Out on a limb
On coming back to my yoga practice after a month away
“Have you ever cried on your yoga mat?”, my friend Asia messaged once.
“ALL THE TIME”, I screamed back in a blue text bubble.
“Cool”, she replied reassured.
Yoga helps me keep track of where I am with myself. After a month away in Texas sans my bending sequences, where I underwent alllll kinds of emotions, this week I came back to Madrid, and to my practice.
Slowly, I am observing my body unclench and de-swell. Old aunt Shouldda (“you Shouldda kept up with your routine!”) came to visit on my first awkward downward facing dog this past Monday. But by Wednesday, she was safely tucked back into the corner from which she likes to hate on me. I just wink and smile at her real big. Like the years that pass me by, I endeavor to own the life that goes through my body, with or without exercise.
I’ve practiced yoga consistently for nine years. Any physical activity to which you dedicate a lot of time allows you to register shifts in the state of your body with precision. There are days in which I am tight and closed as a clam, in all the ways there are. And there are days in which I am so bendy, that I feel absolutely magnetic, like anything can happen in a world that’s my oyster. When I step onto my yoga mat, it’s as if I’m licking my index finger then putting it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. I go to the studio to look inward, purposefully setting aside the time and space to understand where I am, really.
Maybe I only practice yoga in order to cleanse. In my yogic asanas, or poses, I tune into myself, I observe, I breathe into the stiff parts of my body. I accompany it as it unfolds little by little from what is usually a wad of nerves. In that space, I take one inhale, then an exhale, then again. I twist and turn and reach up and bend back so much, that when inevitably I end in savasana, or corpse pose, laying down, I often can’t do anything but shed tears. By wringing myself out, yoga helps me somatize life.
Besides crying if I want to, I keep practicing yoga because the rigor is up to me. Sometimes I’m hot stuff, front row, watch me, queen of the yoga studio (and then end up falling on my face; it never fails when I’m in this mindset). And many others, I pick a place toward the back of the class to yawn and move my body lazily. And then sometimes I want to go to a yoga class and lie down for 75 minutes, to experience only stillness.
I’ve also gone to a yoga session to sleep. Really complicated week, that one.
More than that, I keep showing up because it makes me feel like I’m a lithe dancer flowing through a sequence.
Oh, because did I not tell you that I’m a frustrated ballerina?
I grew up in a Christian religious community that thought of dance as sinful, but when I went to explore the world1, I fell in love with how my body expresses itself through dance. Not to qualify things, but I never learned to do it very well. Or at least not in orthodox (ha!) ways of dance expressions. I am more intuitive with movement, which brings me back to yoga. Vinyasa yoga flows, when done well, act as the balm to my dancing itch.
When I move with my breath from asana to asana, I feel like a ballerina. On really intense days, maybe like a flamenco dancer raising my arms above my head con arte, chin to chest closing in jalandhara bandha, or throat lock, to sequester some internal fire. Out of the corner of my eye I often feel the strong presence of all the professional Madrid dancers who come into my local yoga studio to let go. And I smugly reward my ego a star sticker when a new teacher asks me if I’m a dancer, too. In another lifetime, I reply.
Yoga asks, though, that I walk the line between humility and assertiveness. If I don’t, I break (the pose, the moment, myself). I love being put in my place that way. Because it never ceases to amaze me how the lack of one or the other creates literal instability in the poses. Yoga is my metaphor for life; it teaches me, in my body, what I may symbolically need out of my mat.
If I haven’t yet left yoga behind, like I have so many other physical pursuits, like running or team sports, it’s probably because yoga can mean so many things at once, so it’s a practice that morphs with whoever you are on any given day. It can mean sitting for breath work, it can mean breathing through a tough, sweaty physical practice, or it can mean consciously contemplating a flower.
Yoga puts my body, mind and soul in communication, coming away from a religious tradition and an intellectual culture that heavily dissociate the three. Once, my young sister told me she wouldn’t practice yoga with me anymore because someone at her church (the same one I grew up going to) told her that yoga movements were the gesticulations of the devil. It’s probably the intimacy with one’s own body that bothers some Christians so much about this practice. The body doesn’t lie, so best not to get too close to it, lest one be faced with oneself and see the truth. Because when you come to know through your own flesh, it probably puts any dogma in danger.
After initially being perplexed and angry that someone thought I was doing demonic tricks, yoga even helped me integrate that information into the sea of all things that simply are. Because, perhaps not so paradoxically, yoga has taken me closer to loving the Christian who thinks I’m going to hell. Star sticker for me.
Jokes aside, and in closing out, I’ll salute the idea that even if I didn’t do my asana practice while I was away, the consciousness that one develops with yoga holds strong in winds of adversity. And gosh, I came back a little beat up. So excuse the duality for a second, but it’s probably easiest being a good yogi or a good Christian when you’re not around people who work you up. No offense, family, I love you! But isn’t it beautiful to come back to your sacred space and resolve to keep trying?
As we’re heading into Holy Week, may Consciousness—Christic or otherwise—carry you through.
Bisous, bisous!
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“The world” is a concept used in some Christian circles that connotes a dark, sinful place filled with desire and fallen people who are going to hell, bless their souls. It’s also where you have a lot of fun.