"Think of what you'd like to do tomorrow," Mike said Saturday night. "I want to do something special for you for Mother's Day."
A perfectly reasonable request. But I am not, as it turns out, a perfectly reasonable person when it comes to being feted on Mother's Day.
As Mike headed off for an evening shift at work, Jake crashed following our afternoon going down slides at Azalea Park, and I settled in to watch Lost on TiVo, I truly did give some thought to what I'd like to do for Mother's Day.
Pretty much everything I came up with involved a sun-soaked lunch near the beach. Which was a problem, as we live four hours from anything resembling oceanfront property and the weather forecast was calling for gloominess and rain.
"Well," I thought as I paused the episode to grab the last of a carton of ice cream, "I guess I don't want to do anything in Asheville."
The feeling persisted Sunday morning. Jake greeted me at 6:30 and, since Mike had worked until midnight, it was up to me to stumble downstairs with him. Some lovely wrapped gifts sat on the table by the purple columbine fresh from our garden. Instead of sparkling with specialness at the sight of what my sweet husband had done for me, I felt sad and unworthy, and when Mike roused himself to make sure I got a Mother's Day morning break, I just felt worse for being so gloomy. I didn't feel like I deserved all these favors, and I couldn't figure out why.
Happy Mother's Day, indeed.
When You're the One Being Taken Care Of
If it were Father's Day, you can bet I would have something special planned for Mike. I get it. I understand that even though Mother's Day has devolved into a way for retailers to make money with vaguely menacing ads depicting bland, cheap diamond-earring adorned female models who intone that a good child/husband will buy his mother/wife a Mother's Day gift, even a commercial reason to remind someone she's special is a reason to remind her she's special. I get that.
And I know that Mike thinks I am special, and Jake would too if he understood the concept. I just felt uncomfortable acknowledging that I deserve a little bit of fuss.
Which is not to say I don't know how to fuss over myself. Birthdays are sacrosanct day spa time. Yoga classes in the middle of the work day are non-negotiable. And goodness knows I can lift that certain feeling of dullness and creeping middle age with a satisfying clothing and/or make-up splurge now and then. In fifteen-odd years of being a single adult woman, I became quite skilled at the art of treating myself.
This skill, sadly, does not appear to translate into letting someone else treat me. Even the two people I love most in this world.
And, yet again, I don't think I'm alone. In fact, it's kind of a tired trope, how mothers spend their lives sacrificing for those they love but don't know how to let someone else do for them. "No, no," we're practically programmed to say. "I don't mind giving up the last piece of flourless chocolate cake on my plate if my child wants it, even if he just scarfed a much bigger piece of his own." Or, "I don't mind unloading the dishwasher if you'd like to go to sleep, honey." (Actually, unlike giving up that bite of flourless chocolate cake, I mostly don't mind unloading the dishwasher, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?) Nor do I think two-to-three years will prove nearly enough time for me to stop feeling guilty when I let Mike take Jake upstairs to change a poopy diaper while I read the Arts and Leisure section of the paper.
So, okay, why not let your family do something nice for you if offered a dopey excuse like Mother's Day?
The answer, it seems to me, lies in crossing over from trusting yourself to just plain trusting.
How to Practice Trust
I was going to entitle this section "How to Trust," but it quickly occurred to me I don't know how. Since yoga is about practice, however, I know practicing trust is something I can do.
I was lucky enough, when I discovered yoga, to embrace the concept of trusting my heart immediately. Writing was something I'd always done, pushed to the side, returned to. So it was there waiting for me when I took that first tentative look inside. The summer I embraced yoga, I wrote a screenplay. The summer I got my yoga teaching certification I wrote several television "spec" scripts -- episodes of existing television shows that make up the portfolio of someone trying to break into the business. I got an agent, quit my job, and met my husband, all in short order. All I had to do was embrace what had been there, inside, my whole life, waiting for me to put it front and center.
