Yoga
It’s like this: being of your body, and sensing (with) the ghost of past body, and sensing (with) the ghost of possible body, there is a constant negotiation between these (differing perspectives), each “one” claiming to be “the one”. Then, the analogy (between ghost bodies) is (what we call) time.
There’s something I have to write about but it’s giving me a hard time. It feels like this writhing thing inside of me that wants to get out, (you know, the usual feeling), but if I try to write about it, the words trail off, my fingers stop moving. It’s not that I’m scared of sharing this with you, (I love you but/and you’re really nobody, to me), I have a block just putting it down in written sentences. The words aren’t there to summarize.
Writing down is an alchemical treatment that some things resist. For different reasons, maybe, that I have yet to understand. The frustrating thing is, (why this of all things?), how simple it should be to put down. And at the same time, how alien the words will be from the experience, because the experience is (was) confusing and, well, terrifying in ways I maybe don’t want to share, or “externalize”, (it strikes me, what dubious complexity is hidden inside that word), or let go of.
Something precious (to me) that I don’t want to let go of.
(Working on it.)
Blood on my hands at the start of the day, nothing to worry, just small cat drama, but the flood of sensation (in the webbing of the left thumb) wakes everything up, puts it on edge. I have to write sometime about my relationship with pain.
I wonder if in retrospect this time in my life, this period in my practice, I will understand not as being about muscles or even fascia transformation, but about me and my “nervous system”, re-organizing my entire relationship with pain. There seems to have been a lot of it stored inside here (inside this body?) without me realizing it, or it improvised its own realization, and all this was the result, a nest of pain. As I was ignorant of myself. (I do not enjoy this, but it seems one of those burdens in life, you have no option but to accept. This is your suffering. This is you.) Daily excavation, disentangling the threads of—what is it, once freed?
What does pain become when it has been brought to the light of day, felt fully, and released, does it dissolve? Will it become nothing? A memory? Will it be forgotten as part of the overall motion, absorbed into a new organization? It really hurts. I cry on the mat, I want to remember, I don’t want to forget.
But the thing I study has to be the absolute wonder, an empty-like feeling, at the very possibility of study. I have no right to the intelligibility of this. And yet. I touch it, I feel it, I am felt. And in incommensurate increments, it happens, is let go, and something is becoming. I (willfully) imagine it as, a new kind of self-sense, but I can’t see it yet. The eyes are too new, an infant’s eyes. Looking, without sight, and wanting (hush, hush) to see.
One really cool thing about an ashtanga vinyasa practice is that you can experience dynamic tipping points in your own body.
Sometimes I feel like I know how the earth’s climate feels, as it’s being changed, because of the changes I put my body through. But my changes are toward balance, and Earth’s changes are away from balance. I try to understand the karmic accounting of that, how it could possibly be allowed, how it makes sense. This has been a big part of my yoga practice the past five years. Persuading my body that it’s ok for it to get better, in the cosmic scheme of things, it’s ok to be healthy. I can be an expression of strength and joy in a disintegrating landscape. It’s allowed. It might even be my final orders, so to speak.
Through the breath the parts of the body become whole. To this end, the strong must learn to follow the soft. The biggest and beefiest muscles yes, but also the loudest voices and most urgent compulsions, the ones in reaction to deep fears and sharp pains, surrender to the weightlessness of air.
Your body is an expression of ancient intelligence to which you have literally psychic access!
The first day back after convalescence is like Mercurial sunrise, the inner landscape a chiaroscuro of white-on-black sensation. Limits touching, resolutions in release, the lost body regains shape in a polyphony of pain. The clarity is mesmerizing but cruel. It’s easier to injure unpracticed flesh.
Let go of what? The frozen-shut psoas and illiacus, the clenched-fist side of my diaphragm, which hold everything else hostage, being unable to exhale for possibly forty years has been an adventure, yes and, I’m glad its almost over. Let go of what? The need to name the thing that must be let go of.
Didn’t practice yoga for almost a week because I got sick after our return from Java, again, a body rebells against exposure and exertion. Now my nerves and tissues feel foreign inside me, insolent and funky-twisted. Preparing mentally to resume tomorrow. The hardest thing (as always) is to let go.
Never let anybody tell you where your breath should go. It doesn’t matter what famous gurus say. Yoga yamas, niyamas, asana are preparation for the revolutionary lesson of pranayama. There is no outside authority for the breath.
Yoga days 5 and 6 completed, I wanted to let you know, although family demands have temporarily disenabled writing. I was thinking how writing is a luxury, you can only do it if you have extra time. What that means is a mystery though. Extra means more than enough. Who has more than enough time?
Was gently reminded by yoga day 4 that progress sometimes feels like confusion. Then Ish caught a baby monitor lizard right before headstand. Dangerous if they bite, I (sweaty) gingerly separated cats from lizard, wrangled lizard (alive) into a towel and deposited in the ravine. Savasana deserved.
Woke at 2, big loud soaking rain, couldn’t sleep. Too many thoughts and edits of thoughts too fast. Ah, hormonal insomnia. Best to let it go and soothe the nerves. Did light reading, a little writing, sipping coffee in the dark. Ish came to cuddle. Summoning courage for day 3 yoga. Then a nap. Yes.
Felt a little progress in my yoga practice today, unusual for day 2.
Progress: finding a new way into an old problem.
Slept late, woken at 6 by Ish. Small rain overnight, overcast now. Less flu-y because didn’t use ac? Jeki was almost sweet about eardrops this morning, only a few growls. Then wanted cuddle. Everyone ate breakfast (except me). Saw Blih, brief chat. Day 2 of 6-day yoga week. I’m ready.
Woke up at 4, coffee. Felt flu-y, probably from mold. Gave Jeki ear mite drops, barely. Ish didn’t want breakfast. Startled by centipede in kitchen sink. Liberated centipede. Made amends with Jeki, she tried to drink my coffee. Hope she’s ok. I miss E. Time for yoga.