My Dancer

Let’s just blog it out here for a minute and skip the moody prose, although you can expect a lot more of that in 2014.  Here’s what’s going on: that last crash rattled me.  I’ve been waddling into hot yoga 3 or 4 times a week, working to get back to that good feeling, that supple twisting spine and split second visits to the empty mind.   The heater whirs in the back corner, right above where I stand with two walls to lean on.  The class reaches back left hand to left foot, the open palm, the bend at the hip, like the toy drinking bird my grandfather had on the coffee table- bobbing and rising, bobbing and rising.  The class tips over their teapots to pour out their spouts.  Meanwhile, the beast in the corner grimaces.  Grasping his hairy, sweaty shin, he inches towards the ankle, then over the toes, then finally somewhere near the soft in-step by the scar he got swimming in the Adriatic sea 18 years ago.    The class moves on to the next pose, Warrior One, Virabhadrasana.  Never mind that.  This warrior still fights to get a hold on that slippery foot, then to arch the back and pull the foot towards the sky.  The spot in my ribs, up under my armpit, feels like it has a toy fire engine wedged into it.  Not pain exactly, but obstructed.  Something out of place?  Scar tissue? Swelling?  Who knows.  The subcutaneous and the cutaneous fat compress, although there is nowhere for it to redistribute. Just pressure and squeezing and then finally my teapot tips over, if only for a moment.  The other side is just a bit easier, but damn, still so humiliating.

This is nothing new though.  Practice self-observation without judgement, the highest calling of all.  I do it.  I observe without judgement, after I get the judgement thoroughly recorded and stored for safe keeping.   Sending power to my standing foot I tremble with the Elvis leg and take one full breath.  Sparkly tracers fill my vision when I release the foot.  Yoga makes me swoon and sway right on the edge between quitting and growing.  There’s really nothing to regret.  Just do what you can and save the bitching for later.

I’m a bit afraid of my bike, like when Old Yeller turned rabid. How could it do that to me?  A new bike might solve this, because a new bike solves just about everything.  New bikes are the cure for cancer, broken hearts, and the national deficit.

The big lumbering yogi lets the chitta vritti of bicycles clank around in his mind, holding onto his slippery squirming foot, he’s been worse off than this he thinks.  Then his mind goes blank.

-Juancho

7 Responses to My Dancer

  1. Would you please go to regular cold yoga for a week or two? That hot yoga thing sounds too awful and I am suffering thinking of you suffering in that heat. About the bike, though, I think a person probably needs a selection of bikes like one needs a selection of, well, pens, say.

  2. Juancho, it’s been too long. Blame it on a lame feedreader. I regret missing so much of your fiery prose. I’m back.

    Did you see on my joint that I dun bot a fat bike? The last slippery step over line to the dirt side.

    Lovely that I should stumble back over your stuff on the day I’m about to attend my second yoga class after eight (?!?) years away. Weddings, house purchases, adopting a kid, losing a parent, little things get in the way of self-care, y’know? I’ll think of you as I’m trying not to tip over in revolved triangle today. Was good to be reminded of how much yoga helps you. I did it for years, hope to make a comeback.

    ~V~

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