the body is expressive - what story are you telling?

As a dancer, I became fascinated by the concept of interconnectedness, the idea the mind, body and spirit are inextricably linked.  Anything that occurs in one has an affect in the others.  Dance is an effort to express the broad spectrum and infinite variations of human experience through movement.  The body is the medium used by the artist to tell stories, show ideas, share emotions, and inspire dreams.  In a dance composition class, a teacher once said that the human body can't NOT express.  Even an attempt to make the body abstract (unless completely covered and unrecognizable as a body) is expressing something by its contradiction.  The human face, even attempting to be neutral is expressing something, interpretable by the observer because it is a human face void of expression.  Every person on the planet has experience with their bodies, whatever that experience may be, which gives them a frame of reference, a catalogue of memories, a store of emotions.  From this perspective, whatever they observe in the human body they are witnessing, they will recall something human within them.  For example, a body that suddenly turns its back you, could remind you of your father walking away and never returning or it could remind you of standing in line for your first movie, calling forth the emotions of these moments in your history.  Now, of course a dance composition would attempt to give context to the images in order to drawn out the intended response from its audience.  But this is possible because as human beings we have a shared language in that we all have bodies.  The body can then be effectively used by the artist to express the more subtle aspects of human experience, such as thought, emotion, inspiration.
In yoga, I have discovered that the same concept of interconnectedness is present and is in fact a thematic necessity, only the work is done in reverse to the way dance uses it.  Yoga asana functions on the belief that the work done in the physical will allow or even be a catalyst for transformation in the mind and spirit.  As we open and strengthen our bodies on the yoga mat, we are asked to be mindful, to be aware of the sensations that arise.  We recognize a sensation in the physical body, acknowledge it and breathe, the breath gives us the space to seek beyond the physical experience to the thought liked to the sensation.  Are we telling ourselves we can't do this?  That we are going to get hurt?  Is there a thought of stopping, giving up?  The mind saying, I just don't want to.  Is there self-judgment?  I'm so weak, I'm too lazy for this, I'm too short.  These thoughts then, if we stay with them and allow the observing self (the audience member?) to detach, lead us deeper to the emotions behind the thoughts.  Fear?  Doubt?  Anger?  Sadness?  As we experience an asana on the physical level we are given an opportunity to work thought thoughts and emotions expressed by it.  In yoga, movement allows us to discover the depth of our own humanity, the unhealthy or at least unhelpful thought patterns and emotional sticky places.  If we do the work with our bodies and allow that work to have an effect on the mind and spirit, then true transformation occurs.  We cleanse our way through sensations, thought and emotion and establish new physical and mental patterns, resulting in positive rather than negative emotion and a more pure expression of the self is freed.  

how an aching neck and smooshed nose reminded me who I am

For some time, I had been feeling that I lost a bit of connection.  To what?  my practice, my teachers, my routine, my life as I knew it.  I can say that I had been focusing energy on the ashtanga "7th series" - what Guruji called children and family.  Certainly, parenthood has taken a large priority role in my life, and also in 2012 we moved to a new city and I began a new teaching position - a lot has changed, a lot has been in flux.  I believed I was giving everything I could to my practice.  I was getting on my mat regularly, working my way back into my practice.  I was challenging myself - or so I thought.  Since moving, I have been doing a self practice, no teacher.  I believe and have said as much to many students faced with such an experience, that having a period of time that you have to continue your practice without daily working with a teacher has a lot to offer the ashtanga practitioner.  You can learn so much about yourself, what motivates you, what limits you allow yourself, where you complacencies are etc when you practice alone over a period of time. 
The catch, I recently learned, is that these lessons don't really become evident until you are again working with a teacher.  After more than 7 months of self-practice I made it back to Miami Beach to practice for a week with Kino MacGregor and Tim Feldmann.  Wow - what an eye opener.  While I have always believed it intellectually, it had been a while since I realized experientially how essential it is to do your yoga with a teacher.  Our personal samskaras, or habits, are strong and we can be succumbing to them without being aware.  That one week in Miami Beach kicked my ass!  I was made aware of how soft I had become in my efforts, how accepting of mediocrity, and simply, how lazy.  Kino and Tim pushed challenged me, they helped to me to see where I am more capable than I thought and where I need to really work - tapas! - in order to break free of my limitations.
The true and more profound experience was realizing the power of being pushed and challenged to face and overcome your perceived limitations.  For months I was aware that I was not feeling "myself".  I was on edge, short fused, grumpy...  Not constantly but certainly more than I felt was appropriate and natural for me.  I tried to blame it on hormones, on the exhaustion derived from the first year of parenting, even on my partner! It was in the midst of a dwi pada (a leg behind head pose where you balance on the sit bones) adjustment that I began to see the light.  I had mentioned to Kino and Tim that the balance has been a challenge in the pregnancy, and that I had gone through a prolonged neck, upper back pain, etc.  So, of course, Kino challenged me to stay in the posture for a long time.  As she is standing behind me, telling me to stay, my legs are becoming heavier and heavier on my neck, my gaze dropping, there goes my view of the wall, there goes my view of my mat, slowly collapsing into myself, my neck screaming to be released from this torture.  The words were on my tongue "my neck hurts! I need to come out!"  Then I swallowed them.  pause.  And Kino released me.  My neck was fine, but something within me shifted.  I didn't recognize it until a later practice when I was in pincha mayurasana (forearm balance) and to help me develop shoulder strength, Kino was challenging me to sift my weight further forward.  I felt myself weakening with every millimeter I moved forward, but I surrendered to my teacher, I kept breathing and shifting, more and more and more.  I felt the limit of my strength approaching and the I hit it, suddenly and dropped to my nose, and the rest of me followed.  I was huffing and puffing but smiling, Kino laughed a little, I think surprised.  I was elated!  It is a powerful thing to face your walls, to face your resistances.  Even failure includes a measure of success.  I had found more strength of body and mind and heart in that moment than I had maybe since giving birth and I was reminded of what a powerful person I am and what a powerful practice this is. 
The yoga practice is there to bring us to our friction points, bring us to our insurmountable walls and then demand that we scale them.  Oh, and not only scale them, but do so without succumbing to the desire to escape or complain or negotiate.  To do so with calm serenity and steady breath.
Sometimes in self practice, I thought I was approaching my challenges, pushing myself through them and gaining ground.  Maybe I was to a certain degree and maybe those small progressions were appropriate at the time.  my body was not ready immediately after having a child to be challenged in the way I was that week In Miami Beach.  But clearly, when I began to loose connection to my yoga off the mat, when the person I was began to revert to old patterns I thought I had done away with eons ago, that was the time to work harder, to give more blood sweat and tears to my practice.  And there was no way for me to see that at the time without the guidance of my teachers, who saw beyond my perceived limitations and saw what I was capable of more than I could.  Just from that one week, I felt myself change back into the person I had grown to be, back into he person I wanted to be.  Someone with more patience, less reaction.  Someone with more allowance, acceptance, tolerance and compassion.  Someone with absolute trust in the transformative power of this practice.