I Know Very Little, but I Know These Things

What she wanted was to offer us possibility.

Hello Beautifuls,

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However you found your way here, know that I see your subscription come in and I say your name out loud, a little prayer of gratitude and seeing.

Thank you for being here. It means everything to me.

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Me and my teacher, Daniella (left), doing a handstand variation at my graduation ceremony for 200 hour yoga teacher training, June, 2016.

Last week, I went to a new-to-me yoga class and met a yoga teacher who is in love with bees. She got me thinking how bees and words are so much alike: If you sit still, they stop swarming, and become individuals, wings beating 200 times per second, just waiting for somewhere to land.

As I stood on my mat, this new teacher's words were a quiet drumming. Not the brassy orchestra of a downpour, but the soft glistening rhythm of a heartbeat.

Samasthiti, mountain pose.

Ekam (one). Inhale, take arms up. Gaze to thumbs.

Dve (two). Exhale. Uttanasana.

Trini (three). Inhale. Gaze forward, lift the head.

Catvari (four) exhale. Jump back.

Pancha (five) inhale. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, upward dog.

Sat (six) exhale. Adho Mukha Svanasana, downward dog.

The wires of muscles pulling against my spine began to uncoil as my breathing became deeper, an intentional soft snore deep in my throat.

The wires of fear in my mind loosened and I stopped thinking about the new roof, the sagging fence, the airline tickets I haven't yet bought for my husband to join me on my trip to California. I stopped thinking about the national parks and social security and Canada's sovereignty. I thought only about moving my body from one pose to another, linked by the steady hum of my own breath and the quiet baseline of my teacher's voice.

One Saturday in 2016, during my year of yoga teacher training, I stood on my mat in a room full of 16 other students, working on Half Moon Pose (a bent over sideways balancing pose where only one foot and fingertips or no hands at all remain on the ground). We had been practicing hip opening poses most of the morning and our teacher, Daniella, had warned us, "We hold trauma, especially sexual trauma, in our hips. At some point today, you may need to cry. Do it. If you need to sob, leave the room and go outside so you can really let go. This is why you are here. To befriend your body, to listen to what it is saying to you. Honor that."

I had made it through the morning justfinethankyouverymuch, and was proud of myself for not needing to cry. I was on top of my trauma. I was in therapy. I didn't need to release anything from my hips. And then came Half Moon, a mildly challenging and hip opening pose, but nothing like what we'd been doing. As I wobbled on my single narrow right foot, lifted my left leg and tipped my body parallel with the floor, as I rotated my hips open and sought balance, my whole front body exposed to the world, all at once, I felt the rush and sting, my nose and eyes burned, my stomach and heart felt queasy and overfull. I tried holding on, holding it in, but the sound was about to escape up my throat and out my mouth.

I managed to shuffle myself through the room and out the door. I ran down the street to the open grass at the end of the block and let the sound out. It was a sound like nothing I'd ever made before. Low, off-key, bones and blood and muscles releasing. I sat on the grass and wiped at tears and mucus with my sleeves until they were wet. This lasted several minutes, and then, it stopped.

The crying was over and I sat there, surprised at how calm I felt. How peaceful. How complete. Connected again, to a part of myself, present but denied and now reclaimed.

It was the first time this happened for me and it was not the last, I hope there will never be a last. Because this kind of knowing, this kind of communion with ourselves, is sacred. It goes beyond our minds and taps into the wisdom of our body's experience, our body's knowing. And this is the knowing we need in order to move through this life, the knowing we need to be in love with it instead of afraid of ourselves and what is coming next.

We cannot create change by ignoring the darkness. We change by acknowledging the darkness and being the light anyway.

In this time of so much unknown, so much disruption, disarray and destruction of the foundations of this country and our systems, what I know is very little, but I know these things:

Loving other people in spite of their beliefs is resistance.

Play in spite of disaster is resistance.

Joy in the audience of devastation is resistance.

I went to class again yesterday with this same new teacher. She invited us to try an advanced pose much beyond my experience and ability. An upper body balancing pose, where the arms provide a foundation for lifting the belly and legs off the floor, it involved tremendous shoulder, arm and core strength. She showed us variations on the pose, let us try it ourselves. An invitation to run boldly into the unknown and see where we would land.

I tried. I did not lift my entire body off the floor and balance gracefully on my arms. I lifted one leg awkwardly in the air, I fell forward onto my forehead. I tried using blocks as support and couldn't get them placed right. And yet. Gently guided and allowed to be exactly where I was in my practice, getting the pose right was no longer the point. Had never been the point for her. What she wanted was to offer us possibility. The open expanse of giving ourselves the grace to see what our bodies could do. Like children teaching themselves cartwheels or backbends, they start by floundering, barely lifting their feet off the ground, testing the fear, testing what their bodies can do, and then, in what seems like not time at all, in an effortless arc, they are tumbling through the sky.

There is effort, so much effort, but it is fueled by the belief they are allowed to try. They are allowed to move their bodies, to discover their physical boundaries and surpass them.

This, I have come to believe, is what we need most right now. To remember our bodies (and spirits) before they were formed by culture, by media, by parents and teachers and peers. To reconnect with the vastness of possibility that happens when we are yoked deeply to our beingness, to our physical experience here in these bodies and remembering a time before we were told we couldn't do or be or try.

I also know this: Allowing ourselves to dream of something different, to move our bodies towards freedom, is resistance.

I am again reminded of bees, those wings beating 200 times per second, taking their bodies from flower to flower, wandering miles each day, swooping in, landing, taking off, and, no matter how far they go, always knowing how to get home.

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Photo by Dennis Klicker on Unsplash

With so much love,

xoxo

j