Most of the time, what I want is neither a party, nor a goose that lays golden eggs. No, what I want now are the more elusive things: enlightenment, flexibility, 100% health, financial security, a soul mate. Like Veruca, I'm quite impatient and I shudder at the idea that I might have to wait for any of these things to be present in my life. I just never wear smart little red frocks like she does.
Learning to teach yoga has really shined a light on my inner brat. Each weekend for nearly two months now I've experienced disappointment on Sunday night that I'm still not "there" yet. Fortunately, being here is baked into the practice at yoga, so I've recently come to see the futility of my tantrums. Like it or not, Veruca, you are where you are. And, chances are, where you are (Ahem, a Chocolate FACTORY) is much better than you even know...
Elise Lorimer has been teaching us Alignment 6 hours a weekend for the past six weeks. She's a fantastic, graceful and terribly athletically built instructor who can articulate with her body better than anyone I've ever seen. That is to say, when she shows us how to align our bodies in certain poses, her performance is like that of a Shakespearean actor who breathes life into and teases nuance out of even the Bard's most complicated prose. What's more, Elise has taught us with an incredible amount of humility and with a great sense of (surprisingly geeky) humor! Of course, the downside to seeing her perfectly execute these poses is that I want to be like Elise - now.
Perhaps to counteract the effect she may have on students like me, Elise repeated a phrase to us early and often that I only really understood this last weekend with her: "Try to discover what gradualness means." I didn't even think gradualness was a real word until I looked it up. Sure enough, there is a noun form to the word gradual. Things don't naturally happen all at once, they take time.
I'm learning that through my shoulder. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about my right shoulder being in pain. It is still bothering me and, gradually, I'm noticing that its going to take much more of my attention than I've been giving it. I keep pulling a Veruca Salt and wanting it to just magically stop hurting at the stomp of my feet. But each time I try to override my body, it gets strained and it starts to hurt again. I'm gradually (but stubbornly) learning to listen to it. Its kind of impossible these days, anyway, because I am doing about 10 hours of yoga a week. It is really impossible when my shoulder is screaming at me - "get off of me". Now, I know a lot of you are thinking "Duh! 10 Hours of yoga is going to hurt your shoulder" but this pain has been there long before the training started. Its been building for many years now and the good news is, I'm currently in a training where I can not only learn to modify my practice but also learn how to modify my behavior off the mat that has been causing this for so long. I think what Elise (and my screaming shoulder) are trying to tell me is that this problem, which came to me gradually, does have a solution - but it, too, takes gradualness.
Yesterday in class we learned how to come into a pose called Sirsasana - Headstand. The pose begins by resting on your forearms with your feet on the ground about two feet away from your arms. You then gradually engage your core muscles and draw your shoulder blades closer to the hips to move your hips over your torso and the legs follow. With your legs tucked into your body, its a straight shot to send them up and over your head, resulting in a headstand. Voila! Or maybe not.
I could not do Sirsasana because the forearms on the ground part was just too painful on my shoulder. It sucked and I was pissed. Ellie, Elise's assistant who helped me with this problem before, came over and talked me out of just pushing myself into the pose despite the pain. Instead, she suggested, I should just practice being in downward facing dog with my forearms down on the ground. This is called Dolphin pose. For about an hour, as everyone else did Headstand and variations thereof, I went up and down and up and down into and out of dolphin. Each time I looked up at the 39 other students doing headstand I got even more frustrated by my situation and my energy plummeted.What I didn't realize until this morning is how much of an effect those dolphins had on me. When I woke up my abs and back muscles were really sore! These are the actual muscles that need to be strong to come into a headstand correctly. Like it or not, my body wasn't ready for headstands but it was ready to do other things that I need to build my base for EVENTUALLY doing a headstand.
As I thanked Elise for her teaching after a beautiful class in Dolores Park today, I told her about my frustration at not being able to do Headstand. She gracefully told me I was in exactly the right spot. "You're discovering what gradualness is," she reminded me. "Its great you did dolphin yesterday," she said, "right now, that is your headstand."
That's yoga, y'all. She could have told my that I should probably quit now, that I wasn't cut out to be an instructor or that I was doomed to never, ever, stand on my head. But she didn't. Instead, she reminded me where I was and placed it in the context that where I want to go is still attainable...somewhere down the road. I'm in a pretty good place right now, too. I'm learning how to come into poses with a lot of physical integrity and I'm learning how to prevent myself from being injured. I'm also strengthening my core muscles, which will help me in every pose I do. Yoga means union and I'm learning how to move my body so that all its parts are in union and none of them are screaming out at me. This is great, because I don't like finding similarities between myself and Veruca Salt. I hope I'm gradually becoming less like her and I can continue to discover what gradualness means for me.
Slow down, Veruca!
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