if you’ve ever crossed a bridge by foot–any bridge, even the memorial or key bridges–you can feel its give as you walk (or the cars drive) over it. a bridge is anything but rigid: its very structure is pliant and strong.
setu bandha sarvangasana, or bridge pose, offers an example of this in our own bodies. the shoulder girdle and feet ground the pose in the same way two ends of a constructed bridge are affixed to the opposite banks of a river. the pose is a backbend, and the more grounded the pose, the more open the chest, diaphragm, and breath become. bridge pose is like all poses: we are seeking to be both flexible and “stressed” simultaneously.
i asked a class last night how they defined stress. many students quickly jumped in to define what it feels like in their bodies, and the energy in the room rose even as we discussed it. as we described stress, we noticed that very stress coursing through our bodies — how else would we have been able to know it well enough to give it shape and form through our voices?
stress is a funny word. we tend to look at outside events–demanding bosses, family, and friends; world events; environmental changes; money worries–as the forces pressing in on us that then cause us to feel constricted, tight, depressed, breathless, or anxious. we wake up in the morning, rush out the door, grab coffee or tea for assistance, and roll through the day as though each change were external, beyond our control.
like a bridge, we have to have that steeliness, that stuctural resistance under conditions pressing down on us. otherwise, gravity would have its way and the universe would be an eternally imploding, never-ending black hole. on the other hand, awareness is by definition expansive, and it is a moment of awareness that enables us to realize how compressive, how “stressed,” anything is.
if we use that awareness to our advantage, we actually give in (whether physically, emotionally, or mentally) instead of resisting stress, which, hey, is strong. superficially you may think this will make you weak, but in the end, you actually bounce back into shape with more strength, form, resistance, and flexibility. it is precisely through weakness of any kind that strength occurs. strength and weakness, as a bridge demonstrates, are two peas in a pod as they conduct energy back and forth, up and down. strength is weakness, then, and vice versa.
it’s nothing more than the pulsation of energy that is happening all the time, everywhere, and nowhere at once. if you close your eyes, for example right now, and breathe, you can feel it.
we achieve awareness through meditation practice, yoga, or other mindful practices. we have to practice because gravity and intertia are strong, as anyone who has chosen to forego her regular xx-night yoga class for a drink knows. it is very easy to avoid dropping into the body by giving over to habits, usually destructive, that take us in the exact opposite direction we really need to go. that, of course, is weakness with no strength.
filed under: the boundless perspective, classes this week, yoga external, yoga internal, the poses of yoga
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under the boundless perspective, classes this week, yoga external, yoga internal, the poses of yoga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.