Yoga Practice: Nourishing my Dry Bones

Salida by Susan Fetalvero-Reyes, 2009  exhibited at the Bencab Museum

Two decades ago, I joined a yoga class organised by a group of women in the social development circle.  I was able to attend only one session as the schedule didn't match my work schedules and, admittedly, because I didn't really have the internal commitment to pursue it.  Yoga was one of those nice-to-haves I didn't really take seriously.

A decade later, leaving my job and doing freelance work, I would find that I didn't only have the time for yoga but also had more reasons to commit myself to it due to the growing manifestations of my hormonal woes.  Without a stable source of income and taking care of my still young preschool son, I couldn't afford to pay to attend a yoga class.  I therefore resorted to a yoga CD which I must have managed to do thrice a week for about a month. The CD instructions became too boring, a part of me felt I wasn't doing things right, and I'd find myself spending way too much time on the mountain and child poses, the only poses I can remember from that tutorial because these were the easiest poses. I stopped again.

Yet another decade after, in my 40s, and with more physical challenges bothering me, I'd find yoga calling me again.  Five months after I had initially made contact with the yoga instructor, I finally joined the class yesterday.  It was a rainy Saturday and I had to struggle with the call of the bed.  Wouldn't it be nice to simply have another lazy reading day in bed?  Something made me jump out of bed however and that was the yoga instructor's last text message the day before:  "Don't forget to bring change of clothes, yoga mat, and a sense of wonder."  I didn't want to miss a chance to awaken and put to use my sense of wonder.   

It initially felt awkward as I was with a couple of students in the middle of their neck-standing poses, while I was struggling to reach my toes and recall instructions for a set of movements demonstrated to me and which Edith, the instructor, and I did together just a few minutes earlier. There were moments when, as I struggled to stay in a pose while Edith contemplatively counted to seven, I'd contemplate on simply finish this one session and not come back again. Yet, there were more times when I would feel deep inside that I was meant to be in this class, that my body-mind-spirit needs yoga during this leg of my life journey. 

Here are some Aha moments, some funny thoughts, and some affirmations. 

• Self-consciousness which stems from the fear of failure made me feel really ill-at-ease at some point.  I felt like the other students were watching me and probably had laugh (instead of thought) bubbles seeing how I was doing it all wrong. Once I got into the movements, I realised one can't afford to watch another while one is seriously flowing with one's breath and movements.  Mindfulness took the place of self-consciousness.  I had to be mindful of my breathing and try to let this breathing lead my movements instead of minding what the others are doing or guessing what they are thinking. 
• When I grow older I want to be like Edith - gentle, serene, respectful, and limber. When I told my friend J this, she said, accepting and limber she could imagine. She wasn't too hopeful about the first two though.  Seriously, as I am completing this visualisation and planning exercise for my 46th and beyond, I find it helpful to think about how I would like to be.  I agree with my friend, somehow, and I do so without feeling bad about myself.  This is because, as I grow older I know what I would like is to become more and more like my Self.  Perhaps I am really not the externally gentle and warm person that Edith is, but in my external roughness I know that, deep inside, I also have a gentle and nurturing side. 
• As Edith gently touched my back, it felt like my spine was lengthening.  As I struggled to stay in one of those poses that stretched my legs painfully, I felt a sense of triumph in being able to go beyond what I had thought to be my physical limits. To a certain extent, it felt like my consciousness was expanding too and my mental rigidities, which are evidently expressed through my body's stiffness, are gently giving way to fluidity and opening up to what is. 
• As yoga practice is personal and non-competitive, I deeply feel the invitation to be kinder and gentler to myself, to go beyond my self-invented physical limitations and to do so not because I should outdo another but because there is joy in discovering the potentials of my body. I remember how a few years back, I would push myself to really walk fast while brisk-walking, out of sheer need to outpace other walkers. In yoga practice now, my goal is to do poses that will strengthen my body and push me to my limits. I want to challenge myself a bit, but I also want to be gentler and kinder to my body. 
• When something is part of your journey, it will always come back to you until you have accomplished what you need to in relation to that something.  Somehow, this call to yoga practice resonates with that.  Not only did my interest in yoga keep coming back, but it also seems to call me into something.  That something had been calling me since two decades ago, too.  While in one of the yoga poses, I remembered an image I had while I was in this body-mind workshop during my early 20s - that was the image of a ballerina, but a muscled and tough one.  I won't say who the character I had in mind was back then but every time that image would come to mind I'd find myself either amused and laughing or in panic at what I could have been becoming.