Detours

Two classes in a row without crying. That’s definitely a step forward. Every class I am stretched and pulled beyond what I think is possible. Sometimes the mind and body feels like one stubborn, hardened rubber band. But, subsequently there is a little more freedom.

Quite a few international students/teachers ask me what treatment I have come for and I don’t know what to say. For someone whose profession involves talking and presenting, I am tongue tied when it comes to expressing what I experience. I still feel like a burden on my teachers as they give so much of their time and energy to ensure I am alright. All I have is implicit trust and faith that they will not let me fall. Standing back arches, swinging sirsasanas and variations that I’ve never done before happen with their bodies as props. By the time, the 90 odd minutes are up, I am sore but content. It feels as though each vertebra has been pulled and stretched and put back together. It’s hard work as usual but I follow the instructions as best as I can. I still cannot hear the song of my body but last class I found myself humming a tune as I put the props back.

From the various spots in the room, I can see Guruji’s pictures and can’t help but notice the lines his body occupies. Seen straight up, upside down or sideways, the angles are unmistakable and make for beautiful visual poetry. The pictures have a calming effect on me but I’m still not sure about the invocation yet.

While returning from class, I took a few detours and had some beautiful views of lush green. The incessant rains have given rise to traffic snarls and the detours were a welcome relief. The snarls reminded me of my body and the detours, all the different ways my teachers took me from brokenness to healing.

From a sobbing wreck to someone able to go through a class without tears seemed an impossibility not too long ago. It’s still shaky ground and I don’t know what might come up. But as my teacher said in the last class, you have to accept the good things also.

In gratitude

After the showers

I felt lightness after class last evening. It’s been a long time since that kind of a sensation. As I walked out of the institute, there was a tiny spring in my step and my senses felt more alive than they have in a while.

Getting to class is a mix of fear and surrender. Fear of constricting and having tides of tears and surrender when I show up knowing that I’ll be the only one having these spells. I let go into the hands of my teachers and they look after me. I keep wanting to get over this soon so they don’t have to sort me out every other day but I suppose it’s really not in my hands.

The 90 odd minutes I spend in the large hall are 90 minutes of discovery. It’s an active practice despite being propped and helped. None of the passive, watching from my corner kind of practice. Here I am naked, fully stripped of whatever image I held of myself as a collected and calm person. There is nothing save my body and heart and they’re raw. My mortal fear was losing control in public and that has happened so many times here in the middle of so many people. There is nothing left to hide so I avert my eyes.

I shared with my sister about my frequent breakdowns in class and she pointed out that I never cried when different kinds of difficult situations cropped up. That included deaths, illnesses, massive accidents and abuse. Seen in that context, this tearing up is very little considering that this expulsion is about 30 odd years of bottling everything in.

The pragmatist in me would push aside having to deal with difficult feelings and focus on fixing the situation. In fact, in a previous session when the tears flew fast while in a swinging sirsasana, I felt helplessness like the one I experienced as a little girl. I always avoided experiencing the stronger and difficult emotions and focused on the positive. In the bargain, I didn’t learn to walk through feelings that were painful. They were shut in a box and pushed out of memory.

All these days, anything that had to do with opening the chest area just dislodged heaves of sorrow. It still comes but yesterday was less difficult. In one of the poses, my legs started to tremble for no apparent reason. Through the duration of that pose, I felt ironlike stubbornness of unshed tears and the rigidity of control. Pockets of tightness in different places that had been solidified by years of pride in being resilient and self-sufficient. The high point of the session was after cycles of being helped in and out of sirsasana – vipareeta dandasana repeatedly. It felt good. I didn’t know my body had the capacity to do that. Maybe one has to lose everything to start finding oneself.

There were moments of tears, tightness and tremors. But, there were also moments of something else. Newness, maybe? Considering the rains and lush green all around, I’m thinking green shoots after heavy showers.

New shoot of a Calla Lily in my balcony after the rains

In gratitude