Thursday, October 12, 2006Pigeon PoseIf you ever seriously want to freak yourself (and another person) out, try staring into someone else's eyes for five minutes straight.That was one of the seemlingly-endless moments I lived through last weekend, at a yoga retreat hosted by my favorite yoga teacher. It was held up in the Santa Barbara mountains and the weekend was filled with everything you'd expect: serenity, peace, deep breathing, meditation, good conversations, good silences, the sound of the birds, the breezes through the bay forest. We ate toothsome vegan/vegetarian meals prepared by a gourmet chef named Beatrix, who made us all kind of nervous at a deep level (even while we secretly worshipped her creations.) We slept in yurts and lofts and cabins. We killed ourselves in multiple-hour yoga sessions... but I'll get to that in a moment. Sunday morning we were asked to find a partner. My friend Carol and I of course picked each other, as we automatically were partnering up for everything. We sat cross-legged across from each other and then we were supposed to, simply, look into each others' eyes. For five minutes. If we wanted to pull back a bit, Carolyn our leader said, we could look at the third eye between the two, on the forehead. But the best thing to do would be to simply look in each others' eyes. Straight on. For five minutes. Try it. It was really scary. We immediately started laughing, or trying not to, which meant we started laughing more. Luckily, we never really busted loose with the laughing. But it was a definite threat to our equilbrium for quite a while. It felt like I was there for about six weeks. It was endless. And it took about four of those six weeks to get to a rather amazing thought: what WAS I so nervous about? What can Carol do to me? Carol is my friend. She's not my mother or my significant other or anyone else close enough to levy significant psychic damage. What can someone do to you simply by you allowing them to look you in the eyes? Well, logically, nothing. But inside, it felt like the most exposed I'd ever been. Those of you who know me, know that I am not a skittish person. I am social and outgoing and -- one could argue, especially after reading the book -- a pretty open person. But put me in this situation and I realize how deeply guarded I am on many levels. Not just the deep levels. On all levels. Saturday night we had a "yin" yoga class which was supposed to be restorative and healing. Personally, I find holding awkward and painful poses for prolonged periods of time rather stressful. I'm sorry, but I do. It's good for me, though, and I acknowledge that, just as I acknowledge that staring into someone's eyes for five minutes is an important excercise. One of the poses we did was my personal favorite -- pigeon. It's beyond painful. It's excruciating, in a very specific and intense way. I can't really describe it except that it involves laying down on a bent leg so that the hip on the bent leg pretty much feels like a hot poker is being slowly and forcefully forced into your bone. It gets at a muscle that binds around the back of your butt and when you're doing it right it practically makes you cry, it's that precise. Every other part of your body is fine, except for That Spot. And That Spot is just weeping with agony. God, I love this pose. I really do. The first few dozen times I did it I thought, man, there is NOTHING that could be more painful than this pose. And as I held it I contemplated whether I would actually pass out from the pain. And realized I wouldn't... not quite. So I started playing the edge of that sensation. Would I start crying? Noooo, probably not. Could I last another second? Ah... maybe. So I would. I would hold it until I just could not handle it another moment, and then I'd hold it another moment. Or not. Sometimes I would fidget back and forth, avoiding the pure moment of pain but fidgeting and wasting energy to try to sidestep it. It's all too easy to let up on this pose. You can back off, you can wiggle, you can do a dozen different dance to avoid it, but it never goes away. Finally I realized this pose was ALL mental. It was ALL about mental fortitude in the face of pain. The pain of the muscle was not going to kill me. But my mental attitude about it could make or break my success in holding it. And pretty soon, I realized that I was getting pretty good at it. And, of course, the second I started congratulating myself on my success at pigeon I started losing it again. I started getting cold sweats and nauseated and I'd have to back off like a little baby. It is a pose that keeps me absolutely honest. And it refuses to let up. Pigeon was, of course, one of the poses we held for five long minutes (each side) that Saturday night last weekend at the retreat. It was a pigeon fest. I was tired, I was sore, I felt like I'd been in the yoga room my entire life (we'd had a three hour class that morning and the evening's session was two hour of this relaxing and restorative shit.) And of course we were going to do pigeon. My ego kind of yelped with joy because, I have to admit, I am pretty good at it by this point. When my brain is in a good place, when I can relax and just accept how much it hurts, I can lay down with my face on the floor and actually get so comfortable in all of it that I contemplate being able to fall asleep. And it was in that state the other night that I realized what a great metaphor pigeon is for the life experience itself. Life is the same kind of painful as pigeon. If you let yourself think about any one thing too long, it can easily become a searing pain right through the heart like pigeon is through your hip. For starters: everyone you know and love, including yourself, is going to die. The person you love better than anyone else probably doesn't love you back. Or maybe he or she does, but it probably won't last forever. Or, if it does last forever, one of you is going to die first anyway. Or maybe the person you love better than anyone else is married. Or they were married but by the time they got unmarried you were involved with someone else. And by the time you got UNinvolved with someone else, they were involved with another person altogether. The scenarios are endless, as all of us who love spinning heartwrenching stories can tell you. Tell me that the heart doesn't get itself in pigeon poses on just about a daily basis. Tell me that if you thought about it for more than ten seconds you wouldn't start whimpering with the futility of it all. Tell me that drinking and driving fast and playing loud music isn't our way of wriggling out of the pain. Tell me that even when it hurts beyond belief that you have any other choice but to endure and accept it, because that's one of the few real things we have in life: the knowledge of the pain and our ability to transcend it. Transcending it doesn't mean it goes away. Transcending means you lie down with it, breath deeply and accept that it's just going to hurt for awhile. Like five minutes, or five years, or fifty, or forever. Transcending means you stretch and grow. But it never goes away. Like looking into someone else's eyes, it's something you want to laugh off, glance away from. But, if you want to get to the deep core stuff, you may as well not. Stay there. Feel it. Be real and intense and unapologetic about how much it sometimes freaks you out. Acknowledge your core vulnerabilities and stay there in a way that you can't fidget out of. Get through it in the same way you get through a pigeon pose. Hold it. Breathe. Make friends. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 10:47 PM  
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