Creating Possibility

A couple of years ago I was in Lisbon with a group of tourists (I suppose that actually made me a tourist as well, but I digress). Several of us took an evening excursion to a local casino. I'm not a big gambler, so I just spent some time at the slot machines. On the way home one gentleman in our group, who looked and sounded a bit like Humphrey Bogart, asked the tour director where the craps tables were. She replied, "The Portuguese don't really play craps." Thinking for a moment, "Bogie" retorted, "How could they, without any tables?"

Inevitably when I mention to people that I'm a yoga teacher, someone will say, "Oh, I can't do yoga, I can't even touch my toes!" I always chuckle when I hear this, because when I went to my first yoga class I couldn't touch my toes either. In fact if a pose required any flexibility at all, I couldn't do it. I'm still more drawn to poses that require strength over flexibility. I know other people who suddenly need to use the bathroom when we start working on inversions, but could fall asleep in Paschimotanasana (Seated Forward Fold) with their head resting on their shins.

I had a teacher once who took the time to work with me on the mechanics of a forward fold. We started with the action of the legs in a standing forward fold: quads active, knees soft, grounding through the balls of the big toes, sitting bones opening, lower belly drawing in. From there we started bending from the hips, using blocks under my hands to provide the support I couldn't get from the floor which was too far away. We experimented with the legs straight, the knees bent, etc. until I could feel the fold in the hips and the deepening of the groins while still working with the activity in the legs and the lengthening of the spine. My hands still didn't make it to the floor, and I was clearly getting frustrated. My teacher patiently explained that my hands may never touch the floor, but that we were creating the situation where it's possibe that they might. The important thing was that I worked in this manner, regardless, so that I didn't strain my back or hamstrings.

With the understanding that not all poses are appropriate for all people, the way I try to approach my practice and my teaching, particularly when I'm working on poses that are new or challenging, is that I break them down from a mechanical perspective. Am I grounding myself in my feet or my hands? Am I essentially folding forward or opening the front of my body? Where is my gaze? Where does the support in the pose come from: the core? the shoulders? the legs? Which direction is the energy in the pose going? How am I using my breath? From there I practice bits and pieces of the pose until I can start to combine all of the elements together. Even then, there is no guarantee that I will get my legs extended and floating off the floor in Titibhasana (Firefly Pose) or lower my hips all the way to the floor in Hanumanasana (Forward Splits), but in continually practicing the elements, over and over in the face of all obstacles as Martha Graham says, I am creating the possibility where these things might occur.

This requires a lof of determination and a leap of faith, but we all have to make these leaps in our lives from time to time. We spend years studying and preparing for a career, but there's no guarantee that we'll get the job we want. Oftentimes we have to start with a job that is only related to what we want to do, but we continue to show up every day, building our set of skills and practicing our craft; creating the situation where the dream job will present itself. We want a family, so we have to put ourselves in the situations where we might meet the person with whom we want to create it. We have the novel we want to write, the landscape we want to paint, the cabinet we want to build, the program we want to code; whatever goal we set for ourselves we have to put in the work, with no guarantee of the result we want, but in the practicing we create more and more possibility.

Recently I decided to sell my desk and a sofa that were taking up too much room in my home office. I'm creating a space where I can do my home practice and possibly teach private yoga sessions. Right now the space is a mess until I find or build the storage I need for my books and files. I'm quite certain that I'll continue my home practice, but I have no guarantees that I will get any private clients. But like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, I'm going to build it, and hopefully they will come.