I went back to yoga class today -- I've been an indifferent attender this spring, between one thing and another, but this particular class is always a pleasure -- it's not "restorative yoga" explicitly, but the practice is very calming and centering, and not at all about getting all sweaty and sore. I definitely needed a dose of organ-wringing and hip opening too: I have not been eating very well and I have been sitting around a lot, working on the computer. (Speaking of sitting around on one's derriere, I just read the article in this week's New Yorker by Susan Orlean about the treadmill desk. I need one of those!)
What is so great about yoga is that it does not have to be, should probably not be, goal oriented in the sense that there is an asana that you are going to get right, damn it, or tear your hip flexor trying. I may have gotten into yoga with a goal or goals in mind (strengthen my core, become more flexible, find a way to deal with stress, take time out of busy busy busy for breathing), but when I'm actually practicing, that's all very far away. I think I like yoga class as opposed to my home practice largely because I am absolved of even having to make any decisions about what to do or how long to do it. Today, as I was hanging out there in Pigeon, really feeling it deep in my hip sockets, I thought "Wow, I would never hang out here this long if it were up to me... but it's not up to me." Of course, I could decide to move out of the pose, if for example I was in actual pain. But with yoga it's more an intense sensation that is not pain but that the brain might think is pain if it were screwed up with anxiety about something, or were distracted by the next thing coming down the pike.
Of course, lots of people bring a very competitive, aspirational mindset to yoga; they WILL get fully into break-my-sacrum-asana if it kills them. But I think that kind of person gets bored with it if they don't get injured. Yoga is (and I say this approvingly) massively boring from a goal-oriented standpoint. The changes it crafts in one's body are deep but so gradual and incremental that you hardly notice them until you've been at it for years; my nose still doesn't bump down on my knees when I stand in forward bend, and maybe never will. As the yoga instructor said this morning, "It's not about making the picture of the pose with your body, but about your intention to shape the pose." I love that even though it is obviously a movement-based practice, it is ultimately about what's going on in the consciousness and not about how that is expressed in the approximation of some formal norm in terms of the visible, outward, body.
Ballet, while it can be at times almost as purely in-the-moment as yoga, and certainly benefits from the dancer's presence in her body and indifference to before and after the dance in that instant, is more about making the picture of the pose with your body.Thus, it is more goal-oriented and outward in its nature. Just last night, I was mentally going over this year in my dancing life and thinking about what I've accomplished and what I would like to work on going forward; and that's okay, with ballet, because there is that element of perfection-seeking to it. I have never, and would never, do this kind of self-evaluation and stock taking with yoga, though I am sure some people do and maybe even it can be done productively -- it can be an art form, too, I suppose (witness pictures to follow -- if they're not about making a picture of the pose, I don't know what is). Which is not to say I don't think about how I could, say, be more comfortable doing back-bends, or learn to really hop through from down-dog to a seated position.
Which brings me to Dancer Pose, or Natarajasana if you want to get all Sanskrit about it (नटराजासन if you really want to get all Sanskrit about it). This is one of those asanas that people really like to look at -- it shows up all over the place in what I'd call the popular iconosphere of yoga. Inevitably, the bodies performing the pose in this genre of imagery conform to certain ideals of beauty that can feel a bit oppressive to those of us whose bodies do not conform. Thus:
Pretty, no doubt. There are several variations on the pose, in fact -- this one is, unbelievably enough, one of the "easier" ones, providing you have a nice sand beach, some soft evening light, and a lot of flexibility in your lower back (and also a photographer along for the trip). Other versions require more chest opening, as in...
or even...
Yikes.
What this pose feels like (to me) is more like diving backwards into a dark pond of scummy water; I'm not quite sure what's in there and I'm pretty certain it's nothing very pleasant, but here goes... Most back-bending poses are like that for me, come to think of it. Lack of mobility in my lumbar spine, old injuries, and a tight upper torso limit me in lifted poses to the back in ballet, too: arabesques are hell.
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