I've had a bit of an intermittent practice over the last week what with all the birthday festivitites- I missed Thursday and Friday, doubled up on Saturday, had another commitment on Sunday that prevented attending class, took class on Monday, and then skipped last night to celebrate my birthday. It was worth it. I had a fantastic birthday!
Tonight I am looking forward to a Core 40 class to slough off a little birthday party slowness (hello, cocktails!) and get ready for my first-ever private yoga lesson tomorrow.
I want to work on vinyasa transitions to check in with my shoulder and see if I could sometimes try chaturanga safely without coming to my knees. I want to work on practicing toward full camel and more maha backbends again. And I also want to figure out if there's anything I can do to create more space in Rabbit pose.
I'm really excited to work one-on-one with a master teacher - especially since my body has been changing so much in the last few months. In the recent months of healing and strengthening, I am finally feeling some real closure about my shoulder injury. Almost 7 years ago, I got attacked when I was living in Thailand - pulled off the bike I was riding by my purse strap and dragged behind a speeding motorcycle by said strap for about 1/2 a block before the attackers let go. I was pretty banged up. I needed yoga to heal mentally from what happened and was in shock/numbness to physical pain, so I didn't notice that continuing to practice was causing further and further problems. After a few years of increasing pain and lack of mobility, I had to quit yoga for 4 months and do intense physical therapy (starting off at 4 times a week) to heal major joint separation in my glenohumeral joint.
When I was cleared for yoga again, any weight-bearing postures or lifting my right arm over shoulder height was contraindicated. This put a damper on a lot of practice. It also brought be back to the Bikram series. I struggled through a lot of pain for the first year after coming back. I went through periods of seeming healing, only to go a little too far and end up in a lot of pain again. It got me down for a while. I finally started to accept the idea that I wouldn't get *better* in the way of returning to how I was before. I thought maybe this is what aging is all about.
I tried to live (and then came to resent) the rhetoric in yoga about injuries being your best teacher. I was so angry and wounded deep down inside about the attack and how it robbed me, not of my purse, but of my practice... but I decided to show up and create a new practice for myself. I accepted my body's size and strength as it was in the moment and just started over. Zero expectations.
I also started working with a naturopath on other health imbalances related to food allergies and thyroid stuff... I was content. And then something funny started to happen. I started to get stronger. I started to lose weight without struggling. I started to feel less fear as I worked into my upper back and shoulders. I feel like my body and my practice are totally new. It's not getting back to where I was before... it's starting over completely and learning everything with new awareness. After a decade of practice, I found beginner's mind/body.
I've learned a lot of new habits. I hold onto only a few little things from Anusara and Bikram... but mostly, I listen to my teachers with curiosity and I try to apply new things. The world of alignment has changed a lot over the last 10 years - more scientific awareness of anatomy of each individual has created some smarter yoga teachers... much like awareness of the food sensitivities of individuals has made a difference for so many people with autoimmune/inflammation issues. There is no one-size for hot yoga shorts and there is no one-size rule for alignment. The optimal blueprint is in the recycling bin. It's all about refining balance individually now.
So real healing happened physically and mentally... almost 7 years on in the process.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately & also about an article by Matthew Remski that Bernadette Birney shared on FB recently about Kino MacGregor and injury in extreme Ashtanga practice.
Pattabhi Jois, founder of Ashtanga, is famous for saying, "practice and all things coming."
I have read and heard many interpretations of this phrase that verge on the sort of positivity brain-washing of The Secret ilk. I didn't think the phrase resonated much to me until yesterday... when I realized:
Practicing yoga doesn't bring automatic unicorn sparkles... but if you keep practicing (and even if you don't) all things will continue to keep coming... even things like getting randomly attacked and injured by strangers.
These "bad" things don't go away just because you can do bird of paradise or a perfect dropback or handstand... and you can't will them away with extreme asana practice. Extreme asana practice doesn't necessarily make or keep you healthy. No yoga practice is a surefire pancea against all that ails mind and body, nor is there a linear progression from bad to good that one can expect by showing up to class everyday.
I do not purport to know what Jois really meant when he uttered those words. I just know that "all" encompasses more than just the things we wish for or desire - all is totality of experience. All is coming - no matter what we do. Practice might just make it easier to roll with what comes.
Injuries come. Pain comes. Health challenges come. Sadness comes. Heartbreaks come. Loss comes. This is part of being alive. These things can be teachers, but not in a passing way. It take a long time to learn from an injury or a heartbreak.
In theory - Kino MacGregor's message about her injury might speak to how yoga can help one face all that is coming.
Now the real yoga begins. I always say that pain and injury are the true teachers of the spiritual path and now it’s time for me to walk my own talk. There is a lesson is [sic] everything, especially the hard and difficult stuff. If this is a hip sprain and not a hamstring sprain then it will change my whole paradigm on what it takes to forward bend. If it’s the hamstring I’ll gain valuable knowledge on how to heal and rehab a hamstring sprain. Today’s #YogiAssignment is Wisdom. What is the wisdom that the biggest pain or obstacle in your life has to teach you? What wisdom have you gained from going through a difficult or challenging period in your life? Remaining equanimous with faith and patience through pain, injury and suffering is hard, but it is where the real inner work of yoga begins. Being strong in yoga isn’t about how long you can hold a handstand. It’s about how much grace you can contain when facing adversity.
Yet, Remski's article mentions that 4 days later, she was posting advanced asana again, either ignoring or hiding a serious injury. She needed to be who she had created herself to be - a beautiful, vibrant, and incredibly acrobatic yoga instructor. She needed her story. She needed her livelihood.
I discovered teaching in what happened to me only 7 years after injury - after ignoring, hiding, hating, worsening, addressing, and eventually accepting my pain. It wasn't until I gave up on healing that I started to heal more. I did find equanimity and joy in what I was able to do. I stopped teaching. I let go of caring about how I looked or what anyone thought of me. My time in asana is just for me to spend time checking in with my body and mind.
I feel for MacGregor. I don't think she is being purposefully deceptive about her injury... I think she just might not have seen it coming in the "all" that comes. She might not have been ready for the slow and arduous learning that injuries teach. I hope she gets better soon, but not all injuries heal quickly. Some take 7 years. Others never fully heal or the healing creates a new state that requires profound adjustment.
In practicing and finding equanimity, I find more joy too. On a day when my body doesn't hurt and I feel strong, I think of it as just one instance - not a new baseline or expectation for the future, but a gift in the present. On a day when I feel broken or weak, I don't stress that I will never be "back to normal" again. I don't get as frustrated as I once did. It's just one day. Things change. Practice and all things coming... sometimes blissful, sometimes excruciating.
This brings me to think of the IAO formula.
In beginning a meditation practice, there is always a quiet pleasure, a gentle natural growth; one takes a lively interest in the work; it seems easy; one is quite pleased to have started. This stage represents Isis. Sooner or later it is succeeded by depression --- the Dark Night of the Soul, an infinite weariness and detestation of the work. The simplest and easiest acts become almost impossible to perform. Such impotence fills the mind with apprehension and despair. The intensity of this loathing can hardly be understood by any person who has not experienced it. This is the period of Apophis.
It is followed by the arising not of Isis, but of Osiris. The ancient condition is not restored, but a new and superior condition is created, a condition only rendered possible by the process of death.
-Crowley, Book 4, Pt. 3 Chapter 5
IAO moves like a thread through practice... an ongoing cyclical current as DRJ always utters IAOIAOIAOIAO... in the Star Ruby until it bleeds in YHVH - a formula of all things... all things that were and are and are to come.
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