March 29, 2009

Beyond your flexibility.....go beyond your flexibility.  That is what the teacher in my Bikram Yoga class says when we finish the Pranayama breathing and begin the first pose.  Arms are stretched up over the head, elbows straight and close to the ears, hands clasped with index fingers released and no space between the palms.  Then a slow gradual stretch over to one side in a half moon shape.  Stretch beeeyoooond your flexibility, the teacher says, squeezing the most out of that image.  At first I wasn't sure how you could bend beyond your flexibility but now I know that you can always find the courage to go a little further than you ever have in the past.   We do the same exact sequence in each class, ninety minutes precisely in a climate controlled room of around 104 degrees with 40 percent humidity, led by a variety of teachers who all use the same phrases to guide us through the familiar sequence.  Some ask if I get bored with the same routine every time.   It isn't boring but I don't know why or how to explain.  One day the teacher said that the only thing designed to change from class to class is you.  All other factors remain reliably consistent.  Those of us who practice consistently supply the change.  

It is probably no coincidence that I began practicing Bikram yoga at the same time I began writing Silver Platter Girl in earnest.  I remember because it was late summer and despite the intense desert heat, it still felt cooler outside than it did in the room where "hot" yoga is practiced.  It took me a while to summon the courage to attend my first class after a massage therapist at the facility where I train told me she thought it would be perfect for me.  No doubt my dancer ego got in the way, wanting to "perform" brilliantly the first time and be flexible enough to accomplish the poses that I had viewed over and over again on the studio website.  I wanted to know everything about it in advance.  I was also fearful that I wouldn't be able to acclimate to the heat, that I would faint or turn to mush.  Instead the heat felt friendly to me, welcoming.  It reminded me of good times spent rehearsing for summer musicals on the campus of ASU in non-air conditioned rooms when I was a theatre student.  Or in the second floor dance studios of New York with the windows wide open and oppressive humidity, not a breath of fresh air in the room.   The 90 minutes spent in the peace, tranquility and safety of the hot room where yoga is practiced was like a salve for the wounds caused by wading through the journals and letters of the past as my story poured out of me, struggling to overcome the intense memories of the trauma that led to my terrifying cancer diagnosis.  The writing process shook me to the core but in that room I was encouraged to stay in the moment, stay in the room, leave everything else in my life outside, and concentrate on the care and healing of my body and soul.  

If we are going to take on the difficult work of delving into our own stories and dare to look straight into the eyes of the truth, we must bend beyond our flexibility.  In class, we do several deep back bends.  The first one can be scary and the teacher tells us that it will hurt like hell but we should not be afraid.  Look back, go back, way back, we are told.  But there is a reward for the effort.  When you come back to center, your spine feels released and you have overcome your fear.  Later, the class comes to a climax as we are asked to perform the deepest back bend of the series, ustrasana, camel pose, opening our hearts to the sky.  Whatever is buried inside of you, the teacher says, will emerge as you drop your head backwards and lean back, way back.   This is a pose I cannot yet sustain.  What is buried inside me is hurt, pain, disappointment and tons of chemotherapy.  When these things come to the surface, I am overcome with nausea and unbearable discomfort. But I am going to keep easing into ustrasana, and throw my heart to the sky each time, until I can sustain the pose, until what comes out of me is clean and pure and pain-free.  

After the first 45 minutes of class, the standing and balancing series, we earn the right to lay down on our mats in savasana, or corpse pose, for two minutes.   Don't mistake what looks like a simple break while lying on your back as just that.  No, the teachers tell us, this is the hardest pose in the practice.  Learning to be still, completely relaxed and connected only to the breath.  This is where the renewal takes place, the healing.  It is from this stillness that the best listening takes place, even though you are not to be consciously thinking of anything in particular.  But there is a connection formed with your deepest self, the true place that is not tainted by the demands and challenges of a complicated, modern life.  You can find your answers in that stillness. After a long practice of savasana, you are to roll out on your side, but when you roll out of savasana, don't let savasana roll out of you.  

Should you desire to be emotionally free and well above all else, and should you dare to establish that as a priority in your life, and should you be willing to take the risks associated with such a decision, and should you decide to be strong enough to absorb the blows that come with that work, you must learn to care for yourself in the process.  Not so easy for so many of us.  I was lucky.  Cancer gave me that opportunity, not only to learn to care for myself, but to have the luxury of the support of almost all others in the process.  After all, who is going to begrudge a cancer patient a little selfishness?  But now I know it is not selfish, it is smart.  And a gift to those who truly care about you.  It makes you better.  Whether you find that renewal in the yoga room, the running trail, the bathtub, the chapel, or outside on a moonlit night, be sure you do find it.  When asking a lot of yourself, you must give a lot in return.  

A few days later........

An e-mail popped up from the yoga studio announcing their move from the temporary location they had been using for several months back to their original, completely remodeled studio.   The move would take place on April 1st, with the usual ribbing about the announcement not being an April Fool's joke because the move had been delayed so many times.  I attended noon class on the day before the move at the only location I had ever known.  I couldn't wait to go because I had been immersed in the process of working with the publisher to set the book interior and cover for the galley print.  It was stressful for all the expected deadline driven reasons but more so because it represented one more step towards the presentation of my story to the public, the shedding of all privacy about my personal life . All my anxiety returned when the publisher said that in a few days, he would be sending 60 copies out to media outlets.  Yoga couldn't come soon enough. 

When it came time for ustrasana, camel pose, I was prepared for the usual discomfort, nausea and inability to finish the posture.  I began thinking of how much that room had come to mean to me.  How safe and protected and still and peaceful I had felt there during the turmoil of my work on the book.  How I probably couldn't have finished the work had I not been able to spend time there.  How the suffering and sweating and pushing and pulling had turned into wonderful empowerment and reconnection with my total body, inside and out.  Suddenly I realized that it was a near identical feeling to saying goodbye to the sterile room where my bone marrow transplant transformed my life.  I was terrified to enter that room for the first time and almost didn't, I suffered tremendously throughout the process, and when it was time to go, triumphant with accomplishment, I could barely leave the place where such profound things had occurred.   So in the second cocoon I have had the privilege to inhabit, I threw my head back, opened my heart to the sky, and moved into ustrasana.  This time I felt no nausea, no discomfort, no overwhelming urge to pull immediately out of the pose.  I let the breath flow through me and only good came out.  Later that day, the book went to the printer.  The galley copies would be finished on the first day at the new studio.  

And so, dear readers, dare to go beyond your flexibility.  Then relax in savasana.  Ahhhhhhh.  

SPG
Photograph by Peter Vander Stoep