Maggie is a college yogini, dear friend, and phenomenal teacher both in her vinyasa yoga classes and in conversation

Isn’t it ironic that the things we need to do most, and sometimes want to do most, are usually the hardest? Since I broke a bone in my foot in a West African dance performance three weeks ago  (consoled, at least, by the badass diagnosis of a “dancer’s break”), I have all but abandoned my asana practice. My mat, which has been my rollable home and 2D safe space for eight years, has suddenly become a place of fear and pain.

Yoga always has acted as a mirror in my life. Not the superficial “how do I look” kind – rather a breath-sending, edge-finding, self-searching, divine and, on occasion, necessarily uncomfortable force. Lately, I am finding this reflection beyond uncomfortable. Lately, I unleash my mat for meditation, but I am so frustrated by my inability to move freely that it receives no more than twenty minutes of attention each day. Let me be clear. By no means do I define yoga as simply asana. In my life, yoga means: pranayama, meditation, asana, reading, coffee with a friend (the creator of this blog especially), music, sleeping, praying, crying, dreaming, dancing, sexuality, and of course, knowing when not to “do” yoga – because, as my dear friend Shira has helped me confirm, yoga is lived, not done.

However, I am realizing how much I still define my asana practice and my yoga teaching based on my physical ability and moves on the mat. I long for vinyasa more than a long nap, dark chocolate, or a fantastic orgasm, but I have not been doing the footwork (no pun intended) to bring myself this joy. Why? Because I’m scared of not being as able as I want to be, which is always true, by the way. I’m afraid of challenging myself to change what yoga is in my life, and on the mat. And I’m terrified to start over.

 This morning, I woke up and I felt my left forearm, where I have my first tattoo inscribed. I chose it during my yoga teacher training, and it remains a daily prayer and spiritual challenge. Abhaya– fearlessness in Sanskrit— my arm reads. To me, this does not mean BeABadassBatshitCrazySkydivingDaredevilFool. To me, this means practicing courage in the face of fear. Emanating love, including self-love, rather than fear.

I thumbed the jewelry I wear on my ring finger. After reading The Red Book by Sera Beak, I bought myself a simple silver ring with a lotus blossom imprint as a reminder of my commitment to my divine spirit, which always resides in me. With this ring, I established my determination to honor it, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part (or until we are reincarnated)… The lotus blossom symbolizes potential out of darkness, spiritual development, and new beginnings. With these prayers in mind, I threw on some spandex (observing but trying not to become attached to my atrophied right leg) and a Wesleyan t-shirt, wiped the dust off my mat, and got ready to kick some asana (trademark Shira Engel!). Today that meant: modified child’s pose, modified vinyasa flow, deep stretching, core work, savasana (which sometimes I forget can be my asana practice-duh!) and lots of breathing. Breathing can get me through anything, even meaningful tattoos. My body and heart felt so at home. I lost track of time, forgot my surroundings, let go of labels (dancer, yoga teacher, broken…) and simple was.

While I still long for the days when I can do all I want to do, these days are a potent and beautiful reminder of non-attachment. I am not my yoga practice, and I honor my body. Today I faced the mat, and the mirror of self-awareness that it inevitably reflects. Abhaya. I also honored the meaning of the lotus blossom, and I believe that, although I am somewhat broken now (okay, pun intended), I will flourish again in a new and even more powerful way.

when i mentioned that, for a grand total of 2.5 credits, i am taking acrobatic yoga & thai massage, as well as a class entitled “ritual, health, & healing,” my yoga teacher told me that it looks like i am majoring in english and feminist, gender, & sexuality studies and minoring in Awesome. 

sounds good to me.

and that is what this semester is beginning to feel like. newness. that was one of my intentions for 2012. towards the end of 2011, i found myself getting too comfortable and complacent with what i already knew how to do - certain styles of yoga & meditation, teaching, people, places. so, in 2012, i am making an effort to just insert myself into the newness, into the Unknown, and learning to be comfortable with Unknowing.

this idea of “unknowing” was part of the initial questions we were asked to answer in ritual, health, & healing. like everything, i did not know what it meant until i experienced it. from the 6-hour-long, wonderful, and draining movement lab to the duerr reading dreamtime that incorporated philosophy that went way over my head, i became well-acquainted with what it means to not know. 

i’ll be honest: i took this class because on the textbook list, there is a book on yoga, tantra, & ayurveda. a part of me feels like i am cheating the system - taking a class on healing practices while at a very theory-based university. while readings are phenomenal, i learn through doing. on a day-to-day basis, this (wo)manifests itself on my yoga mat, going through poses, working out kinks of mind, body, soul. 

i have been asked a lot lately why i love yoga. this question is So Challenging for me to answer. there are so many different things that go into it, i want the question to be broken down into a bazillion different ones. but here is one thing i am able to articulate based on my experiences in the movement lab on saturday: i love my mat.

i think of my mat as a tiny studio apartment in brooklyn - manageable, easy to clean, having everything i need for just me and no room for anyone else. it is easy to move around on and it is - metaphorically - a two-second convenient walk to the closest subway station. i know it. i know its color, its frays, the tag on the back that is slipping off. 

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i could not say the same for beckham hall. moving in that space was a challenge. i did not know what to do with it. it was like living in this allegorical brooklyn studio for one and upgrading to a mansion in the middle of virginia with really high ceilings. 

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also, it seems fit to add that i have zero dance background. many of my fellow yogis do and for me, it’s probably a matter of time, but navigating my body in that space was totally Unknown. navigating other peoples’ bodies in that space was even more Unknown. i thought that, after the movement lab, i would be exhausted and would be done moving for the day, but instead, i felt the desperate need to return to the known, to return to my mat. 

so, that night, before dancing in a very different way, in a very different space, i practiced a whole lot of yoga and balanced the Unknown with the known. 

two days later, in class, we discussed the fence. we discussed boundaries and limits that shape our experiences. i had a difficult time conceptualizing this reading. i could relate to individual lines like:

The act of insight was at the same time also an act of love (42).

The ‘underdeterminacy’ of experience by such hypotheses supposedly indicated more than anything else the gulf separating earthly knowledge from divine revelatin (94).

For if we can know what another person feels, which of course does not mean we have to be that person, then it would not be possible to either know what we ourselves feel because we would not possess any kind of scale for the nature of our own emotions.

but when it came to the concept of the fence and how it fit into my life, i was a bit stumped…until the tuesday night movement lab when i began to realize that the fence was the borderline between knowing and unknowing. being on the fence means using what i know to inform what i do not know. 

on tuesday, i understood the purpose of the movement lab, and of this collaborative class in general - to help us learn theory of ritual, health, and healing, by putting it into practice, in our own bodies.