I walked the mud-drenched trail around the frozen lake that madly sunny, winter-warm afternoon. That’s the beautiful part of living in the Front Range of Colorado’s rocky mountains. It gets frigid and snows. Two days later, its melting and you hike in a t-shirt once again. So I walked in the warm sun. And at this point walking looks more like waddling. And a consistently ever slowing waddle at that.

Ankles bare and getting slightly muddied, my mind made winding traces and tracks back to the memory of the last time I saw my grandmother with my own eyes. 

It was June 2013, in the late afternoon, just after my bridal shower. She was too frail then to come out for the party and I knew she would not come to our wedding across the country here in Colorado. So I went to visit her clad in my white bohemian bridal outfit so she could see it and feel part of the festivities. My grandmother never liked it when I dressed “shlumpy” as she called it. 

She was drifting in and out of sleep when Elliot and I arrived. It took all her effort to sit up and sit straight in between us on the bed. I was dressed in that white dress my mother bought me for the occasion. Too which she said was just right as a beautiful bride. 

I was dressed in that white dress but my grandmother was the angel that day. You see, she bore with her own eyes more than any human being should ever have to endure. She hid for her life, birthed three sons (and one in a camp mind you), crossed and ocean with diamonds sown and smuggled in her skirt, buried her husband as well as a son and watched four granddaughters fly on with their lives. And nothing brought her more joy than the happiness of her granddaughters. 

That day I sat next to her she held my hand tightly and she held Elliot's tightly too. She drank us in with what remained of her sight. She knew that we were already legally married as we had told her some months before of our quiet ways—of which she seemed to approve. If she didn't I would never know. She was good about that. She kept things to herself if she didn't think her disapproval would help you or make a difference. 

By the time we sat with her on this hot June day, she had been rather frail and failing for some time and the sense I always got from trips past was that she just wasn't ready yet to let go. She didn't feel at peace to leave her body just yet and ninety-some years old. So she held on. And I have never seen anyone cling to the exquisitely poignant and painfully beautiful manifest world the way she did for those long few years. 

But on this day something about her was entirely different. She was so happy, so at peace. She held our hands tightly. She kissed us. She cried. And she told us she was okay now. She told us she knew everything was good now because I had someone to love and take care me. Elliot smiled and cried. She told us she was very proud of us. And that she was at peace knowing I was happy. I knew in that moment this would be the lat time I would see her. So I just smiled and twinkled my eyes at her in that white bohemian dress she told me I looked like a true bride in. I didn't want her to see how sad I was. We both knew were saying goodbye. 

None of this could have been very long in real time. She got tired rather quickley. And just like that she rather ushered us out the moment she got weary. She was done. And that was it. 

We went home. 

I wept. 

Four month later we had our wedding. 

A week later she left her body. 

Anyone on the trail that day who saw me must have thought I was in the middle of some crisis as the tears rolled like a mud slide down my cheeks. The way they are streaming now as I put these words to page. But something about the slow walk around the frozen lake that day—something about being 8 months pregnant— and something about that golden sun—made me think of her. 

Beauty often makes me not sad but melancholy. It is in these moments I feel all life as an ocean inside. I feel the joy and the deep sadness. I feel the gratitude and the longing. I feel the happiness and the deep well of sadness. I feel the fullness of being so human—so imprinted in a body—so marked by lineage and life. 

Perhaps the most painful part of being pregnant and bringing my child into the world, is that I do it without any of my own grandparents. For me, the saddest part about living in the world at this very moment is living in a world where my grandmother does not. This child whose time is coming rapidly now, would bring my grandmother the joy she truly always deserved to see in the world. My grandmother always placed her faith in the hope of the future. So she could leave once she knew I would carry on the torch. 

In this moment I laughed to myself, rounding the corner of the trail, as I realized something that perhaps we might call a bit TMI or (too much information) to share with you. But I will. That dress—that white dress I wore to the shower and that she loved—according to my calculations—I wore to a wedding the day I conceived my child. 

