yoGAH!

Learning about your body is awesome. Overcoming the bounds the brain has in place to protect muscles and organs and whatnot is an actual chemical thrill, like taking a sled down the hill that looks vertical, or jumping from the wicked high rock in your friend's backyard when you were a kid. It's exxxtreme! and I think I'm addicted. Remember in Psych 101 when you learned that people perceive an inclined slope to be steeper than it actually is, so that dumb-asses don't hurt themselves? Similarly, we believe our joints and muscles to be limited in range of motion to protect ourselves from injury. But, with guidance and patience, we can open our proprioceptive sense and occupy space in ever-changing ways. And once you start this process, miraculous things occur. I'm not kidding. You can stand comfortably for longer; you don't mind when you have to sit on the floor; you can occupy yourself by expanding the diaphragm and intercostals on long car rides.

Everybody's different, right? Some people feel like they can move substantively and confidently through the world when they've crossed off everything on their todo list. Others get that ass-kicking feeling when they've performed, or gotten laid, or earned lots of money, or contemplated the mysteries of the world, or removed a booger from way back in their nasal cavity. We are what we do, and getting down and dirty with that old time proprioception is one of the things that makes me stand up a little straighter.

I love that yoga is a process, and I love that ideas you discover through working the body can bleed into other parts of your life. I know that sometimes the metaphors in yogic practice sound ridiculous (they really do), but there's an extent to which they make sense to practitioners. "Open your third eye" is a perfect explanation for relaxing the muscles that move the eyes, forehead, and scalp, an area of ENORMOUS tension for us anxious folk, and the concept of prana (universal energy) flow wheeling through chakras facilitates the relaxation and extension of muscle groups--making it easier to isolate and tone others--as well as discovering the center of gravity for arm balances and inversions. And when it hurts, the answer is always to breathe deeper, pull into your center, and calm down. Needless to say, this was a revelation to an Irish Catholic white boy from New England with a family history of medical issues related to inordinately HIGH ANXIETY.

Hoo. I don't want to make this post any longer, so maybe some other time we can get into my personal experiences of physical connectivity and body imagery, like scrubbing the inside of my skull during savasana, or connecting the eyeballs to the pelvic floor, wringing out and flushing the intestines, or...