Here is the crazy thing about yoga, and I am guessing it is the same for most endeavors: there is so much to learn! The Course is all about arm balances, and I have gained so much for my personal practice, as well as my teaching practice, I can't wait for May to roll around so I can share it all with the Ophir ladies in our Wednesday evening Town Hall classes next summer.
Two summers ago a friend took me bouldering on a breezy summer evening and there was a point where we were looking at a giant rock with some vague (to me) hand- and toe-holds (I use the word "holds" very very loosely, because honestly, none of it looked remotely possible), and we were standing there kind of scratching our heads and rubbing our chins (mine in earnest and hers, I think, as a show of solidarity). She says, "When you have a problem like this, you can look at how to solve it in a lot of different ways," then she spiders on to the boulder and moves in a manner and direction that I didn't think was humanly possible, and suddenly, she had gotten from Point A to Point B, via points F, Z, Q, and possibly M.
And it is so very true with the asana practice of yoga. I see what the final pose is. I know where all my body parts are supposed to end up. But there are so many steps and ways of arranging yourself, that you start to look at asanas as problems that are waiting to be solved, equations that some days have an answer and on other days, maybe not.
So I am basking in the sunny south-facing window eating my usual post-Sunday-yoga lunch of grilled cheese with pickles and mustard, Constant Comment tea with honey, high as a kite on my practice, when JC rolls in, high as a kite on his giant tour, reporting that the snow was "surprisingly good" and eager to continue skiing with me the rest of the afternoon. Er….. I do want to ski but am not sure I want to commit to an Ophir tour that gets us back to the house right at dark on Sunday. Plus it will harsh my mellow.
Our compromise was to walk up the street and lay down exactly 60 tracks on the mine tailings in a few short runs. The snow is the perfect depth, we got to ski together ("group therapy", another Brucie quote), we stayed close to home and didn't have to get in the car.
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Shadow Turns! |
I know it's kind of lame to show me with my tracks in the background but I am still in a little bit of disbelief that it is finally happening. The kind of tracks I saw people make for the past 6 years and think WTF? How do they DO that?
And honestly, for me it just… happened. I don't know how you teach someone how to move their body like that. Yoga? Place your right foot forward, bend your right knee 90 degrees, line up the inner edge of your back foot with the heel of your front foot… But skiing? It's a moving target.
I think there is a period of time where you are building up the strength you need to then stop using your strength, stacking your bones in a way that you no longer need to rely on your muscles so much, working with the natural forces of the universe instead of against them.
And when it starts to flow, you just keep moving.
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