course, solitude has its sweetness and its value, but solitude's lessons sure do seem to bloom in a space full of other peoples’ breath and music.

Like tonight: a full bloom of solitude's studied poetry. When I heard the words of Hafiz sprinkled into the lyrics of one of The Muteflutes' songs (aptly titled, it turns out, "Hafiz"), I almost fell right over. I couldn't help grinning like an idiot through the rest of the vinyasa; it was all I could do not to hoot or holler or flash some kind of mystic poet gang sign. Yes! My people! Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends. 

It's easy for me to see God in a group of good-looking musicians, wearing flannel, strumming strings. Or in a row of reaching arms, capturing the sky and pulling it down to heart's center. It's easy for me to hear God in Hafiz's poetry and in songs that ask the same questions I do. It's easy for me to feel God in the aliveness of my quaking quads, crescent after crescent after crescent. It's absolutely effortless to feel God and feel connected when a lovely melody is playing and so many buzzing bodies are adding their ujjayi harmonies.

But it's not always easy, at least not for me. After savasana, when silence had returned to the room, my brain rose to fill it as it tends to--with good intentions and terrible timing, per usual. The still, quiet part of me--the part that expands and wants to hold hands with the whole world when it hears a compelling song or moves through a sweaty vinyasa--remained sure that Hafiz was right and my soul had indeed played footsie in God's womb with all the other souls in the room. The neurotic, self-conscious part of me, however, felt like an anxious groupie. I know it sounds silly, but I had to talk myself into walking up to the band, my kinfolk, my Sufi mystic homies, to pay them a compliment and awkwardly exclaim something like Hafiz! how cool!

Near the beginning of this yoga journey, Seva offered a different live music vinyasa and I was too afraid to go--too self conscious, too green, worried about taking up one of the limited spots, something like that, probably all of that. This time, I didn't think twice. I felt excited instead of nervous. Progress! While I wasn't looking, my growing edge crept past the studio threshold and around the corner to some basic level of confidence in my ability to move my body in public. Hooray!  Forming my mouth into smart words in front of smart people is apparently my new growing edge. As is sending this blog further into cyberspace, making it Facebook official as it were and effectively dissolving my brave-making mantra: only three people read these posts.

The new fear is just the old fear in new clothes, though: will I fit in, will I know what I'm doing, will I look foolish, will I fart in down dog? Well, okay, maybe not that last one. The groupie fear of approaching the band and sharing a moment of Hafiz connection, the literal panic of inviting people to read these words I'm typing now--it's all the same old fear. Centuries old, in fact, and yet still completely modern. Elizabeth Lesser calls it the "open secret" in her great book Broken Open--the fear we all share that we'll be found out--that everyone will suddenly notice that we're messy as hell, we've completely lost our shit and we have no effing clue what we're doing. Hafiz said something similar way back in the 14th century (see below). It's kind of funny, right? We separate ourselves and walk around trying to hide this thing we all share, which could be our greatest source of connection if we were willing to feel as exposed and vulnerable as authenticity sometimes requires. It's so human: we all want to be loved and we're all scared to death we won't be.
 
So that's the new trick I guess, the even sharper growing edge. On the other side of effortless, sweet, silent breath connection, to walk up and say something, maybe, or to hang it all out there in cyberspace. To make a little offering of language to the unspoken history we all share and then to try not to feel like it's too little or lame or naked. There's safety in staying in the back row, soaking up the sweetness and traveling out the door with it locked up for later. There's risk in opening ourselves up to rejection or acceptance, even in small ways, even with strangers. But as Anais Nin said, the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Today's that day for me. Facebook official, proud (and equally embarrassed) blogging groupie. Are you feeling brave? Head to the forum and say something about your teachers--fear, yoga, music, or otherwise--or anything else that's on your mind!

As I've mentioned, I initially had mixed feelings about taking my new position and leaving the very soft and steady ground I'd found in my old one--the comfort of feeling confident and competent and being surrounded by friends. But something pulled at me. I didn't call it this at the time, exactly, but it was groundlessness. I feared it and wanted it at the same time; Pema Chodron's interview helped me to understand that draw.

I'm already a little worried that I'll regret saying this--putting it out there like a prayer and asking for more!--but I'm grateful for opportunities to feel shaky and unsteady, for groundlessness. It's one of the ways fear does its deep teaching. My natural reaction to that wobbly feeling is to protect myself--usually by constructing some elaborate support out of language, to justify not taking whatever risk has knocked me off balance, or to blame a circumstance or person for my discomfort and let myself off the hook. But thanks to this yoga business and the commitment that came out of it--to open to fear and live fully--I'm forced to choose a different reaction. If nothing else, so I'll have something to write about. 

The times I've been able to stay with the feeling of groundlessness instead of trying to save myself from it, I've been given the gift of a new perspective: I take a step past the limit I thought was there, and I'm sent happily spinning into space or clumsily falling on my face. Either way, even if I fall or maybe especially if I do, places that I'd worked so hard to protect are opened up, and from my new vantage point on the literal ground or from the metaphorical sky, I can see there was less to be afraid of than I thought and more to feel curious about. Life gets bigger, more space opens up.

In  tonight's hot vinyasa, groundlessness was a literal state. Midway through the flow, I found myself in a wide-legged forward fold, standing sideways on my mat. Warmed up and wide open, I was bent over so far that the top of my head was touching the floor, a fact that I noticed only when I heard the lovely instructor Melissa say, If your head is touching the floor, you may want to find your way into a headstand. 

Ha! With no wall behind or ahead of me, starting in a position I'd never lifted off from, in the dead center of a row of yogis who could peer at me through their strong, shapely legs, a head stand was not in the plan. That is, until Melissa's sweet face bent over beside me and repeated her suggestion. With eye contact. Sweetly calling me out. Form a tripod, she whispered, and shorten your stance.

