Day 15
When I was studying to become a Yoga teacher, there was a fair amount of instruction and emphasis on the art of creating sequences. We had studied the poses, but how would we bring them all together? One of the processes we were taught, and the one I most often employ, is to build a sequence around a “peak pose.” I want to get to this back bend, this inversion, this arm balance by the end of class, so I will teach all of these relative poses along the way. And as a new teacher, I have to be aware of my tendency to put all of my energy - in preparation and in the actual teaching - toward the peak pose. Because to focus on that singular moment - some 60 seconds or so during an hour long class - is to rob myself and the other practitioners of the totality of the experience.
I think similarly of a road trip I went on a few years ago. I was traveling to West, and ultimately needed to arrive in New Mexico for the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. It was, frankly, the entire point of the trip as I saw it. But we had been driving for a few days, and by the time we arrived in Albuquerque, and were meant to wake up well before sunrise before the festival, we just couldn’t do it. We were exhausted. We eventually got out of the house, and found the streets packed with cars. There was no way to make it to the fairgrounds and to experience this moment that we had been waiting for. I was devastated. We eventually gave up trying to force that experience to happen, and found our way to a place called Cherry Creek State Park. It was phenomenal. Breathtakingly beautiful. But I couldn’t enjoy it. I was so upset that we had missed the “peak,” that I couldn’t be present for the next thing that life offered to me.
Sometimes it feels impossible to not get stuck in my expectations. To be flexible and, thus, free. I felt this a lot around liberation work when I first got started. So obsessed with the end game that I couldn’t experience the freedom of a singular moment. I couldn’t be present for the journey or for the opportunities that life offered, because they veered off from my rigid vision of the future.
In Light on Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar writes much about the idea that “work alone is your privilege; never the fruits thereof.” When I think about liberation work, I wonder if maybe the part that frustrates most of us, or extinguishes our fervor, is the realization that we will do this work, and that nothing will (seem) to come to fruition in our lifetime. I think this fear compels us to expend more energy than we have to offer, without rest, as we try to force something to happen. We lose our balance. And, in turn, our ability to sustain our engagement with the work. When the “peak pose” or point of the work is “freedom,” it’s hard to imagine settling for anything less. Or believing that life could possibly offer us something other than our personal vision for the future. And, I guess I am just curious about what we lose in our rigidity; and in our obsession with benefitting from the fruits of our labor.
A Practice for Today:
What is the “peak pose” of this liberation work, as you imagine it? When will you know that you’ve arrived? In what ways has life forced you to veer off course from what you imagined? What came of those moments? What about this journey can you delight in and celebrate? If you were to relinquish the need to see all of your effort come to fruition, how do you think that might change you?