So easy -- but, of course, not easy at all unless you think quitting a steady job and moving 2,000 miles with someone you've just met but want to spend your life with is easy -- to follow my own heart. Just as it's become easier -- with practice of course -- to celebrate myself, honor myself, believe in myself. Doing these things for myself fit what I'd been taught to be: Autonomous. Independent. A strong woman who doesn't need anyone else.
What I haven't had to do, until now, is simply trust -- trust something over which I have no control, something outside myself. I've followed my heart and the writing path to this very spot, to the high dive board. My toes are curling over the edge, gripping at the certainty. And any day now, I'm going to have to jump into a big, open unknown. My website is going to go up, and I'm going to have to do it. Not just write because it's in my heart, but trust that, to other people, people I haven't met, I'm a writer. Who knows? I may perform a graceful swan dive, cutting smoothly into cool, sweet blue water. Just as, if not more, likely, I could perform a big, loud bellyflop and have to dog paddle my way, more than a little bit embarrassed, to the edge of the pool barely able to drag myself out to tend to my stinging skin.
It's almost as scary as letting my husband do something special for me on Mother's Day.
That big, empty space between the diving board and the water below is like this amazing, fascinating aspect of yoga that I love. The endlessness. Not in a scary, void, black hole way. Rather, in yoga, your muscles can always stretch just a little bit more; you can fly a bit higher, be a bit more weightless; you can discover parts of your spine just beyond what you thought was the end; you can find a place deeper inside than you've ever gone. Layer by layer, like the lotus flower, you discover more. Every meditation and every asana practice -- every day if you're living consciously -- is a journey.
So now that I've spent the past seven years or so consciously trusting my heart, I shouldn't be surprised to learn that there's a more challenging path ahead. In fact, I'm rather awed. Instead of trusting something within myself, it's time for me to trust something bigger.
I'm not suggesting there is something out there deciding exactly what my fate should be -- although I completely respect that belief for others. But in yoga, the idea that we are all made up of the same energy means that the light inside each of us, residing in our hearts, is at the same time a light bigger than everything because it's made up of and goes beyond all of our collective hearts. Hence, when I find peace inside, I discover Peace with a capital P. The same thing for Beauty; I find my own beauty by discovering the Beauty of the world. And, too, it's got to be the same with trust. I've learned to trust what's in my heart. Then I should be able one day to Trust the much bigger something of which my heart is simultaneously a tiny piece and the whole enchilada.
This is all a rather abstract way of describing the Something Bigger as I conceptualize it. And to explain how it is possible to trust your heart and yet not simply trust.
In a way, I see it as the difference between letting go and allowing. When I let go I'm proactive and, therefore, retain some control. I see where my path is leading me. I may not know what's around the bend, but I can tell myself to let go and trust to what happens. Because I'm on my path, you see.
Allowing, on the other hand, it's more passive. It's just . . . allowing. Allowing the wind to fly past my office window at 40 miles per hour rather than resisting, feeling buffeted, off, irate. Allowing the people reading my postings to like them or not, to share in the YogaMamaMe community or not. Allowing this to be what I do with my life or having it turn out that I can't. If I trust, then it doesn't matter what happens. I'll still find happiness.
Mother's Day was a good place to start practicing. Because, come on, in the big scheme of things it really is relatively easy to allow someone you love to do something nice for you. And, it turns out, when we did go to lunch at a lovely little restaurant called "Sunnyside" that maybe, because of the name, makes me think of the beach, we saw a couple with whom I've recently become friendly and would like to become friends. Which made living in Asheville feel pretty great.
Especially when the sun came out, and I played with my son on the patio.
A Heart-Opening, Playful Path to Follow: Urdhva Danurasana Walk-Up/Walk-Down
Remember when you were young and having fun kept you from worrying about, say, breaking a limb? Twirling on the monkey bars with nothing holding on but the backs of your knees, swinging so high the chains holding you to the swing set wobbled in mid-air, riding your circular moonwagon down the big hill on Castlerock Road tipped back on the fifth wheel mounted to the back -- they were all so much fun it never occurred to us we could get hurt.
