the Hardest Yoga Pose...

“Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.”
― ​Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

For a year I kept her image on my notebook................
......
....A lesson from a friend & mentor, who instructed us to tack a fitting image to the blank canvas of your prose. 

To mark the doorway where you stand. Let the way forward be clearly shown. THIS is where you are aiming toward. 

And I carried her with me. 

Her grit and her beauty and her passion and her Audaciousness. 
“You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open...” she said. 
•
•
When I am moving through the yoga space, instructing a pose...
Particularly one that pushes the boundaries of our normative way of operating in this skin...
*One that asks us to turn it all upside-down, perhaps.
*Or one that asks us to do things that lie just beyond the familiar comfort zone we operate inside.
*Or one that brings up our stuff - ya' know - the anxiety, the judgment, the stories of not-enough-ness or frustration or ennui - that stuff.
*Or the one that asks us to just sit inside this moment and be attentive to what's coming up.
...
I remind my people that the pose is just a metaphor.
A doorway.
A way to learn to sit inside the discomfort, the fear, the anxiety, the Difficult - and breathe, move, release, Absorb into It ANYWAY.  

That frankly, I don't give a damn if you Ever "perfect" your crow pose or handstand.
But I would love for you to learn how to be inside this skin.
How to honor it.
Attend it.
Offer it unto this present moment - and to the world who needs your vim & vigor and your brave, brave heart.

I invite us to do the thing which is Difficult - holding both courage & compassion inside the same deep breath.

......

And I need this image with me sometimes. 
We do not move forward at all times because it feels good. 
Because it is easy. 

We do not continually repeat the same, tired posture because it feels light & effortless.

We do not do the arduous work of showing up to our calling(s) each and every day because it feels like a blessing. 
Sometimes our labours feel like a goddamn burden and there is little we can do to assuage the feeling. 

Sometimes we muddle through. 

.................

Living inside a digital age - where I am told that everything I want should be ever at my fingertips...

Where I can opt out of life’s difficulties and unpleasantness with a few thumb clicks and filtered pixels and endless, endless distraction.... 

It is a child’s game we play at in this western, privileged world. 
The wanting, the craving, the insatiable need to at any and all times FEEL GOOD. 

But this Life does not call us to remain stuck in the infancy of perpetual comfort, endless glee. Dopamine on demand. 

The practice does not call us to stay inside the tiny bubble of competency we've erected for ourselves.

This life calls us to grow into doing that which is difficult. 
To learn to hold the thing which is thorny, prickly & not easily overcome and slowly move on into it. 
Inhabit it. 
Step into the Circle. 
Explore its full circumference. 
Light. 
Shadow. 
Doldrums. 
Spark. 
.......

This Life calls us to be Marthas. 
To pour ourselves wholeheartedly, unabashedly into the work of this world not because it is easy nor eeking constant delight. 

But because we were made for it. 
And there is so much (LOVE) work to be done.

...............

The practice calls us to step into the hardest yoga pose.

Which has very little to do with touching your toes, or balancing atop your hands.

And everything to do with moving into this Life - with all it's beauty & it's brokenness - and bringing Our WHOLE SELVES to the fight.