A Return to Love is a collection of thoughts on A Course in Miracles, a text that Keegan actually introduced me to. At one point, we had a little book club going with his free-spirited NA sponsor and a spunky moped-riding Catholic lady. Which makes me think (briefly maybe, with tense shoulders): there could truly be just as many legitimate reasons to feel grateful toward Keegan as there are for me to feel hurt and angry.

This isn't the first time I've processed through some feelings about that time in my life, and it's not the first time I've made forgiveness my goal. We're all familiar with the idea that forgiveness is for us, not for them, that it's a necessary part of healing, etc. etc. That all seems true, and it's compelling for sure. But it hasn't, apparently, been enough to move me past my attachment to the painful memories about Keegan--the money he took from me, the strategic ways he built me up and tore me down and knocked me off balance.  I carry that stuff around with me like some sort of chronic virus, dormant for the most part, with occasional uncomfortable flare-ups. And who knows what damage the virus is doing even in its dormant stage, especially to the places inside me that already feel vulnerable. I don't think it's a coincidence that those Keegan-ish areas in my life continue to feel so sticky--debts and doubts and rocky romances. 

some wonderful gifts--the necessary push into the perfect graduate program, A Course in Miracles, my first meditation group, as many blissful memories as there are horrifying ones, a pair of snow boots that have held up as long and as waterproof as my resentment, and a practice in accessing the strongest parts of me in order to walk away for good and start over. When my thoughts take this shape--gratitude, even if with a sprinkle of sarcasm--the leap from fear to love doesn't feel as far.

So maybe there's something to this. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Marianne Williamson recommends praying for someone you're holding a grudge against--praying every day for thirty days or until the anger dissolves. I don't really know these days exactly what prayer looks like for me, but I think it's part of what happens on my mat. So, starting today, I'm going to send Keegan a little love in some form of prayer each day: uttanasana I hope you're safe and happy, anjaneyasana thank you for all of the flowers, halasana I learned so much from you. I'm secretly hoping that the miracle I'll make will roll in somewhere around six figures. But I'll settle for the freedom to move forward differently--with some sticky spots worked out--with more freedom, less baggage and lots and lots of love. Stay tuned!

(Also, check out the video clip of Marianne Williamson talking about forgiveness)

For the record, I did stick to the new plan, the after-30-days-of-yoga plan that I may not have mentioned yet, which is to get on my mat once a day, no matter what, in some way or another.

Day one of puking, before puking was a sure bet, I gave myself permission to skip class and I just did a headstand and a sun salutation. An inversion was maybe not my best move, in hindsight. Day two of puking and its aftermath, I wrapped myself in a scarf and a blanket and settled for a ten minute meditation on the mat. Good enough.

That's the stretch here: good enough. Enough. I hate this lesson, which is, I'm sure why I keep half-learning it over and over. My body is so wise. It does this to me all the time. When I need a break and won't give myself one, my body does it for me. When I want to transition with the grace and poise and perfection of a social work goddess from one job to another, my body instead gives me a much-needed day on the couch to let things settle in so I can feel the change instead of rushing past it. My body keeps me home from work and makes me spacey when I return so that I can come and go as human as I've always been.

But I'm still breathing. This uncomfortable shape I've taken, hunched over and imperfect, is not constricting my windpipe. I can manage, and I can even mange to laugh a little at myself. 

The bigger confession, the harshest imperfection, is the ex-boyfriend (not THAT one!) contact I made in a moment of weakness. I'd blame a lack of electrolytes if I could, but it happened before that and then happened again. Okay, okay, it hasn't stopped happening. I've got dozens of speeches written in my rational mind, lined up and ready to go, about why this is a terrible idea. And yet I'm drawn to him like a magnet. A cold, lonely, wintery magnet possessed by the pushy ghost of the nostalgic holiday spirit.

Even here, at my most vulnerable, blushing and not daring to tell anyone who cares about me and would thus surely try to talk me out of this relapse, I can feel the stretch. I can still breathe, though my breath does have a tendency to become shallow when he's around, and to catch in my throat... It feels good. Yup. Sure does. And also awful.

But here's my theory, for today at least: maybe I'll take a break from punishing myself for my bad-boyfriend addiction. Maybe I'll take it easy on the self-hatred and instead just rest in this pose and keep breathing until the stretch goes deep enough. There are still some tight and tense spots deep, deep down. They might be the old scars that grip and hold tight to beliefs like, "you don't deserve more," or "you're too much!"  Or maybe they're the wrapped-tight parts of me that don't feel ready yet to to loosen up and let go enough to try a different kind of relationship with enough longterm potential to threaten my ferocious singledom (and okay, my also ferocious control-freakiness). Either way, my Yan strength isn't working here, so I'll try the Yin path of stillness, acceptance, surrender.

And I think it's working. Here's why. The wise and beautiful Gretchen also said this tonight: If, after you unravel yourself from the deep and delicious twist, your spine feels a little fragile, that's normal. You're doing it right. You reached all the ligaments and tendons supporting your spine and made them malleable. Deep change is occurring in the deep layers. Be gentle with your spine, be gentle with yourself as you move through your practice.

So maybe I'm not perfect. Maybe I'm even repeating the most obvious patterns I have, with pretty full awareness of their probable negative outcome. But I can feel the stretch, and I'm still breathing, and when I let go and give my spine some extra love, it feels pretty damn good. Even the whimpering, even the shivering on the couch if you can believe it--my tender, fragile spine without its ramrod support. When I release and let the deep work happen without fear of snapping in half or having a stroke, when I send the sore spots a little bit of joy and sweetness even, it all can feel pretty damn good.

Photo credits: Me. Please use responsibly :)