Now, we all know we might have. And as mothers, some of us are shuddering at the idea of our children doing the foolish things we did. Let Jake sweep downhill on his bicycle with no hands on the handlebars? No way.
Maybe, though, just as we will look the other way to allow our children some adventurous fun -- and the development of self-confidence and, yes, trust at the same time -- we can learn, in a small way, to ignore the part of us that worries so much about getting hurt that we don't have fun. And, not incidentally, that we fail to discover the limits we can reach when we approach them playfully.
So I offer here a sequence one can perform at the wall with urdhva danurasana, upward facing bow. If you're not ready for this pose, you can practice setu bandha sarvangasana, bridge pose, and, when you feel open, perhaps try urdhva danurasana with your hands on blocks against a wall. (Instructions for both poses can be found in recent posts.) You have something to trust -- the wall isn't going anyplace -- and maybe that will let you approach it as fun. You may find your heart opening into the full pose.
If, on the other hand, you're way farther along the path to Trust than I am, you can certainly do this sequence without a wall. Maybe one day I'll join you.
In the meantime, if, like me, you have some experience opening and playing in urdhva danurasana but aren't quite up for free-fall drop-backs, here's a sequence to play with it. You'll discover that when you trust, your heart opens and you get to have a little bit of fun. Who knows where that attitude off your mat might one day take you?
The Sequence
1) Set up for urdhva danurasana with your hands at the wall. With your palms on the floor next to your ears, the spot where your palms meet your wrists will be right at the joining of the floor and wall. Make sure your feet are close enough to your buttocks for a tight, energetic pose; you can check the distance by seeing if you can just brush your heels with your hands.
2) When you are ready, keeping your inner thighs rotating toward the floor and your elbows hugging toward each other, let your heart lift you into the full pose. The wall is, yes, close to your face -- that's part of the fun, if you don't let it freak you out.
3) Take a few moments to warm up in this pose by letting your heart draw toward the wall. If your legs start to straighten, see if you can walk them closer to your hands. Activate your upper back muscles so the lift is coming from your heart, not your arms.
4) If this is enough for you, stay here breathing and opening. When you're ready to come down, lower slowly as you tuck your chin toward your chest -- likely brushing your head against the wall.
5) If you'd like to move on, feel your heart lifting you so strongly you start to float. Trust that you can. And then -- here's the fun part -- start to walk your hands up the wall. As long as you keep your feet firmly rooted and your heart -- all that trust! -- strongly lifting, you will go up. And if you start to doubt, you can always walk your hands right back down to the floor.
6) At some point, your hands will start to come off the wall, and you will need to lift your heart so much you bring yourself to standing. Notice that you are floating through the air, sort of like my high dive. Only, of course, you are firmly grounded through your feet, so there's really not so much to be frightened of.
7) As you come to standing, draw your hands to your heart in angeli mudra, prayer position, and find your center. Notice what's going on in your heart. It just might be kind of giddy.
8) Root your feet firmly, rotate those thighs toward the wall behind you, and, with your hands still at your heart, start to lift your heart again. Really activate those back muscles to help. Let your head fall back gently so you can see that wall behind you. If that freaks you out, come to standing and move into balasana, child's pose, to absorb all you've done.
9) If, from standing with your heart lifting and your head tilted back to the wall behind you, you'd like to move on, trust your lifting heart to support you and consciously reach your hands back, still lifting with your heart, until your hands come to the wall. Walk your hands down the wall until you find yourself in urdhva danurasana with your hands on the floor. Let your heart lift once more, tuck your chin, and slowly lower yourself to the floor.
Wherever you go in the pose, release it with something that feels good and a little bit playful -- dead bug (or happy baby) on your back with knees bent, soles of your feet facing the ceiling, and hands holding the outsides of your feet is a great pose for this.
And, hey, if you want to jump and dance and play a little bit after dead bug, definitely do it. You might even invite someone you love and trust to play with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment