nothing left out

Thought for the day: “When ego is lost, limit is lost.” Written on the tag for my teabag this morning.

For those of you who don’t know, Shiva Rea is a major yoga celebrity. There are only a few names that have soaring fame in the community, because they have DVDs and clothing lines and studio affiliates and so on – Shiva Rea, Seane Corn, Rodney Yee, Baron Baptiste, and a few others. Shiva’s area of yoga is vinyasa, and I would argue that what she’s done in the area has been revolutionary. Within the boundaries of vinyasa yoga she encourages total freedom of movement, not bound by the specificity of traditional asana, and she has created out of whole cloth a line of yoga-inspired movement called yoga trance dance. I am not clear on what exactly it involves, but I know it involves a level of abandon I don’t know if I could bring to my body in the company of others.

I learned yesterday that not only is she a brilliant yogini, but she is thoroughly connected to the universe, a person who understands energy and movement and the flow of life in a way which I can only aspire to. She’s also funny and personable and a wonderful teacher.

There were about 100 people there, I think, give or take a few. We were set up in a circle around a central point that had flowers, a brass statue of probably Nataraja although I couldn’t see, flowers, apples, a pineapple, and incense. The location was actually a gym of sorts, with that waxed laminated hardwood floor, bumpers on the walls, fenced windows. It was a community rec center so there were obviously lots of uses for this room, but it was clearly often used as a gym.

There was lots of chatter around the room, people hugging, etc. I saw that the little shop set up in the corner was selling Manduka Eko mats, and I went ahead and bought one. It was way too expensive, but it felt REALLY COOL, and I’ve been needing a new mat and have been putting it off. More about that another time. It was approaching 9:30 so I did a little warmup and then sat on my new mat and waited.

When Shiva Rea entered the room, a hush very rapidly fell over the room. Soon there was utter silence while we waited for her to come to her mat and begin. I can’t tell you how remarkable this was; it was a silence filled with the most profound respect I’ve ever been a part of. She came to her mat, put on an over-the-ear mike (that was the source of nothing but trouble throughout the entire practice) and we began.

We started off with a movement that almost felt like I was in an aerobics class. We were all synchronous, moving to the beat of some intense drum music, reaching out with one arm at a time and bringing energy into the heart center. While we were doing this, Shiva called something that’s been thundering in my mind ever since: “Become a whole, integrated human being. Nothing left out. Nothing left out.”

In writing this blog, I try to write about everything I am. Weaknesses, strengths, inner thoughts, failures, fears, successes, all the stuff I do and am from day to day. Nothing left out. I am never the person in this blog in my real life, unless I’m interacting with BF. Especially not on the mat; there I strive to be my best, most high-consciousness, most strong and flexible and expert self. While my fears might come up in my mind to be kneaded out in the practice, I try never to admit fully that I’m lonely, that I’m acting egotistical, that I hunger for yoga like a drug and that I never ever want to leave the mat once I’m on it. My biggest fear is that one day I’ll let loose a little gas while I’m in class, because a lot of the poses make that a distinct possibility, and YOGINIS DON’T FART.

No. Nothing left out. People fart, people cry, people yell at each other; people also move and breathe and feel in divine ways. Nothing left out.

That’s how I went through my practice, and it’s how I wish I could live the whole rest of my life. The practice itself was daunting, exhausting, full of loud rousing music and so much warrior 2 and yogic squat that by the end I thought my quadriceps would slide right out of my legs and lie on the mat quivering like jelly, and my quadricep weakness is my biggest barrier to my practice right now and I felt terribly insecure about having to move out of the pose and back in again from the muscle strain that was burning up my thighs, but I EMBRACED IT and kept going as long as I could, trying to be graceful in the pain. We danced, and I closed my eyes and cared not how I looked to everyone else. We flowed spontaneously, and I let go of worrying whether I was doing the right thing. Nothing left out.

Time stood still for this practice. I’m serious. I felt as if I’d been in that gym for days and days, but I also thought I could stay there for another week without being hungry or bored. (I was tired, yes, but I just had to rest for a few moments and then I could keep going.) And when I got out, it was 12:15, and I wasn’t hungry. This is a miracle along the lines of loaves and fishes, I swear, because I had the same breakfast as always, had a physical workout far beyond what I normally do, and I am always hungry at 10:30 and ravenous by 11:30 on a normal day. I still wasn’t all that hungry by the time I got home at 1:30 and I wanted to take myself to the doctor to make sure my stomach was still there. It was almost as if I hadn’t even been there, hadn’t even done the practice, or that my system had given me some kind of temporal break for the morning.

Today, being back, I see the world in a slightly different way; however, I am also feeling a little desperate from having to sit behind this desk all day. I am torn between wanting an ordinary life, no surprises, no night terrors, and wanting a big, sloppy, exciting, nontraditional life. I want to be a writer and yoga teacher and thinker, not a paralegal. But being a paralegal provides security and freedom from fear. No, the freedom from fear has to come from within before you can take advantage of it in an external way. But the crazygonuts life isn’t attainable right away, nor will it be easy to live. Getting the paralegal cert wasn’t easy either, but you did it to give yourself a better life. But that’s different.

Yaw, yaw, yaw, you all don’t really need to hear me arguing with myself but NOTHING LEFT OUT.

Is that what my life is missing? Does freedom from fear come from acceptance of all the parts of me?

Today my legs hurt like a mother, my back is telling me (softly) that I did a bunch of yoga yesterday, and I can’t believe I have to stay at work until 4:30 and then go to class for three hours. I mean, I can’t believe it. Did I really take instruction from Shiva Rea yesterday, and do I really have to go back to this today?

The main thing for her yoga, I think, is to move the way your body instructs you to move. If that involves dancing with yourself, or with the sky and the air, that’s great; if music moves you, let it. I embrace this fully, with all of myself, wishing I’d come up with it, but the problem is that my body is still holding me back from full freedom of movement. Shiva can move like that because she’s been doing yoga for 30 years. I can only do a part of what she does. (By the way, part of the reason I wanted to go to this session was to see in person the jump-forward she does from downward dog to uttanasana. When she does it, it’s a gravity-free leap that looks like it’s impossible, but I saw it yesterday with my own eyes.) I can feel it, in my body, and I can try to move, but ow! my thigh is screaming for me to stop, ee! my knee won’t go that way, ach! my forward bend stops THERE and will go no further. It’s a fluidity that I badly want but am not yet ready for.

Tomorrow I will unroll my mat and try again anyway. Yesterday was, if nothing else, yet another affirmation that I want to do yoga for the rest of my life.

Yoga fans out there, if you have the chance to take a class of any kind from Shiva Rea, knock down your grandmother to do so. She is beautiful, expert, and full of grace.