yoga conundrums

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write something about yoga without sounding completely fucking pretentious. I’m hoping that being unnecessarily vulgar will help. Only that once though. Maybe.

Yoga’s one of those things that I’ve done for a while as a sideline, intermittently as it were, and as a means to an end. The “end” has been improved flexibility for climbing, hockey, Aikido. That’s served a purpose to date, I suppose, but I’ve never really had the kind of breakthrough with my bad hip that I’ve dreamed about. So I’m trying to go a bit deeper, make yoga a focus, and end in itself.

This is one of those risk and reward things.

I swindled a pass at a new studio. I figure that working under consistent professional tutelage might help. Today I tried Khundalini yoga for the first time. It involves very specific poses and movements combined with intense breathing exercises. And lots of twisting. The back thing, which I’m pretty sure is just deep tissue and bone bruising, is still healing, so it was really intense for me and, surprisingly for me, not just in a physical sense. We did one exercise – sitting straight, hands on shoulders, thumb behind and fingers forward, and then twisted side to side in time with powerful breaths – that broke something non-physical in me. Maybe it was just the rib pain, but I don’t think so.

I just wanted to go someplace dark and weep for a while afterwards. And I totally don’t get that, what it’s supposed to mean, I mean. I know that it can happen, that it happens all the time for people practicing yoga, but I don’t understand what its significance is for me, right now.

Reward – I’m loose and breathing better. The back spasms have eased and I can sit and write. Risk – I’m a basket case at the moment and the part of me, the dominant part, that likes to figure shit out and know what stuff means, is clueless. Utterly. This is profoundly uncomfortable for me in disturbing ways.

S’okay. Confusion, I’ve liked to repeat ad nauseam, is the last state our minds experience before we learn something new. If I figure it out, in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll pass it on. Until then, I have a child’s pose to pass out in.

ALSO: This song came to mind…

AND, namaste…

* It only felt like swindling. Really, it was just a great introductory deal that I'm getting the best part of.