Funny how the universe plays these little cosmic jokes on us. Funny how she keeps on winking and batting her big bright eyes and long eyelashes. In love. In light. In death and loss. In birth and life. In it all she is with us. She is weaving all the parts of our lives into a bigger tapestry we could ever imagine. 

More and more I am learning the wisdom of these human bodies and find faith in a greater intelligence than the mind can even compute and comprehend. Try these on for size. 

Consider the size of the human baby and the size of the human vagina. 

Thats right people. It does not add up. Hence why they call it a “miracle”. Consider the vast differences we see amongst each other from the outside and yet how we share nearly the same genetic code. A sea of humanity in a myriad forms. Consider the size of planet earth within the whole of the solar system. A mere speck of stardust compared to the totality of it all. 

Up until recently I have been rather nonchalant and casual about my plan for birth. I know the best made planned rarely go exactly as such and I also know that for thousands of years the female form has birthed humanity into being. So I have gone about my business and figure, well, I suppose I will do it too. 

Last week in our birth class I hit a wall. I am not talking a fatigue wall where you rest and recoup. I mean, The Wall. I turned to Elliot and said, “You know, I just don't think this is for me after all. Too messy. Too intimate.”

I had hit what I call an intimacy threshold. That place where you are like. “Nope. I’m good watching from the sidelines”. I wanted to run and hide and crawl myself under a rock. I wanted not a single pair of eyes to see what I was feeling or the me I was being asked and beckoned to bring forth. Because what I am being asked to do is all too vulnerable, raw and real. 

I watched the seven other couples try different labor positions and tools that were set up throughout our room that evening. And I watched myself stand and peer out of my own skin frozen. Paralyzed. Looking desperately for the sign saying “Turn Back Here.” As grace would have it, there is no sign. There is no back. There is no way out other than through. 

Dammit. 

And so my intimacy threshold continues to be obliterated on a daily basis. In a the most awe inspiring and terrifying of ways. I suppose this is the true nature of Durga, the goddess, the great mother. 

Pregnancy has shown me the most deep and hidden reservoirs of internalized patriarchy inside myself. Imagine my horror as I come to realize that the most earthly and connected part of my own female form is the part I am most afraid to become and see revealed. Somewhere along the way, like many other women, I too have come to believe that the white virgin crowned in gold is better than the red messy drenched in tears. Pretty is better than honest. Angel is more revealed than animal.  

I am face to face with my own distaste for my bloody, brown, red, howling animal. My sense is, without her. Birthing will not be possible. If I was asking for a kind of re-wilding any where in my own psyche, the prayer is being answered whether I cognitively like it or not. 

This is the part of ourselves that is so raw and so awesome and so terrifying that we can barely look away nor can we look at it head on. It is that moment in the Bhagavad Gita when Arjuna wants to see the totality of Krishna only to find himself overwhelmed and begging for concealment once again. It seems to me as I stand on the precipice of experience and the edge of a new knowing that it is not just a baby that will be born, but a new version of woman. One that is more honest, more whole, more real.

Perhaps this intimacy threshold I speak of now is not the one between two lovers or partners or even in community for that matter. But between each of us as we come face to face with the concentrically deeper laces of our own selves.

This is the Bhakti path. The path of devotion. But the devotion is not to anything or anyone or any deity other than the innermost thrown of your own becoming. It is easy to love the beautiful, put together, organized, articulate, shiny, rose and vetiver scented version of myself who keeps her sheets and towels crisply folded and bleached white. But I wonder how easy it will be to love the forgetful, seeping, vulnerable, fullness. It seems to me that the path of devotion asks us not to crown another as Guru but instead to bow to each part of ourselves we birth, re-integrate and commune with. Bhakti is the path that asks us to strip away all other false gods and devote ourselves only, forever and continually to Love—the parts easy to love and the parts that make us turn away. 

