimes there are things our bodies just can’t obtain, so this time yoga isn’t moving deeper it’s being where you are, learning your lesson and moving on. Sometimes in class I tell my students when they come to a difficult asana to ‘wrap it up in love’ and try it again. And that’s what I’ve been doing in my yoga off the mat, when the difficulties arose I would wrap my whole relationship up in love and try again. I wanted to love my relationship into working just like I want to love my thoracic spine into a beautiful back bend.  But it’s not time for back bending and it’s not time for pushing anymore. There will always be love around my former relationship, there will always be quite a lot of love in fact but it’s time to step away and accept that this practice is now the practice of letting go. This yoga of heartbreak is about observing and healing and eventually growing. Maybe one day pigeon will be less elusive and maybe one day my thoracic spine will open enough so that this heart of mine can find some more love. But for now it’s me, my dog, and the mat; Om Y’all.

anatomy of pigeon

Yoga Cravings

Some people have will power; I am not one of these people. If there is a tin of Christmas cookies on the counter, I will grab one every time I pass it, chips and salsa hardly make it past a day and oddly enough if there is cereal in the house I’ll eat it for nearly every snack and meal except dinner. I’ve just never been good at moderation, at the very least with food! Which is actually something I struggle with as part of a yogic path, being able to control my cravings and impulses. However lately there’s been one thing that I’ve been craving and happily surrendering to those cravings: asana! I am absolutely loving being on my mat lately. Throughout the day I will start to feel that familiar urge, but what is unfamiliar is that it’s not in my stomach, not a little beeping telegraph to snack on the yummy things in the fridge. It’s a different urge, one that I feel in my legs, my shoulders and chest, the same pull as a food craving but a much happier one. There’s almost a sense of satisfaction that accompanies the craving, and I attribute this to the tumultuous year I just had when getting on the mat felt like a chore I had to carry out if only to point out how hard the task was because I had neglected it for so long. So now that my body is wanting yoga there’s already a sense of accomplishment which I think makes it even easier to get on the mat and practice. And what practices are being had, no classes on cd or dvd, no yoga podcast, just me maybe some good tunes and whatever posture my body whispers a hankering for.

For me these “multi practices” have been very slow and introspective, some lasting only 20 minutes but they have all lead to 2 things: 1. New developments in my physical practice and 2. Really amazing meditations. My body is starting to do things I never thought it was capable of, things like a full pigeon or getting my right shoulder open enough to grasp my fingers behind my back in cow face pose. I’m so thankful for the extra range of motion and also for the awareness to notice more subtle changes to my practice; like the extra fraction of an inch lower in Hanuman (the splits) or just a hair deeper into a twist. As for the meditations, well that gratitude carries right over into the meditation; waves of gratitude seem to wash over me whenever I close my eyes and draw my awareness inward.

I have no idea why in the past week y practice has seemed to lift off, but the theory I’m going with is that since I’ve taken the “should” (as in, ‘I really should do yoga today’) out of practice and now am simply obeying the yoga urge that basically the pressure is off. I’m not looking for an outcome (as in ‘I should be able to do full pigeon by now!’) or looking to asana as a remedy for the funk I was in last year. I’ve just accepted my yoga as a real and substantial part of my daily life and am honoring it. So I choose to believe that by honoring my practice, my practice is rewarding me by sending up more urges and encouraging me to go deeper with each surrender. So I’ll probably never get and grip on my cravings and indulgences but the way I feel it, if I’m gonna go down I’m gonna go down dog in yogic style!