Keep calm and...

I have been a bit neglectful of my blog and although I would like to say I have been too busy to post that is simply not true.  I have been busy, but not too busy.  I can't even claim to have writer's block - this time last week I had a fantastic idea for a post, based on a meditation of yoga as story. Now the key idea eludes me, and I hope it will come back but if not, oh well - that is simply the price I have to for letting it slip away in the first place.

Today I found myself fighting tears on my yoga mat, during forward bends of all poses.  I had a lot of tightness in my lower back and my left hip was a little sore, but my tears came from nowhere, connected to some old inner sadness.  Dom encouraged me to speak to Cerissa afterwards and she said it was perfectly natural and not simply some emo chick thing as I feared (I hate the thought that I am weak).

I think my lack of posting is related.  I am avoiding something, but I am also wary about making a big deal out of it.  It seems with yoga given time and space these ills heal themselves - without specific mental effort or therapy.  I don't know, I really don't.  But I will yoga through it and try my best to post through it. Maybe we will all learn something new.

Yoga and Poetry

Today after class I had an interesting conversation about poetry with my yoga teacher, Jib.  She mentioned that after showing Dom one of her poems he had told her that her approach to poetry resembled mine in that it was consciously crafted with attention paid to rhythm and rhyme.  She said she noticed my practice showed similar tendencies (in fact it was noticing this that prompted her to make the connection that I am Dom's wife as she is probably the only teacher at yoga elements who hasn't seen us together).

I restrain myself. I strive for accuracy of alignment at the expense of pushing myself deeper.  This sounds like a polite way of saying I am lazy, but I understand what she means.  Some people work very hard to go deep into poses before they are flexible enough to handle them and in so doing they compromise their posture.  We all do it sometimes - out of a hungry desire to improve quickly - but sometimes I know when to hold back and indeed to enjoy holding back.  Jib was gracefully letting me know she noticed and (as a self-confessed precision junkie) appreciated my restraint and respect for the details.

I will examine at how I became this way in another post.  But for now I want to consider poetry and yoga.  Reflection on Jib's parallel between yoga and poetry led me to think more about how I write poetry.  The crafting for me is more than just matching rhymes and aligning rhythm, I also try and get deep meaning into a small number of words.  This is also, I think, the essence of yoga.

Consider the title of this blog.  I named it "in balasana" rather self-deprecatingly because that is how I spent so much of my first few yoga classes, resting... in child's pose. But it is also a play on "in balance" and "imbalance" because when I cam back to yoga a mere two months ago I did so with some very deep imbalances, emotional and physical, which I am slowly and carefully, through my practice, bringing into balance.

In balasana, imbalance, in balance; three meanings, all very significant, layered deeply over each other.

This is poetry is yoga.  This yoga, poetry.