Be Strong In Your Warrior

One is not supposed to think during Yoga. You know the bumper sticker slogan "Go with the flow"? I'm thinking some yogi coined it. Yoga is about flowing not thinking. I know this because I got to thinking today, during yoga, and when I opened my eyes at the end of practice, I was facing the back wall, while everyone else was facing forward.

 Yoga is about focused intention.

I’ve had loads of practice thinking, mulling, musing, pondering—“dreaming” as Isabel Allende put it in an interview about her writing process which I searched for but couldn’t find. "Daydreaming" as my grandmother used to call it, "procrastinating" as I call it, "resisting" according to Steven Pressfield in War of Art.

I recall Allende saying that she dreams her scenes then writes them. I’ve tried it, and find dreaming my scenes, playing them, working through them in my mind works. But I have to fight against falling asleep. 

I fight the fight during yoga, too. At the end of each practice we lie in “corpse pose”--(pretty self-explanatory: lay flat on your back on the ground like you’re dead. (Makes me think of a sick joke: What did the mortician tell his new bride? Take a cold shower and then...)

However, while playing the corpse, even with the instructor’s warning: “Tell yourself you are practicing deep meditation, you will not move, you will not fall asleep…” I’ll find myself jerking to attention or snorting awake. Maybe more than once, my friend Mimi had to give me a nudge. 

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"I am practicing deep relaxation. I will not move. I will not fall asleep zzzzzzzzz"

I don't know about you, but when I think "yoga",  love-not-war, flower power and "peace, Dude" comes to mind, not battle. Which makes flowing through a series of warrior poses seems oximoronic (if that’s even a word). Today, when Catherine said, as she does every yoga session “Stand strong in your warrior",  the oximoronosity--which self-corrected to monstrosity--of it came to mind.

As I stood, with my back leg stretched, front knee bent, staring past my quivering fingertips, pushing down through my aching legs in one of my mightiest Warrior 2 poses ever, I thought hard about this notion. 

Why would a peaceful practice such as yoga need warrior poses? What do flower power peace dudes have to do with battle?

2 out of 3 of my Warrior Poses were Stellar. 

Okay, so my Warrior Three was wobbly. In my defense, I was thinking . . .

It was not my best yoga day. (“Thinking, mulling, pondering” and “listen and follow directions” are mutually exclusive.) This question of why peaceful yogi-types would spend so much time and energy posing as warriors won. I couldn't let it so. So instead of sticking to the tasks I'd set for myself, I searched the internet for answers. 

Validation came when I came across an article in Yoga Journal  which also challenged warrior pose's role in yoga:  

“Given that the ideal of yoga isahimsa, or ‘nonharming,’ isn’t it strange that we would practice a pose celebrating a warrior who killed a bunch of people?”

— Richard Rosen, a contributing editor to Yoga Journal and the director of Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, CA.

Rosen's conclusion is that the yogi is doing battle against her own ignorance. . . trying to "rise up out of your own limitations." Which is not easy. Battling oneself never is. Is this why we resist? Why we avoid? Procrastinate? (Which, for the record, is so not the same thing as daydreaming. . . )

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“If you attempt to stay in it [warrior pose] for any length of time, you’ll confront your own bodily, emotional, or mental weaknesses. Whatever limitations you have, the pose will reveal them so that they can be addressed....When viewed this way, practicing Warrior [pose] can be seen as fighting the good fight. ”

— Tim Miller, director of San Diego's Ashtanga Yoga Center

Allende lights her way into battle with a candle. In an interview with Bill Moyer she shared how she lights a candle when she begins writing. "It's a real candle, but it's also a metaphysical candle."

“And if I have a candle, for as long as the candle is burning, I write. And then, when it’s over, when it burns off, I can have dinner and get out, and do things.”

Imagine, each of these candles represents pages, chapters, novels . . .

Today has been a battle. A battle to stay the course in yoga. A battle to stop puttering and sit down to work. and the worst, a battle to publish this posting. Three times I've been clicking away and something went wrong. It would have been easy to quit. And there were many things I had planned to accomplish today. Important things. This was the one I focused on while I stared down the length of my outstretched arm. How:

First: admit it. No matter what differences we are trying to make, what we are trying to create, to change, it is a war we are fighting. A war against taking the easy road, playing it safe. 

Second: Arm yourself with whatever will help you focus your intention, be it yoga mat, walking desk, candle. . . 

Third: Attack!

 If you're reading this, I won! And it feels darn good. 

BE STRONG IN YOUR WARRIOR