I Am The Mountain

I had to let Reiki Jane out to pee one more time before bed. It was so hard to stand at the door. Everything hurt. It felt like all my flesh, all the weight of ME was just going to be too much for my poor bones. The weight of ME was going to rip me apart.

Enough. If I have to stand here and wait for Jane I might as well do it with purpose. So I stood squarely on two feet, building the pose from the bottom, up. Each foot balancing on four points of the sole so that the arch is just right to support the lower legs, adjust knees, thighs, straighten spine, pulling tailbone down, front of body up, top of spine lifts with expansion of chest, shoulders roll up and back, neck adjusted. Then comes all the fine tuning. The mountain is never still. There are always micro movements as muscle and bone dance together, balancing energies in a performance billed as Stillness.

It feels good to stand in Tadasana. It’s been a long, long time since I have done so. Coming back to yoga after being so angry for such a long time is bound to have side effects like stiffness and loss of strength. But I am amazed at what my body does remember.

I am breathing in the pose, through the pose. I feel the breath as it moves through my body as if consciously finding its way to every starved cell, every neglected fiber.

Then all at once I am the breath. I am the mountain. And it’s time for Jane to come inside and go to bed.

That was my first step onto the mat, so to speak, even though there was no mat and it was dark and I was in my PJ’s waiting for my dog to pee in the rain and then come inside. Deciding to stand in mountain pose, to consciously build the pose and breath life into it as I go is the first real yoga-by-choice that I’ve done in a long time.

I should say it’s the first Hatha yoga I’ve done. Because I never stopped chanting. I never stopped learning from my breath. But I had given up on Hatha yoga.

I guess I didn’t recognize that what I did on the mat was affecting my entire life and when I began to try to line things up, the makeshift solutions I had been clinging to fell away like rubble—i blamed yoga for the mess.’

I was angry for 10 years. I was angry at my body for getting Lupus. I was angry at yoga for not saving me form disease and I was angry at God for betraying my confidence in goodness.

But time and grace have helped me and I am not angry anymore–usually.

A friend uses a word instead,of a resolution each NewYear so I’ve been trying to think of a word to contemplate for 2019. I’d thought of the word encourage– maybe because of the wonderful encouragement I’ve been blessed with this year. I thought I’d like to consider how to give the same gift to others.

I thought of the word love. I was in love and then crushed by the loss of it this past year. I was destroyed by it. And now I am coming back to life without the delusion that it was the Other that I was in love with. I have a lot to learn about love. So that is not my word.

Then I thought, what about mountain?

I mean, I Am the mountain. No.

What if I just say that I am for the next year and consider the power and all that is associated with those two words? Whatever I say after I am can change. I like that. But the core stays the same. I am.

Yes. That is as good a place to start as any.

I am encouraged. I am encouraging. I am loved. I am loving. I am love. Or better yet, why not shift the focus away from me to whom and what I love. Let me use the word love as a verb, as something I do.

I love you. And you. And you.

Now.

There is real power in those words.