In humaness

This blog is offered upon invitation from Kate of You & The Yoga Mat as participation in her month-long blog tour on Sequencing. Thanks Kate! You can sign up for the whole series here. There are many other brilliant teachers offering their expertise on this virtual tour.  Be sure to check out Kaya's piece today as well as Dagmar's tomorrow.

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For me teaching is a conversation. A conversation between the student’s awareness, the student’s body, the asanas and my witnessing. This dialogue makes every class, every private, every student unique. Why do I use one adjustment on one student and a gentle verbal cue on another? Its subtle. Honestly, its not a pure formula of sequential steps I learned from teacher training. Rather its a combination of the theory I know, the body I am seeing, the person inside that body I am seeing and my own sense of intuitive presence. In all honesty, the last piece is the foundation for the work I do. Let me say it to you plain. Your awareness—your sense of your internal world— is actually the gateway to understanding another. So that can be our topic for another day. 

But what seems pertinent as a skill set to share with you at this moment is one of the distinctions I balance with every student, in every class, in every private. The distinction between Affect and Effect. Balancing Effect and Affect allows you as the teacher to use all the good science you know to actually help the student in the vein of what the yoga can offer them. Allowing for their affect, or their inner life and emotions to be present, calls on you as the teacher to stand in witness to what is actually unfolding in the moment for the student. 

Only teach the student and we risk missing the education of the actual movement form. Only use my perception and risk too much self error and subjective viewing. So to find the interest and value in the complex dialogue I use a very clear distinction between what I know the yoga can do for someone, the Effects of the yoga, and a spacious being with the student’s experience as it arises on the path, known as their Affect. 

Depending on your lineage, your style, and your interest in asana you know a certain amount of prescriptive protocols to establish a desired result from the yoga or to resolve a certain issue. Think about depression for a moment. Depending on where you come from in your teaching you know that a certain set of poses or poses done in a certain manner will yield the effect of brighter mood and less depression. 

I am not here to say this is true or untrue. I do not really believe in any one set of protocols and I see tremendous value in many of them. If you say “Oh, backbends are good for depression because they open the ribcage, encourage deep breathing, lift the chest and take the energy of the body up”.  I would say “Yes. I agree.” But I would also not be expecting that immediate response from a student. You see the road to the desired result can be long and arduous. So if the student is working on lifting their mood. I might have a whole slew of appropriate poses aimed toward a desired effect on their body, mind and nervous system. But I am also keenly aware that anything could happen along the way. 

In order to reach that desired effect, they might experience tremendous grief. They might experience a kind of rage. They may at times look even more despondent. The nascent teacher assumes that the effects of the asanas will invariably coincide with a matching affect. And when there is not that matching an assumption that the yoga is not working often arises. The point I am trying to make here is that there are plenty of times where what is happening in the moment and where you are headed may look and feel different. 

So yes, have your protocols and know the effects of the poses in such away that you can use them in your private work with clients towards specific issues. Know the science of the yoga and the asanas and build your sequences. Yes. Awesome. Keep doing all the good work. But also know that where you are headed is not the same as the experience of where you are going. Students need (hell, we all need) free reign to experience whatever we experience in yoga.

My suggestion as you begin working with this distinction in your teaching and facilitating is to continue the good work based on your science and knowledge of the asanas and human beings in asanas. And then observe. Keenly observe what happens for your students in each pose. Observe their fascial gestures. Observe their breath. Observe their energy. Listen to what they are telling you. In fact, a deep emotional expression or even the experience of numbness along the way toward depression or anxiety relief or healing a disordered eating pattern is not only shall we say fare game. It is a sign of health. You can remind your students that all of them is welcome on the mat. And that experiencing their process towards the aim of the yoga is part and parcel to what you are up to any way. 

Now one side note here that is not such a side note. Your ability to be with what arises for students then becomes critically important. But that we leave for another day.