Embodying Soul: A Return to Wholeness
Section 4: Chapter 25—Overdue Nourishment
Dear reader: When a human being has gone for 30+ years with repression as their only and best tool for dealing with emotions, religion, relationships—it is more than a relief to learn that there are other options. For me, my earliest exposure to yoga was not about relaxation or meditation—but about an awakening to Truth. I would begin questioning all the falsehoods I’d been swallowing. Starting with the falsehoods in my own mind.
Enjoy!
Chapter 25: Overdue Nourishment
My first yoga teacher, Maryann, a lively and ageless woman with dark, shoulder-length hair set off by a wide, white smile, greeted me at her Monday night yoga class. She led Curiosa and me down steep wooden steps into a darkened basement, where I saw immobile bodies bordering the room in L shapes.
Maryann whispered, “This is called Legs up the Wall Pose. I will show you how to do it.”
She folded two wool blankets into the size of a thick pillow and butted them against the wall, then indicated that I should sit sideways on top so that my left shoulder and hip touched the wall. She helped me swing my legs up and lie back, so that my hips were elevated on the blankets and the bottoms of my bare feet were facing the ceiling. She tied a D-ring yoga strap around my thighs and tightened it until holding my legs up became effortless. She asked me to turn my palms upward alongside my body, then she placed an eye pillow over my eyes. Finally, she covered me with a soft blanket and advised me to remain as still as possible.
Paradoxically, as Maryann covered me with a blanket at that first yoga class, layers of self-protection lifted off me, and I began to feel everything. I almost cried from just the caring touch of another human being, wondering when someone had last approached me so tenderly without wanting anything in return. My life at that point revolved around my young children, and, despite my love for them, it was all-consuming work. My husband was traveling a lot for his job, and when he was home and gave me attention I assumed it was only because he wanted sex.
Now, as I lay there, I could feel my heart contracting and expanding, and in the silence thought I could even hear it. I heard Fear and Guilt arguing in my mind about why I was wasting my time doing this when I could be home catching up on chores. But I heard Anger push back, saying, “Just one moment of peace. Is that too much to ask!” It was intense and powerful, reminding me of the time my family and I had eaten bananas purchased from a roadside vendor in Costa Rica, agreeing ecstatically that every other banana we’d ever had in our lives had been a poor replica of the real thing.
The following weeks I returned to Maryann’s class longing to place my body in Legs up the Wall Pose, lie in the darkened silence, and feel more, although I couldn’t yet explain why. The classes followed what became a predictable routine. After leaving us alone for fifteen or twenty minutes in Legs up the Wall Pose, Maryann would sit on a cushion in front of the fireplace; break the silence reverently, like breaking Communion bread; and say, “Watch your breath. It was always there, you just weren’t paying attention to it. Now you know more about your breath than when you walked into the room.” So I’d note the way my breath entered me effortlessly; slipped down into my belly, which rose and expanded; then exited, a little warmer after the journey. Soon it felt like my breath followed the shape of an oval rather than an in-and-out or up-and-down pattern. On my inhale, my breath traced the curves along the back of my spine, then it curved under my tailbone, ready to move up the front of my spine as I exhaled. I had never experienced the subtleties of my breath, my life force, and I found it fascinating.
Finally, Maryann would lead us out of Legs up the Wall Pose one step at a time until we pushed ourselves up to a comfortable seated position, by saying, “First, bring awareness to your hands and feet. Just imagine your hands and feet moving. Now follow through and move your hands and feet. Do just one thing at a time. Now let your knees fall down into your chest. Wait. Integrate that much change.” The concepts of one thing at a time, mindful movement, integrating change sounded both foreign to me and also strangely familiar, like I’d heard them somewhere before.
Then Maryann would lead us through sixty minutes of classical yoga poses, each guided by a simple principle she called “action within the form,” explaining that this was her “innovative approach to teaching the same old poses.” Under her guidance, a pose was never finished. Instead, we practiced surrendering, twisting, extending, and folding within each one. Along the way, she soaked each yoga pose in philosophy like tea leaves in hot water. By the time my body was fully settled in a Downward Facing Dog Pose, I understood that I was not there primarily to stretch the backs of my legs but was learning what descending consciousness felt like by pressing my heels into the floor and what ascending consciousness felt like by reaching my spine and fingers into the world. During poses such as Triangle Pose, Maryann encouraged us to “lengthen the dark side,” inviting us to bring our shadow sides to the light of awareness, knowing that we had no chance of changing anything we wouldn’t first acknowledge. Her teachings, dancing equally with eternal wisdom and earthly knowing, showed us an embodied way to live — with our feet grounded, our hearts open, our gaze steady, and our arms extended out to the world, very much like a tree.
One Monday Maryann said, “Pay attention to your thoughts. They were always there, you just weren’t paying attention. Now you know more about your thoughts than when you walked into the room.” Watching my thoughts, I was surprised at how active my mind was, even while my body was perfectly still in Legs up the Wall Pose. I wondered how I could not have noticed that a Shakespearean play was constantly going on in my mind with the same cast of characters, the same plot, day in and day out. I had questions wanting answers.
I opened the door to my mind and tiptoed inside. I was shocked to discover its state of chaos — like the aftermath of a drunken fraternity party. My unsupervised emotions were drunk on and addicted to their own beliefs. My thoughts were a maze of false starts and botched endings. Outdated promises to myself were written, like graffiti, on the walls. I picked up one of several empty bottles from the floor, turned to the snake hiding in a corner wearing a pinstriped suit, and demanded, “What was in this bottle, Fear?”
“Um, that was ambition, Keri. We concocted it when you were young so you could be successful,” he answered with false confidence.
“Well, I’m clearly out of it, now, aren’t I?” I accused, tipping the bottle upside down.
“Yes. Well, Guilt was trying to rustle up some more,” Fear insisted, pointing to Guilt.
“No, Fear, I don’t want any more ambition. It’s poison for me,” I said. “Don’t we have a healthier elixir, like self-love or even self-respect?” I searched around, but except for a few scraps of praise scribbled on old report cards there wasn’t much in my mind that could be called self-anything.
“No — not yet, Keri,” Fear admitted, gulping. “We emotions can’t make those things for you. You need to make them yourself. And if you ever make any compassion — ”
“Compassion for you, Fear? Ha, that’ll never happen,” I assured him. “You don’t deserve it after the mess you’ve made in here.”
“I was only trying my best,” Fear insisted, hanging his head.
I walked out, promising to come back soon to start cleaning the place up. While a bit horrified by what I had found in my mind, I was also oddly fascinated. I felt like finally, in my own way, I was beginning that course in psychology I’d always longed to take — with myself as my first client. Like a wheat stalk standing tall in the path of an oncoming combine, I knew this path of yoga would transform my mind and life, and I could barely wait.
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