Up and Down

I had a wonderful time in the mountains last weekend but I’ve felt unsettled this week since coming back. I’ve had pj Harvey stuck in my head: “Shame is the shadow of love.” I’ve forgotten to do simple things like unplug the tea kettle, I’ve been late to meet people. I haven’t slept well. I even got into a parking lot car accident the very night we got back. I’ve eaten poorly. I didn’t do any yoga because I didn’t feel like it. So there. (says my inner child to my dictatorial brain)

Cardamom (an awesome spice) wrote that he’s been thinking of yoga poses as a physical expression of energy. My energy was a little mechanical today in class. I tried to follow the instructions properly instead of listening to what I wanted to do. I wanted to, but I couldn’t feel my inhale moving down and my exhale moving up as Kira suggested.

I guess that mechanicalness comes from scrambling to figure everything out intellectually. Am I afraid of something? Am I clinging desperately onto a static vision of myself and my life? I think I’m pretty happy on the outside—cool job, cool boyfriend, cool apartment, lots of yoga, living in California. Sweet! But yet I have this worry and sometimes insomnia, this disconnection between my heart, head, and body. This voice telling me I’m not yet myself. Or that who I think I am is changing. How? Is? This? Possible?

Maybe I’ve just always thought that with enough yoga I would eventually just be happy all the time. But like that song, maybe love is just a package that comes with shame/sadness. Love/god isn’t shiny-sunshiny ojai, but the ojai that also rains like hell sometimes or cooks you til you can’t sleep at night. To quote Kira quoting her sutra class, “God is what you can bear.” I think for me the shame comes from being afraid of offering myself and then not being wanted.

The best moment in my practice today was when we did this seated twist and Kira asked us to curl our tailbones under and then back out and, on our own, find some place in between that felt good. Since I had no idea what pose we were ‘supposed’ to be in, I really was able to find what felt good. And I felt like I was some sort of artist, trying out different paint colors until I found the right one to express my idea. And it was beautiful. I do NOT know how she could tell but Kira could, because at that moment she gave me my one yoga compliment for the day.