I’ve been dipping in and out of the reverb10 project — reading and thinking about the prompts each day, but not always writing them up here. Some of the prompts spoke more clearly to me than others. (I really have no response to prompt #26 “Soul food. What did you eat this year that you will never forget?” since I don’t have that kind of intense passion for food — I ate good food most days of the year, and enjoyed it, but that’s about it.) A few prompts I wrote about privately; they were useful for my own end-of-year reflection process, but not something I wanted to share.
And then there was this cluster of prompts that, for me, all go together: #12 Body Integration, #14 Appreciate, #19 Healing and #24 Everything’s OK.
Mulling over these prompts as they appeared in sequence and realizing that they all speak to my Bikram yoga practice has deepened my own awareness of how significant that practice is in my life. I thought I already knew this. I did already know this, but the sequence of the prompts revealed to me some connections that I only intermittently access.
While on the mat, it’s not unusual for me to have flashes of insight or ideas about something I’m writing, an issue in my life, or a new project. But if the yoga is working as it should and usually does, by the end of class I’m released from my thinking brain, temporarily free of the left-brain verbal dominance that runs most of my hours. Which means there’s an utterly incommensurate gap between the experience of yoga and writing about yoga.
I’m fortunate to have found the yoga practice that grants me that experience of body integration — not only between mind and body, but between the left and right hemispheres of my brain. Sure, there are days where my monkey mind runs wild for the first 30 minutes of class. There are days when it obsesses on conversations from the day, on the sensations in my left knee, or on the tone of the instructor’s voice. But I’ve learned that even on those distracted days, Bikram practice grants me peace by the end. That’s when I know everything’s ok, no matter what. It cleans out the emotional detritus and the physical toxins, and gives me another new start.
Bikram designed his basic yoga sequence (26 postures and 2 breathing exercises, performed in a heated room, in the same order, each and every class) as a healing sequence. It’s designed to work through all the muscles, joints, and systems of the body. I’ve experienced its healing power in several ways myself and seen in my classmates what else it can do. Most obviously, for me, this yoga has healed my “bad” ankle and knee to the point where I can run several times a week with my dogs and it balances my brain chemistry to ease and prevent depression. You have to put in the practice — for me that means at least four or five classes a week to feel at my best. But that’s worth it.
A couple of years ago, I started expanding my daily gratitude practice into my yoga: during the two-minute savasana that separates the standing series from the floor series, I (silently, mentally) express my gratitude for my fellow students, for my teacher, for the staff and owners of the studio, and for Bikram himself. Sure, there are sometimes days when it’ s hard to feel grateful for the sweaty, farting guy in the row ahead of me. But that’s when it’s even more important to try.
As the perfect blend of physical exercise and a meditation practice, this particular kind of yoga helps me be a happier, nicer, and better person. I’m incredibly grateful for what it’s given me over the past seven years and am looking forward to more of the same in 2011.