I burst into tears during baddha konasana today after days of, for some reason, being unable to get
through the primary series in it’s entirety. I just find myself warming up about halfway through as things are getting interesting and oh, it’s
time for shavasana…. What? I know not all students do the full series every
morning, but I must be going slower and slower. It's very weird. My body is sorer than ever - this is day 5
in a row for me and tomorrow day 6 and Thursday day 7. May is the month of
every day, no matter what, do your practice because next month I'm in Mysore practising every day except Saturday.
Today was shit-house.
Absolutely broke me. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I just got to the
point where I was practising Mysore style in my daily Adelaide class, nothing feeling really great, all a
bit sluggish and I get into the twists that suck the breath out of me but make me feel great afterwards, and then Kurmasana - it's too weird to explain, but let's just say it's called sleeping turtle or something. I like to call it 'freaking turtle' because this one gets you questioning what you are doing yoga for, really. So I get out of that one alive and onto bad Konasana, where you open your knees out wide, feet together leaning forward. I hear my teacher's footsteps coming towards me..."please don't be coming for me, please see someone else so I can get out of this one quick.....ple..."
But no. He's seen me on his rounds and comes over and applies a
bit more happy, chirpy pressure on my knees and everything inside screamed Nooooooo!! But I was going there anyway there was no escape and my walls broke and emotion just welled up from the base inside me and I started sobbing – I can’t do it, I
said, trembling at the force of pain through my inner groin I was somehow expected to not only endure, but push through, like balancing an elephant on a leaf or pushing your head through a concrete wall.
Yes you can, he said.
No, really. Today I just can’t do it. But he didn't stop the pressure so I decided to still do it anyway, with snot and blubber and tears heaving.
And I felt it
completely through me. An understanding that this whole part of you is a
curtain and is coming down, and it hurts. This other part of you is just doing
the posture and it’s fine. No problem. One does not equal the other. Emotionally I broke down, allowing all this gentleness
suddenly washing through my chest, arms head, while at the same time leaning forward into the pain, forehead on my toes, forehead in front of my toes. Forehead on the ground. Oh my God. I never meant that phrase more.
My ears were throbbing, everything was ringing alarm, and yet this deep surrender to the freaking out, ok so not the best I've ever felt in this asana, breathing through my mouth, and physically yeah, I could do it, but emotionally I was, am still, at the end of my protection. There is no more after this, I feel completely vulnerable. Man, baddah konasana is a total bad-ass. It disarmed me completely. And guess what. I get to do it all again tomorrow.
My ears were throbbing, everything was ringing alarm, and yet this deep surrender to the freaking out, ok so not the best I've ever felt in this asana, breathing through my mouth, and physically yeah, I could do it, but emotionally I was, am still, at the end of my protection. There is no more after this, I feel completely vulnerable. Man, baddah konasana is a total bad-ass. It disarmed me completely. And guess what. I get to do it all again tomorrow.
Sometimes I don’t think there is
a reason for emotional releases. They just come up if you practice enough – you
laugh, cry, twitch, whatever. But this
was pretty major. Not because of anything else going on in my life, being woken at 3 am, 4 am 5 am with an injured animal in my house, with stuff on my mind, just because of being sore and this is day 6 or whatever, and omg I’m going to
Mysore and it’s getting very real now.
What if I can’t do it? What if my shoulder freaks out? What if I get sick over there? What if I realise things about myself I don't like very much, like I need my personal space and someone's foot is in my face and someone else stinks and I can't get air and I'm too hot and start to panic? It's India woman. Personal space is not a thing, I'm pretty sure. This is like week 1 of 4 weeks in a row. So
I’m effectively going to do 4 weeks daily here and have the next 4 weeks daily
practice over there. That’s the plan.
And I’m in week 1 and freaking. Oh man. I'm in trouble.
