Imago: metamorphosis, usually into a winged state. It can induce a state of wonder.
The best part of my day is falling. I begin with Sirsasana. To extend into a headstand, I cradle my head with interlaced fingers, root down my forearms, extend my legs straight behind my head, walk them up until my pelvis tilts forward. I lift my feet into a headstand.
A headstand is not static. My whole body is like a blade of grass in the wind. I am constantly adjusting, monitoring my breath, keeping my legs aligned with my shoulders, not arching my legs over my hips. I strive to keep my body straight, yet tucked in. My shoulder girdle is extended, not collapsed. My body is held not by my head, but through the strength of my arms.
This focus requires holding my gaze like a dancer or a figure skater as they whirl at impossible speeds held only by a single focal point. This is the drishti gaze, a single point of concentration, a hub in a rapidly spinning wheel, like the blue sky that surrounds clouds as they move with the wind.
I am learning Ekapada Sirsasana, which means I am in a one-legged headstand. I hold one leg up towards the sky and keep the other leg extended, reaching for contact with the floor. Getting into this pose throws off my balance. My muscles are not yet supple enough to have my toe touch the floor while my other leg stays rooted in the air. So my leg comes three-quarters down, hovering so close to the Earth that I yearn to anchor into, but my body can’t quite reach.
Staying in this pose generates a lot of heat or agni in my body. My shoulders and forearms feel the weight of my body while my abdominal muscles contract to hold the pose. I am hoovering between strength and flexibility. The heaviness of my ungrounded leg is challenging to maintain. I practice ujjayi breath, which sounds like the tidal surge of the ocean cresting and falling. I breathe rhythmically to calm my central nervous system. I begin to sweat as I bring my leg up to switch sides.
The shift in balance happens so quickly that it takes forever. I always fall. I have enough time to take my hands out of their tight interlacing behind my head, relax my shoulders and fall into the torque of my body. I hit my Yoga mat hard. I laugh out loud every single time. I love it.
How wonderful it feels to fall
I love being able to let go of the fierce concentration required to hold the pose, the strength of my core, the balance of my hips, the stacking of bones over flesh, held together by will and muscle. The sheer joy of falling is a delight. There is nothing to do except soften my body as I pummel the ground. I am not a graceful waterfall of limbs. I am a tree falling in the woods.
My partner hears me in the next room. He waits for my laughter to hear I am OK. I tell him I love this part of my Yoga practice. Falling is the one thing I don’t have to work at.
I have only collapsed from the posture of my body one other time in my life. I was on a graveyard tour in New Orleans, during a bachelorette weekend for a friend. We had been out the night before, up to no good that involved copious amounts of alcohol.
I didn’t drink enough water the next day. I had been feeling dizzy and not quite myself. The alcohol my girlfriends and I enjoyed to remedy the effects of the night before didn’t help. Meanwhile, the guide informed his group that, without fail, one person always passed out at some point during the tour. No one was to worry. Water and well-trained staff were on standby.
I made it halfway through, and I started to feel dizzy. I felt like my head was a nimbus cloud floating away on the bright lights and streams of conversations rising and falling around me. I started to sway and lost control of my body. My brain was the last to go as it registered every detail of my fall. I crumpled, astonished I could not will my body to master its own collapse. There was nothing I could do except let go. It felt wonderful. My last thoughts were a hope that I’d land softly on the hard concrete.
When I came to, I was on the ground, surrounded by 20 people who were inquiring if I was OK. I was helped to my feet, given water and assessed with dehydration. I was told that New Orleans is below sea level, which heightened the effects of the alcohol in my body. It can bring on a sort of disorientation, like altitude sickness, that makes it hard for people to recover from a night out.
My mat is a holy place
The body is a vehicle for all sorts of strange happenings that are impossible to put into words. It is a container for grief, joy, fear, lust, love, anger, play and wonder. It holds touch, gives the seed, receives it and births; it is broken open through wounding, surgery, cancer, broken bones and things we cannot even conceive of until we experience them, always first through the body. The mind is always a step behind, playing catch-up as it sorts and analyzes information.
I find that Yoga is prayer. It is a devotional practice, a container that holds the moments of my life.
In Yoga, the highest form of practice is not asana, but meditation. I find that Yoga is prayer. It is a devotional practice, a container that holds the moments of my life.
When I step on my mat, I offer my life, my suffering, my hopes, my troubles. I offer my mother, my dead grandmother, my sorrow, the things that cannot be fixed but only held; I ask for blessings, that the cry of my heart is seen by my sweat and the movement of my body as I rise and fall over the mountains and valleys of my life.
My mat is a holy place. My body moves over it like wind currents and hummingbirds sipping flowers, so when I fall, I pray. I let the ground hold me softly, let my return be an invocation of life returning to life, let the surrender of my body be an act of migration, the imagination of form as it breaks open to become something else entirely.
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image 1 StockSnap de image: Pixabay 2 images par Pexels de image: Pixabay 3 images par Fernando Gimenez de image: Pixabay
