but, first, just standing. standing still becomes an entirely new experience. yoga becomes real. my whole life i have been standing with immense pressure on my joints--now, when i experience what it feels like to my swollen, fucked up knees to stand with my shoulders back, my lower back and core muscles engaged, my knees straight and facing forward, chin up, heart open----and it took me a year and a half of intensive yoga practice to realize how these simple, simple motions affect your entire life---now i can feel it.
try to do an entire yoga practice without putting pressure on your knees. if you can avoid this, you will experience engagement in other areas of your body like you have not yet considered. by imagining yourself light from the inside, lifting from your core and forgetting about gravity, you can experience lightness on your entire body. and your knees, your chins, your ankles, your heart...they will all appreciate the relief. relief that you've always been able to provide yourself--ways to make yourself feel better, by yourself and in your own skin. you do have to live in your body, after all. its rather nice if you can enjoy being there.
this has to be the right way to do this---all these lessons from this knee surgery have been incredibly powerful, rich and deep. to slow down, to focus, to love myself. i have been running a million miles an hour away from many things and toward no certainty.
i laugh at myself so much these days. granted, i have only had one week of immobility but, with my intense and rather overworked personality it has felt like a month. rather like the one time i went to jail for three days. that was moooore of enough of THAT shit, for me.
here's what i'm saying.
the things that im learning are not concepts that should be new to me, or anyone. these are the proper ways to live--paying attention to your body, listening to it, feeding it properly and nourishing it. standing up straight. being calm in your mind. doing work that makes you feel fulfilled as a human. letting the people you love in life know that you appreciate them and allowing them to appreciate you back. finding your focus and approaching your aloneness. laughing at yourself. sleeping. sleeping a lot. taking pain medication and putting in earplugs and submitting yourself to total darkness for 13 hours kind of sleeping.
nobody has time for this shit! we're all running around. and i most certainly plan to continue running but, the next time, those things will be a bit more focused, more calm, and more extreme in their allotments of joy and real expression. it is possible to take care of yourself properly on a very basic, daily level--no matter what you do or where you are--and, the best part of all of it is, that you will feel better, all the time. you will feel stronger, more beautiful and more interesting, just by treating yourself properly. i always thought the message of modern yoga, much like modern anything, is much too based in the visual, the appearance. my message for yoga is that yoga, much like life, should be based on acknowledging how it makes you feel, first, before acknowledging how it makes you look. and, fortunately and intriguingly, they are entirely symbiotic concepts. you feel better, you look better. they also cannot survive without the other, they're entire unsustainable as independent thoughts.
so far, there have been parades and antique air shows outside my window. i've been visited by my friends and family and had beautiful conversations with the ones i love who have involved lives somewhere else. i've had offers of financial support through art from a completely astounding amount of individuals from far and wide and i even have a handsome sound guy who comes by and fixes my speakers and sets them up for the perfect audio experience at my ear, couch-high, level.
the splendor of being loved is a bit too much, sometimes. there are so many out there who need love, crave it, search for it. and you gotta give it to yourself, first. what a doozy.
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