The "Bitch Please!" Moment

Last yoga post. And then we'll get back to Hollywood, since I haven't written about that in a while.

Yoga is a different type of pain than lifting weights. The pain of pushing plates is a mechanical pain: the stress of physical forces exerting themselves upon various body parts. Yoga is a simple and pure exhaustion of the body, one that leaves the body floating in a state of release.

I have been been told that yoga and meditation go together like peanut butter and chocolate. And that's because, as I've learned, that the two are different means to the same end: clearing the mind.

Meditation passively clears the mind; it's the process of allowing everything in the mind to simply drift away, until there is nothing left. Yoga actively clears the mind; it's the process of concentrating on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. That one thing being, maintaining the position of your limbs even at the very moment they are about to collapse.

When I'm holding a yoga pose, I find that I simply cannot think about anything else: my writing, the errand I forgot to do, the meal I'm going to prepare later. All I can think about (besides my breathing) is a particular location in my body at this present moment. And that moment leads to another, and another, and before I know it, I've spent an hour and a half completely liberated from the stresses of my life. (Of course, now all those stresses are good stresses.)

During my first week of classes, I made the discovery, thanks to an incredible soreness, that my neck and shoulders had been clenched in a perpetual state of tightness. Our bodies remember skirmishes that haven't been fought in weeks or months, and still coil themselves to spring into battle. Yoga is definitely helpful in unwinding that tendency - I've thought to myself on more than one occasion, this is how my body felt when I was a kid.

I definitely credit my instructor (aka The Superstar) with my progress - she's steadfastly refused to allow me to become complacent. In every session I've had with her, she's allowed me the time to master new techniques, and then, inevitably dropped what I call, the "Bitch please!" moment.

No matter how many techniques I master, she never fails, about a half hour from the end of the class, to introduce a new feat of contortion that I cannot conceive of myself attempting, let alone performing. Like a headstand. Or an upside down "L" with my feet against the wall. Or a one-legged tree pose with my eyes closed.

I suspect she's self-conscious of this tactic, as she often jokes that her students think she's crazy. Once, while explaining how to tie a Gordian know with one's body, she caught my expression as I was thinking to myself: "What in the hell does this woman WANT from me?!"

She smiled at me and said, "It's gonna be fun."

And she was right.