My Door

Yesterday in class, Hard Teacher read a passage from Light on Life which talks about the space within and the space outside a vessel. A vase, a body. In art there is negative space -- there is line and form and light and shadow. I have studied visually the way the one creates the other...

When we work a pose, she said, we are used to working on the outside space. What I want you to play with today is the interior space...

There are ways that when we contract, it creates freedom. When we push against ourselves from the inside, we become freer...

She had us take three belts with us to the mat.

At the end of class, we went into shoulder stand. But not just any shoulder stand; shoulder stand with three belts. It felt a little like some sort of strange bondage fiasco... One on our arms, behind our back -- one on our shins, one on our ankles.

You'd think it would be harder, holding oneself strapped in...
it's scary -- I thought I was going to fall...

but it was so unbelievably light.
it was as if, by being contained, the legs lost their connection to the earth...

So I was thinking about that this morning -- as I went to start practice -- which I will have to return to later. I was thinking about how, in life, sometimes it is the restrictions that allow the space to open up -- outside and inside... the binding brings the light.


And it feels related to this other thing I was thinking about this morning. I am trying to change my headstand ascent to both legs and once -- as Hard Teacher feels this is the right way to do the pose... sigh. I'm solid in the way I go up now -- but the baby steps of reverting to two legs has me back at the wall...

the walls, in my case, are the doors of my living room. I managed it -- with a little hop, my two legs up -- this is a major feat for me right now -- I made it almost all of the way up -- then reached my toes to the door for a moment of steadying.

The door, of course, opened.
I fell sideways.  Landed on my ankle. Left my practice for later -- for which I am also judging myself...

You know, I am pretty sure I would have been fine if the door hadn't been there.
But if you think there is support -- and it fails -- balance is nearly impossible.

Maybe it's a matter again of looking to hold tight the container -- to feel the support in the vessel itself -- not looking for the strength outside -- but allowing the strength inside to be supported by the pressures and the binds of the day -- to take strength from the space that opens in response to constraint.