Life Upside Down

Spent some time in camel pose tonight, after battling traffic for nearly an hour only to miss a long-anticipated yoga class. I always find the pre-yoga commute stress ironic, and annoying that I can’t just banish it quickly altogether. Then I get annoyed that I’m annoyed at myself, and the cycle continues.

The solution: a few vinyasas and deep stretches on my veranda, under a full blue moon to the soundtrack of Xavier Rudd.

Camel is a deep stretch, a heart-opening, back-bending pose. It engages almost all of the muscles down the front of the body, especially those niggly ones like the front of the hip flexors, tops of the thighs and the throat. I remember first acquaintance with this posture was not a fun one. I felt light-headed, nauseous. My throat would tighten and constrict in my neck. My head was an awkward watermelon weight that would never rest and hang back back between my shoulders.

Camel pose is associated with the heart chakra, anahata. It’s known as a posture to unlock emotion and heal broken hearts. It’s a position of extreme vulnerability requiring a lot of breath and patience.Tonight, under the moon, something felt different.

Despite having ignored this pose for the better part of several months, camel felt fluid and intuitive. Challenging, yes. Exacting, yes. Broadening, yes. But it didn’t carry the same frustrated tone, like my camels of past. I didn’t resent my way through it.

The Sanskrit translation of anahata: unhurt, unstruck, unbeaten.

That’s exactly what tonight’s camel showed me. Things are not stuck, life continues to move and flow. Things unfold as they will. Growth and change are always possible.

And in the morning, when I rise
One question, that feels like the sun in my eyes
Am I making the most of this life?
So much trouble and so much strife
And in my guilty hour
Through all of my shame
When all my love is run sour
I have no one else to blame
Cause it finds me through the mask I wear
And I see it through it my eyes closed
But still I can not bare to stare into my worries and my woes
There’s comfort in self loathing and its easy to slip into it
But still I must learn to lead my life w
With no regrets
All the time it all moves in the same direction
So don’t let it pass you by
Because It moves so fast, theres no time for perfection
So make the most of this life

Brett Dennen, Make the Most