Last week I had a massage. If anything equated with the pains of labor with my second child, it was this massage. I employed every breathing technique, every visualization, every relaxation method I could think of just to get through it. And yes, it was worth it and it was necessary, but I could only think that when it was over.
My breathing and visualization and relaxation stuff didn’t work very well, to be honest. I realized, while I was trying to use them, that I’ve been holding my breath a lot. I haven’t practiced visualization in some time, and it was difficult to call on the skill when it was so rusty. And methods of relaxation? A glass of wine down the hatch would have had better results that my own efforts.
Someone was doing something to me that I was allowing and that was painful, and in the moment I was severely unpracticed at coping at all. And the most interesting part? I was fighting against it still with my anxiousness.
And I thought, wow. Wow. This is the ol’ universal skillet, hitting me on the head again so that I finally get the point.
How can I set myself up to be better able to breathe in difficult situations? Is there a way to practice and see, in my mind’s eye, a really fantastic outcome here? What do I do to relax my efforts, in this moment, to be more fully present?
Today I read this from Sally Kempton:
I’ve always found Guru Purnima, the full moon day of July, to be a time when both the blessing and the challenge of the Teacher are most fully present, most profoundly available. So today is a great day for inquiry. You might ask yourself, “Where is the inner teacher guiding me now? What is the next edge on my learning curve? How am I serving? How could I be showing up more fully for my life?”
Now, up until today, I had never heard of Guru Purnima. Even after twelve years, yoga is a constant learning curve for me, and teachers and students of yoga are always saying things like this that seem to knock me flat on my rear-end, making me feel awkward and immature. But on the other hand, in these moments there is such contemplation and intensity in the questions that I can’t help snatching them up and wrestling with them for a while.
And back to the vein of honesty, I had been wrestling with those questions anyway. So here is my personal challenge, and I want you to join me. It’s a month-long one.
Let’s find our stability.
No matter what school of yoga you love and are practicing, this is accessible. For instance, in Iyengar yoga, it’s working with an outer spiral of the lower legs and an inner spiral of the upper legs. In Anusara, it’s “shins in, thighs out.” For Ashtangis, it might be working the four corners of the feet to root the pose and engaging mulabandha, effectively organizing the pose. The most beautiful part is this. Figuring out how to stand effectively on our legs gives us legs to stand on.
Imagine.
Practice every day, even if for only five minutes in tadasana or uttanasana. When you start finding your proficiency, switch it up a bit by practicing utkatasana or virabhadrasana II.
I think once I get the hang of it in virabhadrasana II, I just might go back for another one of those deep tissue massages…
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