A funny thing happened to me,
on the way off my mat…
Sweet Teacher said to me, as I
was lying in happy baby pose/ dead bug pose (which for those of you who don’t
know, finds a practitioner on her back with her legs squat open and her feet in
her hands – completely open)… Sweet Teacher says to me, “That was one hell of a
wheel!”
It was a very strange moment.
First off – I adore this woman.
I feel like even after only a few months she has changed my life forever –
given it more grace and more understanding and more push and more gentleness…
Praise is lovely, when it comes
from someone you trust and love.
Praise is so awful. It makes me
self-conscious. Last year I started forcing myself to say “thank you” to
praise. And just saying that has helped me understand the nature of acceptance
– of accepting other people’s appreciation – other people’s energy and
kindness… So many of us are so good at accepting our faults…
So I said thank you. I felt
self-conscious. I wondered what on earth I looked like up in wheel pose… you
never see yourself practice – like sex, I suppose – so there is no relational
scale…
But this was not quite that.
There was another strangeness to the idea of the praise. I suppose it comes
from which pose it was, really. When she said nice job as she twisted me into a
very painful bind minutes earlier – or helped me get my feet over my head,
which proved difficult today, I heard encouragement and gratitude for courage…
But my wheel… my back bends. I
struggle to build the muscles around enough to support the suppleness therein…
My back craves a deep, high bend – and when a practice doesn’t include it, I
long for the stretch… the natural nature of the way my very own back wants to
extend…
So when she noticed, it felt so
otherly I was hard pressed to answer…
It has nothing to do with me.
There is no connection with pride in this practice. It comes of the body – a
body I struggle to accept and to love… Good morning, sweet body.
We have these gifts, yes. They
are given to us. We encourage or we don’t – the flight to which we are capable.
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